Sh­er­nice Thomas

The Tour of T&T In­de­pen­dence Cy­cle Clas­sic has been re­vived in or­der to join the cel­e­bra­tions of the coun­try's 50 years of In­de­pen­dence. The event will ped­al off from Au­gust 19 to Sep­tem­ber 2012. The fourth edi­tion of the event is or­gan­ised by for­mer na­tion­al cy­clist, An­tho­ny "Bike Doc­tor" Com­mis­siong, and is sanc­tioned by the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF). The race en­ti­tled "The Uni­ty Race" is the biggest and most pub­li­cised road cy­cling event in the Caribbean since it fea­tures 12 stages, and as such, it has al­ready been dubbed the "Tour de France of the Caribbean." The first stage of the tour is a 50-mile trib­ute to Njisane Phillip, Roger Gib­bon, Gene Samuel, Leslie King and all oth­er present and for­mer cy­clists who have made T&T one of the most suc­cess­ful cy­cling coun­tries in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. Some 600 cy­clists are ex­pect­ed to turn out for this fun ride which is open to all cy­clists over the age of 11. This event was last held in 2008 and saw cy­clists from Guyana, Suri­name, St Lu­cia, Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Cana­da and the USA com­pete against one an­oth­er. Mar­loe Rod­man of Ja­maica emerged the top rid­er of that year.

How­ev­er this year's event promis­es to be the best yet, as cy­clists from Kenya, Chi­na and In­dia will be vis­it­ing T&T for the first time to pro­vide keen com­pe­ti­tion for the ten par­tic­i­pat­ing Caribbean coun­tries. Pro­mot­er and Race Chair­man Com­mis­siong, is very ex­cit­ed hav­ing been able to re­vive the event once again. Com­mis­siong, who rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the 1977 World Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships, is al­so re­spon­si­ble for re­viv­ing a num­ber of oth­er lo­cal games in­clud­ing the pop­u­lar South­ern Games. The "Bike Doc­tor" still needs vol­un­teers and cor­po­rate spon­sors to help in the suc­cess­ful run­ning of this event. Per­sons who are will­ing to pro­vide as­sis­tance can con­tact Com­mis­siong at 479-3852.