‘We have to look outside competition’: Cycling boss pledges to keep exposing youngsters to higher-level competition

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Cyclists Jyme Bridges Jr (third from left and Emmanuel Gayral (second from right) represented Antigua and Barbuda at the Caribbean Cycling Championships held in Santo Domingo.
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By Neto Baptiste

The President of the Antigua and Barbuda Cycling Federation (ABCF), St Clair Williams, said the body will keep investing in the country’s young cyclists by ensuring they compete in more regional and international competitions.

His promise comes on the heels of what he is calling encouraging performances by cyclists Jyme Bridges Jr and Emmanuel Gayral at the Caribbean Cycling Championships held in Santo Domingo last weekend.

“We continue to, over the years, have a benchmark of around 20 to 22 miles per hour average speed racing [in Antigua]. We’re still doing that over the past 20 years and what we are recognising is that we have to go outside of Antigua if you want to get better in terms of going to more … races with better cyclists to get faster,” he said.

“The guys that represented Antigua over the weekend — Jyme Bridges and Emmanuel Gayral — when they finished the road race they were averaging 25 to 26 miles per hour. So, if we could get them into more places or races like those, I believe we could get the cyclists faster in Antigua,” he added. 

Bridges clocked 3:01.37 (three hours, one minute and 37 seconds) to finish 22nd from 48 competitors, while young Gayral was 44th in 3:18.17 (three hours, 18 minutes and 17 seconds) in the road race event held on October 16.

Williams said the body must break from the norm in an effort to get improved results.

“That is the push for the next season, to try and see if we could get our cyclists outside of Antigua to participate in better and faster races. We cannot continue to say we are riding at 20 and 22 miles per hour and that’s the cap. That is what a lot of us in Antigua are accustomed to and we don’t want to depart from that. Now we are doing something different, some people don’t want to come out of their comfort zone but we have to do [so] if we want a different result,” the president said.

The federation will now turn his attention to the Jenel Warner Circuit Race slated for Sunday at the Pan Am Base.

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