Vice pres­i­dent of rac­ing, Desmond Roberts, is the lat­est high-rank­ing mem­ber of the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) to re­sign from the or­gan­i­sa­tion with­in a tu­mul­tuous pe­ri­od dat­ing back to 2021.

In giv­ing rea­sons be­hind his res­ig­na­tion, which was hand­ed in on Au­gust 30, Roberts stat­ed that the fed­er­a­tion is be­ing run as a car­tel and op­er­at­ing as a law un­to it­self and that he can­not work with per­sons who play with the mind­set of young per­sons for their per­son­al ben­e­fit.

Be­tween the pe­ri­od of 2021 to 2022, the TTCF lost vice pres­i­dent - fi­nance Claire Leach Lewis, Trea­sur­er - Re­ce­na Leo­taud, pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Dawn Scott, and now Roberts, all for vary­ing rea­sons.

Roberts, in his res­ig­na­tion let­ter, stat­ed: "I cur­rent­ly hold the po­si­tion of vice pres­i­dent of rac­ing of the TTCF and I am grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have served in this po­si­tion. How­ev­er, it is with deep re­gret that with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, I wish to ten­der my res­ig­na­tion from the TTCF as vice pres­i­dent of rac­ing."

He con­tin­ued: “Man­agers and coach­es se­lect­ed for na­tion­al teams as per the rac­ing pol­i­cy, fail in the ex­e­cu­tion of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to su­per­vise, keep records, and to show fur­ther­more that the ti­tle of coach should be termed as care­tak­er coach for these events. The team trains on their own with min­i­mum mon­i­tor­ing and it seems to me that peo­ple are there for a trip and to look good when the ath­letes suc­ceed. This does not auger well for busi­ness if our ob­jec­tive is the progress of the team. Tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey must be ac­count­ed for wise­ly. Man­agers and coach­es should al­so be mind­ful of state­ments made around young cy­clists when rep­re­sent­ing T&T abroad."

Roberts added: "No struc­ture is in place for the man­age­ment of the TTCF equip­ment/as­sets, and I do not wish to be aligned should there be any miss­ing part or equip­ment. I be­lieve there is no fair play, in re­la­tion to all cy­clists and the TTCF must set these pa­ra­me­ters for this to hap­pen, and it must be to the ben­e­fit of all cy­clists.

"There seems to be a car­tel in place which does not seek the best in­ter­est of all cy­clists. There are too many in­con­sis­ten­cies in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es of the TTCF, e.g., de­spite rec­om­men­da­tions by the rac­ing chair­man to se­lect and start prepa­ra­tion of the 2023 Com­mon­wealth Youth Games team six months pri­or, this was on­ly done three to four weeks pri­or, which re­sult­ed in many coach­ing is­sues. It is ev­i­dent that de­ci­sions are be­ing made by the car­tel with no rules be­ing strict­ly ad­hered to.

“There is a lack of prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the TTCF and the cy­clists it gov­erns and this leads to is­sues at events and with­in clubs. I am very pas­sion­ate about the sport of cy­cling and to this end very dis­sat­is­fied with some mem­bers of the rac­ing com­mit­tee and the way rac­ing busi­ness is be­ing con­duct­ed. I will on­ly at­tend meet­ings in my ca­pac­i­ty as a life mem­ber, to seek the in­ter­ests of all cy­clists in T&T."

Guardian Me­dia Sports reached out to Roberts for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on is state­ment and he re­spond­ed: "When I be­came rac­ing chair­man, I put a sys­tem in place where on­ly cy­clists who qual­i­fied for the na­tion­al team could have used the equip­ment, be­cause back then, the equip­ment was used by who is favoured to do so, and my thing is that it is gov­ern­ment's mon­ey, so you do not want to go back to the gov­ern­ment to ask for wheels when the wheels are be­ing used by some­body for a keep fit.

"That's not what it is for, this is for na­tion­al du­ty and this equip­ment costs a lot. I was try­ing to put a sys­tem in place where there could be a con­trolled flow of the equip­ment. My own cy­clist, I turned down be­cause he want­ed to use the wheels for Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships and I told him no. But af­ter I told him no, some­one else got ap­proval and used them for the same na­tion­al cham­pi­onships, so I called an emer­gency meet­ing to say this is not for that."

Roberts said he al­so took of­fence when De­vante Lau­rence want­ed to go to the 'Worlds' al­though he did not make the qual­i­fy­ing time and was a sub­ject of ridicule and laughed at by mem­bers of the fed­er­a­tion as his fam­i­ly want­ed to pay for him to make the trip and par­tic­i­pate.

He told Guardian Me­dia he be­lieves in giv­ing all a fair chance be­cause that same thing hap­pened to Te­niel Camp­bell - a rid­er Roberts per­son­al­ly man­ages - and she is now a top, world-class cy­clist to­day.

Mean­while, when con­tact­ed Rowe­na Williams, pres­i­dent of the TTCF, said she didn't know what Roberts was talk­ing about since he was part of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing in the fed­er­a­tion.

Williams said: “The fed­er­a­tion will have to have a con­ver­sa­tion with Mr Robert to find out clear­ly what he is speak­ing about.”

About the use of equip­ment, she dis­agreed with the be­lief that this should be for na­tion­al cy­clists on­ly: "The fed­er­a­tion has to have a prop­er pol­i­cy when it comes to that and right now the equip­ment that there is used for trav­el­ling na­tion­al teams."

How­ev­er, Roberts is firm in his po­si­tion and said he was even more dis­turbed when, in a de­par­ture from cus­tom, his is­sues were not even men­tioned at a coun­cil meet­ing held on Sat­ur­day ex­plain­ing that usu­al­ly, the con­cerns ex­pressed when a per­son re­signs are raised at sub­se­quent coun­cil meet­ings to be dealt and dis­cussed, but that did not oc­cur in this in­stance.