T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) Pres­i­dent Joseph Roberts will be chal­lenged by for­mer pres­i­dent Rowe­na Williams for the po­si­tion of pres­i­dent when the An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing (AGM) and Elec­tion of Of­fi­cers of the or­gan­i­sa­tion takes place vir­tu­al­ly on Jan­u­ary 30.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Tues­day Roberts, point­ed out that the work he did dur­ing the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic last year, will speak for it­self.

Williams is the cur­rent Rac­ing Sec­re­tary of the TTCF, af­ter serv­ing as pres­i­dent of the sport in 2010 and 2014. She has been the on­ly fe­male pres­i­dent the dis­ci­pline which has been in ex­is­tence for the last 70 years.

Roberts on the oth­er hand is a for­mer vice pres­i­dent of the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion who took over from Lar­ry Ro­many who re­signed in 2019. Dur­ing his tenure, he start­ed the vir­tu­al cy­cling plat­form which staged the 20KM Vir­tu­al Cy­cling Time Tri­al event that took place at the stu­dio of In­door Cy­cling Works on Mu­cu­rapo Road.

Nom­i­na­tions to serve four-year terms of of­fice have been sub­mit­ted for all ten po­si­tions which com­prise - pres­i­dent, gen­er­al sec­re­tary, three vice pres­i­dents, rac­ing sec­re­tary and as­sis­tant rac­ing sec­re­tary, as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary, trea­sur­er and pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer (PRO).

Roberts was al­so re­spon­si­ble for key changes in the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion's con­sti­tu­tion to en­sure bet­ter man­age­ment of the sport.

The sport's mem­ber­ship will de­cide on who they want to man­age their af­fairs, but ac­cord­ing to Roberts what will be im­por­tant is for the clubs and mem­bers to choose the best per­son to op­er­a­tionalise and im­ple­ment on the as­pi­ra­tions go­ing for­ward.

"It will be about de­liv­ery. How can we be trans­par­ent in what we do and whether we can de­liv­er an am­bi­tious vi­sion for 2021 and be­yond," Roberts ex­plained? The cy­cling pres­i­dent, along with his ex­ec­u­tive, has just for­mu­lat­ed a three-year strate­gic plan to take them through this year's ex­pect­ed tur­bu­lent pe­ri­od.

The plan, which was done with the help of a con­duct­ed SWOT Analy­sis that out­lined the or­gan­i­sa­tion's strengths, weak­ness­es, op­por­tu­ni­ties and threats, is ex­pect­ed to treat with dis­en­chant­ment with­in the fed­er­a­tion. Guardian Me­dia learnt that be­cause of this dis­en­chant­ment, there are many mem­bers who will not be con­test­ing the elec­tions.

Apart from the pres­i­den­cy which will be con­test­ed by two nom­i­nees, the oth­er two po­si­tions that will see a two-way con­test are the as­sis­tant rac­ing sec­re­tary po­si­tion which will see in­cum­bent David Fran­cis be­ing chal­lenged by Maria Top­pin-Lopez and the vice pres­i­dent of rac­ing, will al­so be a two-way fight be­tween Joel Browne and Desmond Roberts. The in­cum­bent is Gre­go­ry D'an­drade, who will not be seek­ing re-elec­tion.

Joseph Bap­tiste is set to be re­turned as a vice pres­i­dent un­op­posed, while Jacquelin Corbin will not be seek­ing re-elec­tion as gen­er­al sec­re­tary af­ter serv­ing the sport in var­i­ous po­si­tions for many decades. Al­so, not seek­ing an­oth­er term in of­fice is the vice pres­i­dent of fi­nance Ian Cole. Claire-Ann Lewis is ex­pect­ed to be the new vice pres­i­dent of fi­nance un­op­posed.

How­ev­er, Roberts, a for­mer bas­ket­ball coach, sees this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to look clos­er at the or­gan­i­sa­tion and its struc­ture, and how to achieve one of its man­date of de­liv­er­ing goods and ser­vices to its mem­bers and clubs, say­ing peo­ple maybe be dis­en­chant­ed from not hav­ing cy­cling last year, due to the COVID-19.

He said: "Part of the strat­e­gy for me be­ing the leader of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, if I am giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty, notwith­stand­ing peo­ple may be com­ing from dif­fer­ent places, but in lead­er­ship, one of the first things you need to have is some kind of re­treat. And im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the elec­tion, if un­der my stew­ard­ship, is to have a re­treat with all the ex­ec­u­tives, and roll out what we have dis­cussed with re­gards to the strate­gic plan."

Roberts, the for­mer bas­ket­ball play­er and ad­min­is­tra­tor, wants to con­duct some as­sess­ments that would en­able his ath­letes to con­test some re­gion­al tour­na­ments, de­spite the COVID19 pan­dem­ic.