Af­ter a four-year hia­tus, one of the coun­try's most an­tic­i­pat­ed and en­ter­tain­ing events, Cy­cling on the Av­enue, is set to re­turn on Oc­to­ber 4 with a theme "Catch Me If You Can".

The ninth edi­tion of the event was an­nounced to the me­dia at Mikes Bikes Shop on Ari­api­ta Av­enue Thurs­day af­ter­noon and in keep­ing with its theme which is a re­flec­tion of the strides be­ing made by the sport, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­cent years on the world stage the event will fit­ting­ly fea­ture a list of in­ter­na­tion­al rid­ers.

Chief pro­mot­er of the event, Michael Phillips, said that af­ter he and his com­pa­ny were bom­bard­ed with re­quests from the cy­cling com­mu­ni­ty and the gen­er­al pub­lic to bring back the event, it was de­cid­ed to put the plans in mo­tion for its re­turn, es­pe­cial­ly when cou­pled with the recog­ni­tion that more in­ter­na­tion­al sport­ing events are need­ed on our lo­cal cal­en­dar.

Phillips, who has held nu­mer­ous roles in all spheres of life, rang­ing from cy­clist and pro­mot­er to singer and to artist, told a gath­er­ing of me­dia per­son­nel that the last time they would have staged the event was back in 2019.

With­out go­ing in­to specifics, he al­so hint­ed that the event wasn’t just for the cy­cling fra­ter­ni­ty and those spec­ta­tors and well-wish­ers who choose to come out, will be in for a lot more than just cy­cling as there will al­so be a se­ries of en­ter­tain­ment and oth­er events, which he said would re­main a se­cret at this time.

"Since the in­cep­tion of cy­cling on the av­enue, we al­ways had that en­ter­tain­ment fac­tor in try­ing to bring some­thing that is dy­nam­ic. So for me per­son­al­ly, hav­ing in years gone by be­ing a lot more pro­lif­ic in terms of events, I had to re­al­ly mea­sure and see how these things (types of events) are to re­al­ly sur­vive and keep peo­ple mo­ti­vat­ed."

He con­tin­ued, "A lot of par­ents and cy­clists, even fans of the event, were say­ing we need to con­tin­ue this, and ask­ing [me] when are you bring­ing Cy­cling on the Av­enue back?...... The an­swer to that is…that's why we are here to­day for this an­nounce­ment. To con­tin­ue this labour of love."

Like in the past years, the event will fea­ture a duathlon race spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed for schools, with the pri­ma­ry school chil­dren - boys and girls - aged 9-10 years, con­test­ing a 400-me­tre run, a 1.3-kilo­me­tre bike race and a 400m run; while for sec­ondary schools' boys and girls there will be three cat­e­gories, 13 and un­der; 14-15 along with 16 and over. De­spite dif­fer­ent age cat­e­gories, these kids will all com­pete in an 800-me­tre run, a 2.6-kilo­me­tre bike race and an 800m run.

Ac­cord­ing to Phillips, not on­ly will the school events be held again, they will serve to jump-start the pro­gramme at 7 pm, be­fore one of the ma­jor main races, a two-lap sprint for in­vi­ta­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al rid­ers.

The fea­ture event, a gru­elling 30-lap cir­cuit grind for open, in­ter­na­tion­al and elite and in­vi­ta­tion­al rid­ers, will then fol­low with the win­ner rid­ing off with a $4,000 cheque, the run­ner-up $3,000 and the third-place rid­er col­lect­ing $2,000.

Cash prizes will al­so be pre­sent­ed to rid­ers fin­ish­ing fourth, fifth and sixth-place with $1,000, $800 and $500, be­ing al­lo­cat­ed for these re­spec­tive po­si­tions. While there is a nom­i­nal val­ue on all prizes the ac­tu­al amount and val­ue won may be dras­ti­cal­ly in­creased based on the primes and oth­er in­cen­tives that will be on of­fer.

Phillips said should he con­tin­ue to get the sup­port of the event’s main spon­sors NL­CB, along with Blue Wa­ters, Lifestyle Mo­tors, Tourism Trinidad and Sub­way Trinidad, among oth­ers, he will def­i­nite­ly be look­ing to throw many more events in the fu­ture.