​It is still un­cer­tain whether the Skin­ner Park fa­cil­i­ty in San Fer­nan­do, which claimed the life of cy­clist Col­in "Creepy" Wil­son on the open­ing day of the East­er In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Grand Prix, was cer­ti­fied for the event.

​For­mer T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) pres­i­dent Frank Git­tens, who is now serv­ing as a com­mis­saire, con­firmed yes­ter­day that the fa­cil­i­ty was cer­ti­fied. How­ev­er, this stands in stark con­trast to an of­fi­cial UCI (Union Cy­cliste In­ter­na­tionale) doc­u­ment, which lists the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va, as the on­ly cer­ti­fied fa­cil­i­ty in T&T to date.

​The UCI list, pro­vid­ed by for­mer TTCF pres­i­dent Robert Far­ri­er, showed all cer­ti­fied fa­cil­i­ties glob­al­ly; cur­rent­ly, on­ly the NCC is in­clud­ed for T&T.

​Git­tens, who pre­vi­ous­ly held the top lead­er­ship po­si­tion in lo­cal cy­cling, not­ed that his role as a com­mis­saire car­ries sig­nif­i­cant weight re­gard­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al events. A com­mis­saire’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clude race mon­i­tor­ing, en­sur­ing safe­ty over­sight (Ver­i­fy­ing that the race course and equip­ment meet safe­ty stan­dards to pro­tect both rid­ers and spec­ta­tors), deal­ing with con­flict res­o­lu­tion (Ad­dress­ing dis­putes and is­sues to main­tain the in­tegri­ty of the event), and in­ter­act­ing with race of­fi­cials, teams, and ath­letes to con­vey de­ci­sions clear­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly.

​When asked if the fa­cil­i­ty was cer­ti­fied, Git­tens an­swered in the af­fir­ma­tive. He told Guardian Me­dia Sports that the fed­er­a­tion's on­ly blun­der was the as­sump­tion that fenc­ing re­moved for Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties ear­li­er this year had been re­placed with its orig­i­nal struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty.

​Re­gard­ing whether the event was UCI-sanc­tioned, Git­tens ex­plained that there are dif­fer­ent clas­si­fi­ca­tions of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

He said, "I would say yes, it was UCI cer­ti­fied. Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is in light of the events you want to hold on it. Skin­ner Park would not be cer­ti­fied for an Olympic event or Com­mon­wealth event. The Cou­va track is of the Olympic stan­dard, so, in cer­ti­fy­ing, there are dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories for the dif­fer­ent types of events. If you want to set or at­tempt to break the world record, that could on­ly be done on an ap­pro­pri­ate track. They wouldn't cre­ate rid­ing on the road with a track."

Ac­cord­ing to Git­tens, "It had the East­er Grand Prix events, the lo­cal events. It had the Caribbean Cham­pi­onship events and the UCI event, and there were sanc­tions for all three. Go­ing back to how the con­ver­sa­tion start­ed, I was not the com­mis­saire for all the events; I was the com­mis­saire for the lo­cal events. For the Caribbean Cham­pi­onship events and the UCI events, there was a UCI com­mis­saire here. The track was cer­ti­fied pre­vi­ous­ly, and it is doc­u­ment­ed that it is ap­proved for cy­cling.

"Where I would say we made a blun­der is that they pre­vi­ous­ly had Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties in the fa­cil­i­ty, and they re­moved the bar­ri­ers to fa­cil­i­tate the trucks and the bands, and so, it ap­pears that they did not re­place it in a se­cure man­ner. The weld­ing, some of the weld­ing was just tacks that broke loose on im­pact.

"They had re­moved part of the fenc­ing, and where they re­moved it is where he col­lid­ed with, and it broke and dam­aged him," Git­tens ex­plained.

Git­tens said fur­ther, "With the in­stal­la­tion of the fence, there wasn't a de­tailed struc­ture in­spec­tion on the fence, on the rail. We were of the as­sump­tion that if a fence was there and you re­moved it, you would put it back with the same in­tegri­ty. So that was the short­com­ing of the cy­cling fra­ter­ni­ty, be­cause it's not one per­son who went and looked at it and shared any con­cern.”

Mean­while, Far­ri­er crit­i­cised the fed­er­a­tion’s de­ci­sion to add the novice rid­ers with the mas­ters events. Wil­son's crash took place as he at­tempt­ed to nav­i­gate away from novice rid­er San­jeev Soni­lal of the Rigtech Son­ics, who went down on the track.

Far­ri­er, the founder of lo­cal club DPS, not­ed that there had been pre­vi­ous at­tempts to dis­cour­age mix­ing these cat­e­gories.

“This is not a nor­mal prac­tice in cy­cling,” Far­ri­er said.