The court will de­cide whether tri­als will be used to se­lect the T&T cy­cling team for the up­com­ing Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Chile next year, or if the team will be cho­sen based on the cy­clists’ rank­ings.

The T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion made its de­ci­sion at a vote held dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing on Mon­day, which was con­duct­ed vir­tu­al­ly. Af­ter 14 clubs vot­ed in favour of hold­ing it on Jan­u­ary 17, six clubs vot­ed against. The cy­cling fed­er­a­tion has con­tend­ed that it is the fair thing to do, as many up­com­ing cy­clists would be left out if the team were cho­sen us­ing the rid­ers’ rank.

The vote goes against the TTCF se­lec­tion process, which en­ables the team to be se­lect­ed three months in ad­vance, as it gives the cy­clists suf­fi­cient time to pre­pare for in­ter­na­tion­al events. Gre­go­ry D’an­drade, VP Rac­ing, said, “We can’t de­ny the young, up­com­ing cy­clists a fair chance of mak­ing the team. What should we do, not ac­com­mo­date them?”

Based on the se­lec­tion process alone, tri­als are sup­posed to be com­plet­ed on Mon­day and the team se­lect­ed. But Dan­drade said the clubs, in a meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 20, re­quest­ed more time for their rid­ers to pre­pare for the tri­als and asked for it to be held in Jan­u­ary, which the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion ac­cept­ed.

Soon af­ter the vote on Mon­day, two clubs—the JLD Cy­cling Acad­e­my and Heat­wave Cy­cling Club—via at­tor­ney-at-law Dr Emir Crowne, is­sued pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters to stop the process. Dr Crowne, from the New City Cham­bers, un­der the head­ing Se­lec­tion Pol­i­cy, stat­ed, “As a start­ing point, sub-sec­tion 1.003 of the Pol­i­cy and Pro­ce­dures for the Se­lec­tion of Cy­clists and Of­fi­cials to Rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go At Lo­cal & For­eign In­ter­na­tion­al Com­pe­ti­tions (the “Se­lec­tion Pol­i­cy”), it states that “The Rac­ing Com­mit­tee will host tri­als at least twelve (12) weeks pri­or to the for­eign in­ter­na­tion­al event. Should a for­eign in­ter­na­tion­al event be held with­in three (3) months fol­low­ing Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships, said Cham­pi­onships may, at the dis­cre­tion of the Rac­ing Com­mit­tee, form the ba­sis for the se­lec­tion of cy­clists.” (em­pha­sis in orig­i­nal) This means that tri­als must be held on/by No­vem­ber 24, 2025, at the lat­est.”

“Prac­ti­cal­ly, this can­not oc­cur. In fact, sub-sec­tion 1.003 of the Se­lec­tion Pol­i­cy goes fur­ther. It states that “The Rac­ing Com­mit­tee should se­lect cy­clists to rep­re­sent the coun­try at for­eign in­ter­na­tion­al events at least twelve (12) weeks be­fore the stag­ing of the events in or­der to al­low ad­e­quate time for the reg­is­tra­tion process with the for­eign and lo­cal pro­mot­ing en­ti­ty and the com­ple­tion of nec­es­sary fund­ing and trav­el arrange­ments.”

The le­gal team for the clubs al­so touched on the is­sues of im­promp­tu tri­als, not­ing, “The Im­promp­tu Tri­als: In light of that no­tice, the Fed­er­a­tion’s pro­pos­al to host tri­als on Jan­u­ary 17, 2026 (the “Im­promp­tu Tri­als”) is there­fore in­con­sis­tent with its own Se­lec­tion Pol­i­cy. A pol­i­cy that has ex­ist­ed since at least No­vem­ber 20, 2021. In re­view­ing the cor­re­spon­dence avail­able to us, we note that the Fed­er­a­tion is re­ly­ing on the min­utes of a Sep­tem­ber 20, 2025, meet­ing ti­tled “An­nu­al Col­lab­o­ra­tive 2026 Plan­ning Ses­sion” (the “Plan­ning Meet­ing”) to val­i­date that change.”

“It may be trite, but it is self-ev­i­dent that a plan­ning meet­ing lacks the req­ui­site au­thor­i­ty to amend the se­lec­tion pol­i­cy. In fact, some­what fit­ting­ly, the plan­ning meet­ing it­self ends with the fol­low­ing re­minder: “Ms Williams re­mind­ed all that the poli­cies are there and are re­quest­ing per­sons to read them.”

Un­fair­ness and Ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty: To that end, the Im­promp­tu Tri­als should not be ap­proved or coun­te­nanced by the Fed­er­a­tion as it 1. is ul­tra vires (i.e., it was passed dur­ing a meet­ing that lacked the req­ui­site pow­er to amend the Se­lec­tion Pol­i­cy); 2. runs con­trary to a long-es­tab­lished Se­lec­tion Pol­i­cy; and 3. dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fects in­ter­na­tion­al rid­ers as it sits square­ly with­in their train­ing block and would un­fair­ly dis­rupt their in­ter­na­tion­al tra­jec­to­ries. In­deed, we would be re­miss if we did not men­tion that the Fed­er­a­tion – and Trinidad & To­ba­go as a whole – is blessed to have sev­er­al rid­ers ranked in the top thir­ty in the world in their re­spec­tive dis­ci­plines: Mr Njisane Phillip (no. 23), Ms Alexi Ramirez (no. 23), and Ms Makaira Wal­lace (no. 26). To risk un­der­min­ing their per­for­mance and over­all sat­is­fac­tion with the Fed­er­a­tion is an el­e­ment that can­not be over­looked. Put sim­ply, you don’t sab­o­tage your best.”

Dan­drade, in line with main­tain­ing a fair process, called for in­ter­na­tion­al­ly based rid­ers to sub­mit their times to be viewed by the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion for se­lec­tion, say­ing there are rid­ers like Kwe­si Browne, who was in­jured and wants to make the team.