By Tamica Garnett
The Guyana Cycling Federation (GCF) will host a cycling meet and family fun day on Sunday at the Malteenoes Sports Club ground(MSC), Thomas Lands.
The event will be sponsored by Smalta who has deposited $150, 000 towards expenses for the event.
Sunday’s event, which will feature cycle races, domino competitions and many other attractive features, is being held to raise funds to assist the federation to attend several upcoming international events.
At a press conference held yesterday at the offices of Ansa McAl, East Coast Demerara, Vice President of the GCF, Brian Allen, explained that while the GCF would have preferred to have four competitors attend the Central America and the Caribbean Games being held in Puerto Rico, they were only able to send two because of the unavailability of funding.
Allen stated that they do not want this to be the case for the other meets that the federation was hopeful of attending and as such, the GCF has decided to take a more concentrated step towards gathering funds.
Subsequently, Allen indicated that this would be the first of several fund-raisers that the federation will be implementing in order to garner “much needed” funds required to facilitate the oncoming expenses.
“This is only the first of a lot of fundraisers, we are also planning a track meet for sometime in August,” Allen disclosed
He said that the GCF was looking to send competitors to the Caribbean Youth Championships which is expected to be held early next month, the Caribbean Elite Championships to be held in Guadeloupe and the Commonwealth Games which will be staged in India. The latter two events will take place in October.
Ansa McAL, which is the official distributors of Smalta, will be stocking the bar at Sunday’s event and all proceeds from the sale of the beverages will be donated to the GCF.
Ansa McAL’s Marketing Assistant, Anjeta Hinds, in her address conveyed the company’s overwhelming joy to be onboard to support the GCF in this venture.
The cycle races will begin at 11:00 am and will feature eight categories, namely seniors, juniors, veterans, mountain bikes and four BMX categories for the younger competitors between the ages of 6 – 14 years old.
The circuit for the races, which will begin at the entrance of the MSC, will run along the outer perimeter of the National Park, heading east along Thomas Lands, turning north into Vlissengen Road, then west into Carifesta Avenue, south into Camp St and turning back east into Thomas Lands.
The junior,the veterans the mountain bikes, and the BMX open categories will feature cash prizes for the first three places while the senior’ category, which will be a ten lap race, will have cash prizes awarded to the top six competitors. The top three performers of the other BMX races will be presented with trophies.
The junior category will be a six lap event, the veterans’ category will be three laps and the mountain bike races will feature five laps.
The BMX category will see an 800m race for 6 – 10 year olds, 1000m race for 10 – 12 year olds, a one lap race for 12 – 14 year olds, and a two lap open race.
The domino competition is expected to feature 12 teams and will begin at noon. An entrance fee of $6000 per team will be charged. Prizes awarded will be $30, 000 for first place, $20, 000 for second place, and $10,000 for third place.
Additionally, a take-away-lunch will be held with the fun day, the lunch costs $800 and will be served from 11AM.
