There has been no res­o­lu­tion in a le­gal dis­pute over a de­ci­sion by the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion to hold im­promp­tu tri­als one month be­fore the Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships, which will take place in Chile in Feb­ru­ary next year.

High Court Judge West­min James re­served his de­ci­sion over an in­junc­tion against the tri­als af­ter hear­ing lengthy sub­mis­sions from lawyers for the fed­er­a­tion and two cy­cling clubs and three pro­fes­sion­al cy­clists on Tues­day.

Jus­tice James gave lawyers for cy­cling clubs Just Liv­ing Dai­ly Cy­cling Acad­e­my and Heat­wave Cy­cling Club, and pro­fes­sion­al cy­clists Njisane Phillip, Alexi Cos­ta-Ramirez, and Makaira Wal­lace time to get their clients’ views on an of­fer made by the fed­er­a­tion dur­ing the hear­ing.

They were al­so giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to file ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence be­fore Jus­tice James ren­ders his de­ci­sion on the in­ter­im re­lief, lat­er this week.

On De­cem­ber 1, 2025, lawyers for the group filed a law­suit over the fed­er­a­tion’s de­ci­sion to host the tri­als on Jan­u­ary 17, a month be­fore the cham­pi­onships.

Last week, they filed for the in­ter­im in­junc­tion stop­ping the tri­als.

In their court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the group’s mem­bers claimed that they were on­ly in­formed of the fed­er­a­tion’s de­ci­sion, tak­en in mid-Sep­tem­ber, on No­vem­ber 10.

They claimed that the move was in con­tra­ven­tion of 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,” they said.

They con­tend­ed that af­ter con­cerns were raised over the move, the fed­er­a­tion held an emer­gency meet­ing in which its mem­bers ap­proved the move by a vote of 14 for and 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.

They claimed that Phillip, Cos­ta-Ramirez, and Wal­lace would be prej­u­diced by the de­ci­sion as they are based abroad and would have to dis­rupt their train­ing sched­ule 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.

In re­sponse to the ap­pli­ca­tion, the fed­er­a­tion filed af­fi­davits from sev­er­al mem­bers, who vot­ed in favour of the tri­als at the meet­ing.

The mem­bers all claimed that they were in­formed of the group’s le­gal con­cerns over the move and still vot­ed in favour of it as they felt it was the most fair and ob­jec­tive se­lec­tion method in the cir­cum­stances.

The clubs and the cy­clists were rep­re­sent­ed by Dr Emir Crowne, Matthew Gayle, and Ja­son Jones, of New City Cham­bers. The fed­er­a­tion was rep­re­sent­ed by Zel­i­ca Haynes-Soo Hon, Ker­ri-Ann Oliv­er­ie, and Kali­fa Lovelace.