A High Court judge will this week con­sid­er whether to grant an in­junc­tion block­ing the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) from hold­ing im­promp­tu tri­als one month be­fore the Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Chile next Feb­ru­ary.

​Ear­li­er this month, lawyers for the Just Liv­ing Dai­ly Cy­cling Acad­e­my, Heat­wave Cy­cling Club, and pro­fes­sion­al cy­clists Njisane Phillip, Alexi Cos­ta-Ramirez, and Makaira Wal­lace filed a law­suit over the fed­er­a­tion's de­ci­sion to host tri­als on Jan­u­ary 17, a month be­fore the cham­pi­onships. 

Last week, they filed for an in­ter­im in­junc­tion to stop the tri­als.

​In court fil­ings ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the group claimed they were on­ly in­formed on No­vem­ber 10 of the fed­er­a­tion's de­ci­sion, which had been tak­en in mid-Sep­tem­ber. They al­leged the move con­tra­venes the fed­er­a­tion's se­lec­tion pol­i­cy, which states that tri­als should be sched­uled to take place on or be­fore 12 weeks pri­or to an event. 

​"The De­fen­dant has act­ed with­out prop­er rea­son and/or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in de­vi­at­ing from its own se­lec­tion pol­i­cy," the fil­ings stat­ed.

​The claimants con­tend­ed that af­ter con­cerns were raised, the fed­er­a­tion held an emer­gency meet­ing where mem­bers ap­proved the move by a vote of 14 for to six against. They claimed that the vote was un­law­ful as mem­bers were not ful­ly in­formed of the sit­u­a­tion.

"The De­fen­dant has re­fused to re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion in re­spect of the im­prop­er tri­als and has pro­cured the most re­cent coun­cil vote by mis­lead­ing the mem­ber­ship and/or fail­ing or re­fus­ing to ful­ly dis­close per­ti­nent doc­u­ments to the Coun­cil, as to the state of af­fairs with re­spect of the on­go­ing lit­i­ga­tion as be­tween the par­ties in the in­stant claim," they said. 

​The group fur­ther claimed that Phillip, Cos­ta-Ramirez, and Wal­lace would be prej­u­diced by the de­ci­sion, as they are based abroad and would have to dis­rupt train­ing sched­ules and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments in or­der to par­tic­i­pate.

"Since fil­ing the in­stant claim, the third, fourth, and fifth Claimant's in­ter­na­tion­al ranks have in­creased, fur­ther high­light­ing the ab­sur­di­ty of these last minute manda­to­ry tri­als," they said. 

They al­so ques­tioned whether the move may have an im­pact on the three ath­letes qual­i­fy­ing for the next Olympic Games. 

"The Claimants' Olympic prospects are like­ly to be se­vere­ly di­min­ished and/or put in jeop­ardy as a con­se­quence of the De­fen­dant's un­law­ful and/or im­prop­er de­ci­sion to hold tri­als as the Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships is a key step­ping stone to Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tions and/or if the De­fen­dant can sim­ply re-write se­lec­tion poli­cies and cri­te­ria on a whim with 24 hours' no­tice it would set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent for any fu­ture se­lec­tion process, in­clud­ing Olympic se­lec­tions," they said. 

The in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice West­min James at 9 am on Tues­day. The clubs and the cy­clists are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dr Emir Crowne, Matthew Gayle, and Ja­son Jones, of New City Cham­bers.