The T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion has fi­nal­ly bro­ken its si­lence on the is­sue of no avail­able funds for its ju­nior team to com­pete at the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships, which is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in Ve­r­acruz, Mex­i­co.

Last week, a wave of com­plaints flood­ed so­cial me­dia when the team of Kafele Des­ormeaux, Cris­t­ian Nel­son, Zion Lu­cas, Shame­ka Hoyte and Kylee Young found out that af­ter months of prepa­ra­tion, there were no funds for them to go.

As the young cy­clists, their par­ents and oth­er sup­port­ers point­ed fin­gers at the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T for the non-ap­proval of the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion’s bud­get of close to $200,000 for the trip, the Sports Com­pa­ny de­liv­ered a sting­ing re­sponse, blam­ing the em­bat­tled cy­cling fed­er­a­tion for the team’s non-trav­el, say­ing the TTCF was in­formed three months in ad­vance.

In a two-page re­lease on Wednes­day, the SporTT as­sured, “All Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs) un­der its purview were for­mal­ly no­ti­fied by the Sport De­vel­op­ment Unit (SDU) in Feb­ru­ary 2026 that fund­ing ap­provals were placed on hold in­def­i­nite­ly pend­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive and fi­nan­cial re­view process­es. This po­si­tion was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) more than three months ago, at a 29 Jan­u­ary 2026 vir­tu­al meet­ing.

The de­ci­sion to place sub­ven­tions on hold was not tak­en light­ly and was in part nec­es­sary due to per­sis­tent com­pli­ance chal­lenges across sev­er­al NG­Bs, es­pe­cial­ly in light of on­go­ing fund­ing con­straints.”

It not­ed fur­ther that the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion did not meet its com­pli­ance oblig­a­tions, as high­light­ed un­der the head­line ‘Out­stand­ing Com­pli­ance Oblig­a­tions’ in its re­lease. Ac­cord­ing to the SporTT state­ment, “In re­la­tion to the TTCF, SporTT con­firms that there are cur­rent­ly eight (8) out­stand­ing ex­pense re­ports span­ning the cur­rent and pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial years.” Five (5) of these re­ports are present­ly un­der re­view by the SDU, pend­ing ad­di­tion­al sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion from the TTCF to com­plete the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process. The re­main­ing three (3) re­ports have not yet been sub­mit­ted by the TTCF. In line with gov­er­nance and ac­count­abil­i­ty best prac­tices, these out­stand­ing mat­ters must be re­solved be­fore fur­ther fund­ing re­quests can be con­sid­ered. SporTT com­mu­ni­cat­ed these re­quire­ments to the TTCF through es­tab­lished chan­nels well in ad­vance of the Cham­pi­onships, al­low­ing suf­fi­cient time for al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments to be ex­plored.”

Mean­while, Rowe­na Williams, the pres­i­dent of the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion, who could not be reached when Guardian Me­dia Sports reached out to her two days ago, made it clear in a sim­i­lar two-page re­port that at no time was her fed­er­a­tion in­formed that out­stand­ing ex­pense re­ports would have been used as a ba­sis to de­lay or with­hold con­sid­er­a­tion of fur­ther fund­ing.

An­oth­er NGB of­fi­cial, who re­quest­ed to re­main anony­mous, sided with the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion, as he, too, was forced to re­quest the pol­i­cy of the SporTT that spoke to the with­hold­ing of funds if ex­pense re­ports were not forth­com­ing. Yes­ter­day, Williams said, ‘While SporTT now as­serts that these mat­ters were com­mu­ni­cat­ed “well in ad­vance”, the TTCF did not re­ceive any clear, for­mal no­ti­fi­ca­tion in­di­cat­ing that fund­ing sup­port would be con­tin­gent on the res­o­lu­tion of these spe­cif­ic re­ports with­in the stat­ed time­frame. It should be not­ed that the bud­get for this event was sub­mit­ted on Feb­ru­ary 03, 2026.”

And ac­cord­ing to the lo­cal cy­cling boss, “The TTCF has been ac­tive­ly en­gaged in the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process and has main­tained on­go­ing di­a­logue with SporTT. Any de­lays in com­plet­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion have large­ly been ad­min­is­tra­tive in na­ture. In par­tic­u­lar, three (3) re­ports re­main out­stand­ing as the TTCF is re­quired to await the re­turn of ath­letes and of­fi­cials to sub­mit orig­i­nal re­ceipts and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments. We ad­vise fur­ther that events with­in re­cent times have tak­en place back-to-back, and it is not as sim­ple as just sub­mit­ting re­ports as an event is com­plet­ed, while we do re­quire re­view­ing re­ports be­fore fi­nal sub­mis­sion to SPORTT.”

The TTCF al­so took a slash at SporTT’s claims of out­stand­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion to com­plete the com­pli­ance process, say­ing, “Im­por­tant­ly, five of the re­ports ref­er­enced were al­ready sub­mit­ted as re­quired and un­der re­view by SporTT’s Sport De­vel­op­ment Unit, which in­di­cates that the process is on­go­ing, not ne­glect­ed.” To sug­gest that the TTCF was giv­en suf­fi­cient no­tice to make “al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments” is mis­lead­ing. No such di­rec­tive or warn­ing was com­mu­ni­cat­ed in a man­ner that con­veyed ur­gency or con­se­quences of this mag­ni­tude. In this re­gard, the TTCF wish­es to ad­vise that it will con­tin­ue in its di­a­logue with SPORTT to ad­dress all con­cerns raised and en­deav­our to bring an am­i­ca­ble res­o­lu­tion that is in the in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cy­clists.”

The ju­nior T&T team was ex­pect­ed to de­fend the coun­try’s team sprint ti­tle, which was won by the trio of Je­lani Nedd, Ju­dah Nev­er­son, and Javon Ram­roop, who al­so shat­tered the na­tion­al record when they de­feat­ed the Colom­bians in the fi­nal in a time of 46.061 sec­onds in 2025.

This year, the team of Des­ormeaux, Nel­son, and Lu­cas was giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of de­fend­ing the ti­tle.