Great Britain’s Mar­cus Hi­ley and James Hedg­cock of Cana­da will head­line a large field of in­ter­na­tion­al cy­clists for this year’s UCI-sanc­tioned ‘Speed Par­adise’ and ‘Car­ni­val of Speed’ cy­cling events at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va, lat­er in June.

The event is be­ing held to pro­vide cy­clists na­tion­al­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly with op­por­tu­ni­ties to qual­i­fy for the UCI World Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Chile in Oc­to­ber.

Event or­gan­is­er Robert Far­ri­er and the DPS or­gan­i­sa­tion told Guardian Me­dia Sports there are lots more ben­e­fits to be gained from the event, rang­ing from eco­nom­ic to on-track achieve­ments.

“The event has been recog­nised world­wide by the UCI, the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body, and has been up­grad­ed from a Class 2 event to a Class 1 event due to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, cou­pled with the stan­dard of the fa­cil­i­ty be­ing used,” Far­ri­er ex­plained.

Al­so, “ The event is be­ing used to en­sure that our rid­ers ben­e­fit from the in­flux of top in­ter­na­tion­al rid­ers who will be on our shores. We have been hav­ing lots of rid­ers break­ing ground in terms of per­for­mances, and this event will put them on course with these in­ter­na­tion­al rid­ers, which could on­ly au­gur well for their growth and de­vel­op­ment.”

“And on the eco­nom­ic side, the coun­try will be on the re­ceiv­ing end of sports tourism when rid­ers and their fans touch down here,” Far­ri­er ex­plained yes­ter­day.

In its third edi­tion on lo­cal soil, the event is be­ing put on by the DPS team in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T, which will pro­vide its ex­per­tise to en­sure max­i­mum pro­mo­tion of the event.

The event will be launched on Wednes­day (June 4) at 11 am at the Bam­boo Room of the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre (NRC) in Tacarigua, mi­nus a bud­get of $250,000 which will go main­ly to­wards op­er­a­tions. Far­ri­er said fund­ing has been dif­fi­cult to come by and calls on cor­po­rate T&T to come to their res­cue of the event.

Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, the event has be­come a fix­ture on the cy­cling cal­en­dar, usu­al­ly af­ter the stag­ing of the East­er In­ter­na­tion­al Grand Prix. This year, the Speed Par­adise will be held on June 19 from 5 pm, and the Car­ni­val of Speed will be staged from June 20-21 at the same venue. Tick­ets are priced at $80 per day, with a sea­son tick­et for $200.

Mar­cus Hi­ley’s last vic­to­ries came in the men’s team sprint dur­ing the Eu­ro­pean Un­der-23 Cham­pi­onships 2022 and the men’s team sprint dur­ing the Eu­ro­pean Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships 2021, com­pet­ing in the keirin, sprint and team sprint.

Hedg­cock com­pet­ed in sprint events and claimed vic­to­ries in the team sprint, the 1-kilo­me­tre time tri­al at the Pan Amer­i­can lev­el 1 event. He made his se­nior de­but at the 2022 Com­mon­wealth Games, win­ning four gold medals (keirin, sprint, team sprint, and 1-kilo­me­tre time tri­al) at the 2023 Cana­di­an Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships and suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed all but the team sprint ti­tle in 2024.

Most of the Caribbean re­gion’s top rid­ers will al­so be in­volved in ac­tion for the event. Far­ri­er al­so re­vealed that Cana­di­an An­drew Parad­ows­ki, the pres­i­dent of the UCI Com­mis­saire pan­el, will be here to su­per­vise the events, and lo­cal of­fi­cials will get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn from him. (WA)