By Neto Baptiste
There will be no competition for cyclists across Antigua this weekend after the Antigua and Barbuda Cycling Federation (ABCF) was forced to postpone the individual time trial organised by the Road Runners Cycling Club.
This was revealed by President of the ABCF, St Clair Williams, who said the body was forced to postpone the event following a request from the organisers.
“This was a race that was supposed to be put on by Road Runners Cycling Club in conjunction with a sponsor they have but they were unable to put everything together for this race this weekend so they asked the federation’s permission to postpone it to a later date and we obliged them so what we will be doing is rolling over to the next race which is scheduled for the 25th of this month and forego the race that was supposed to happen on the 11th which was supposed to be an individual time trial,” he said.
Williams said the federation would not be looking to fill the slot this weekend but would, instead, start planning for the body’s next race on the calendar, a near 40 miles circuit race slated for April 25.
“It was supposed to be held at the Sir Vivian Richards stadium but we are going to move it to the Pan Am Base, reason being that there is a lot of diversion of traffic around the stadium because of the road construction that’s going on, so to keep the cyclists safer we decided to utilise the Pan Am Base circuit,” he said.
Explaining that it would have been difficult to ask the cyclists to readjust their training routine from preparing for a time trial to a circuit race, Williams hopes the riders would use the time to ramp up their training and to also cycle for charity.
“I think we have quite a number of races on the calendar and the guys continue to train. In addition to that, we also have an event we are participating in which they call wheels for meals which is a fundraiser for the soup kitchen, so the guys still go out and put in their miles and we scheduled the race for the 25th [April] so that is still on and they are training towards that,” he said.
“For the juniors and the elite members of the Antigua and Barbuda Cycling Federation, we are hoping they could get themselves ready for the Caribbean Cycling Championships in June as well,” he added.
The cycling boss assured that the Road Runners Cycling Club event will be rescheduled to a new date.