WAL­TER AL­IBEY

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Scarci­ty of flights to To­ba­go ini­tial­ly threat­ened to put the To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cle Clas­sic in doubt, but Jef­frey Charles, the chief or­gan­is­er of the event, has as­sured the event will be an ex­cit­ing and com­pet­i­tive one.

“We still have some good qual­i­ty rid­ers for Di­vi­sion One with in­di­vid­ual rid­ers,” Charles said.  

The event will get go­ing on Fri­day with the nine-kilo­me­tre, com­pet­i­tive Mil­ford Road Cir­cuit from 8.30 am, how­ev­er, the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny will take place on Thurs­day af­ter­noon from 4 pm at the Crown Point Ho­tel.

Emile Abra­ham, the home­town hero, who is based in the Unit­ed States has re­turned for the event, along with rid­ers from Switzer­land, Colom­bia, and the USA, as well as rid­ers from the Caribbean.

Abra­ham told Guardian Me­dia Sports ahead of the Na­tion­al Cri­teri­um event that he would con­test the To­ba­go Clas­sic but he will not be at­tempt­ing to win it as he is in no con­di­tion to com­pete.  

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Charles con­firmed that six teams had to can­cel due to the dif­fi­cul­ty to get flights to To­ba­go.

“And even if they reach Trinidad, they will not be able to get flights to To­ba­go, as all the flights are booked up,” Charles ex­plained.

Charles said most of the rid­ers have to get con­nect­ing flights to get to lo­cal shores, which is very cost­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to Charles, over the past sev­en days alone six teams, in­clu­sive of Ger­many (one team), Colom­bia (two teams), Den­mark (one team) and the Unit­ed States (two teams), had to can­cel their trips be­cause they could not get flights.

Al­so miss­ing from the line-up will be de­fend­ing cham­pi­on of the Tour of To­ba­go Stu­art Mc Gill from the USA, sec­ond-place Clevon Mar­tinez of Venezuela and Bri­an Gomez of Colom­bia. All have said they have oth­er com­mit­ments which took them away from the event.

De­spite the chal­lenges, how­ev­er, it could be a bless­ing in dis­guise as Charles failed to get the num­ber of spon­sors he would nor­mal­ly get for the event.

Fol­low­ing the Mil­ford Road cir­cuit on Fri­day, the event will con­tin­ue with the Mar­ket Square Cir­cuit on Sat­ur­day and the pres­ti­gious Tour of To­ba­go on Sun­day, which fea­tures a ride around the sis­ter isle.

For the Tour of To­ba­go, the field will com­prise some 40-plus elite rid­ers, in­clud­ing cy­clists from abroad will be tak­ing part, as well as 55-plus open rid­ers and 25 novice cy­clists.