Sport­ing events are the cat­a­lyst for every ath­lete, and for pro­mot­er Michael Phillips, it has al­ways been a plat­form for his per­son­al growth.

On Wednes­day night, Phillips Pro­mo­tion put Ari­api­ta Av­enue in Port-of-Spain back on the fast track, with the re­turn of “Cy­cling on the Av­enue”.

Host­ing the ninth edi­tion of the event which was themed “Catch Me If You Can” was a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for the for­mer na­tion­al cy­clist.

“You al­ways have to adapt,” said Phillip.

“You can’t do this with­out re­la­tion­ships,” he added. “I’m not a one-man show by any means, I may be more on the cre­ative side but if it wasn’t for peo­ple like my broth­er Es­hean Ar­joon who han­dles a lot of the lo­gis­tics, my cousin Waled LaRoche who does most of the heavy lift­ing and Tamiko But­ler who han­dled the duathlon, it’s im­pos­si­ble.”

Prime among his lessons was the new spon­sor­ship en­vi­ron­ment this year as the race pro­gramme did not have the ben­e­fit of a long-time sup­port­er.

“We lost our ti­tle spon­sor, and we lost some co-spon­sors be­cause of that, and (we had) to re­struc­ture the en­tire event,” he re­vealed. “Vi­su­al­ly it did not look scaled down but there were a lot of things that we were not able to do that made it so much more stress­ful on our part.”

Ac­cord­ing to Phillips, ex­pe­ri­ence saved the ef­fort, and made for a tri­umphant re­turn.

“What we recog­nised by hav­ing such re­duced re­sources is that the brand of ‘Cy­cling on the Av­enue’ is pret­ty, damn strong and what we have is peo­ple that can get it done,” said the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Phillips Pro­mo­tions Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

He not­ed that sport­ing drinks spend more mon­ey on Car­ni­val than they do on sport, this may be down to sheer num­bers of eyes, what he calls ‘sin fac­tor’, and vi­su­al im­pact.

Sport pro­mot­ers are al­so out­num­bered by ‘fete’ pro­mot­ers.

Still, he ped­als on.

By his es­ti­mates, a cou­ple thou­sand spec­ta­tors of vary­ing in­ter­est in the sport lined the side walks of Ari­api­ta Av­enue and Phillips spent a por­tion of his evening thank­ing them for be­ing there.

He said the pres­ence of chil­dren among the evening’s com­peti­tors was a hit, but more than that it was im­por­tant to in­volve the young ath­letes in a meet that fea­tured some of the na­tion’s top ath­letes.

“The kids them­selves nev­er get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to per­form in front of such a large au­di­ence so that for them is a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I’m sure they’re nev­er go­ing to for­get, es­pe­cial­ly how ex­haust­ed they were be­cause there were peo­ple cheer­ing them on. It was pace!” said the for­mer na­tion­al cy­clist, adding that it’s crit­i­cal that they have that ex­pe­ri­ence at this stage of their de­vel­op­ment, and it was es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant for the fu­ture of the sport­ing in­dus­try as a whole that girls were in­clud­ed.

He says there is val­ue in em­u­lat­ing the school sports en­vi­ron­ments of Ja­maica’s In­ter-Sec­ondary Schools Sports As­so­ci­a­tion and the Unit­ed States col­lege sys­tem but that cor­po­rate and gov­ern­men­tal buy-in was im­por­tant to fa­cil­i­tate those ecosys­tems.

“We have more seat­ing ca­pac­i­ty per capi­ta in sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties than most places, but no fund­ing,” not­ed Phillips. “That’s like buy­ing a Fer­rari and not putting gas in the tank.

“And if we are call­ing it a sport­ing in­dus­try, we now (need to) ded­i­cate our­selves to host events, ex­port ath­letes have this be some­where where peo­ple want to come and com­pete. We have all the el­e­ments for do­ing things that are grand and dy­nam­ic.”

Phillips threw his first in­ter­na­tion­al event at age 28, it in­volved in­ter­na­tion­al track and road ath­letes com­pet­ing over ten days.

The son and grand­son of two for­mer T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers, Phillips said his work with this na­tion’s cy­clists is his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to their lega­cies.

“Some­one told me some­thing when I was laps­ing in a train­ing ex­er­cise, he gave me a work­out and even­tu­al­ly I puked, he said ‘Michael one of the worst things in life is to waste a God-giv­en tal­ent’ and that haunts me.”

He’s done al­most every­thing to not let those words fall in his gar­den again and even sold art in or­der to fund his first race.

But he fears for the fu­ture of ath­let­ic en­deav­our in T&T.

“We as Trini­bag­o­ni­ans seem to be fash­ion­ably unim­pressed by most things,” he mused the day af­ter the “Cy­cling on the Av­enue 9” event.

“I’m con­cerned that we are no longer able to re­spond to ex­cel­lence the way that we used to, and what that’s go­ing to cause is peo­ple no longer want­i­ng to as­pire to and achieve ex­cel­lence.”

Phillips wants to be re­spon­si­ble for good news in his com­mu­ni­ty and of­fered some ad­vice for oth­ers who may feel the same way.

“You’re not owed any­thing, dis­com­fort is okay, take the lessons from los­ing, it’s not go­ing to hap­pen un­less you put in the work.”