President of the Guyana Cycling Federation (GCF) Linden Dowdridge says Guyana will no longer host the Caribbean Road Racing Championships because of a lack of funding.
Guyana was supposed to host the elite and ladies road racing championships this month and the cost would have been around 15 million Guyana dollars said Dowdridge.
“That would have been for the accommodation and logistics expenses,” he told Stabroek Sport in an exclusive interview.
“We would have had to put up the cyclists and the officials and provide food and shelter and of course all the other logistics,” he added. Dowdridge said he recently met with Minister of Sport, Charles Ramson Jnr., who said that the ministry was unable to fund the event.
“The Minister has advised that he can no longer support it because of a lack of funding.
“We had a meeting a fortnight ago and he said that he could not do it anymore because he did not have the funding to do it,” Dowdridge told Stabroek Sport.
Some 29 countries were down to participate in the championships which will now be held in the Dominican Republic said Dowdridge. Quizzed on whether the GCF receives funding from the International Cycling Federation (UCI) and whether that money could not have been used to host the championships, Dowdridge explained that the UCI usually reimburses the host country for the expenses incurred after the and not before.
“We could not have run the risk of doing that because how we are set up there would need to be proper credit facilities that would allow you to cater for these expenses on credit until those funds come,” the former national cycling champion declared. Dowdridge, who has been president of the GCF since 2019 asked whether the pandemic affect local cycling and in what way said that it affected the sport and operations of the GCF immensely.
“The pandemic had a major negative impact of the sport. At the commencement of the pandemic, we were unaware of how it was spread, we were aware that it could cause death. This caused the cyclists to stop training. As it grew, we had to stop competition activity.
“This caused our cyclists to lose their fitness levels, and in some cases lose interest in the sport,” he said.
“It is because of this ‘hiatus’, now that we are active again, we are not seeing the level in performance that we should. Our cyclists are now “fighting”, to get back, and hopefully surpass what we were at, prior to the pandemic,” he declared.
Dowdridge also spoke of the loss of the usage of the National Park where cycle races were usually held most Saturdays by national cycling coach Hassan Mohammed.
“We have lost the use of our Nursery facility, i.e. the use of the National Park for the summer schoolboys and novices programme, where we would have newcomers into the sport,” he said.
“This federation has been in communication with the Management of the National Parks Commission, negotiating for the use of the facility.
“The pandemic caused a heavy “economic downturn’ and, as you are aware, the sport hinges on sponsorship and since the business community would have been experiencing economic challenges, cycling was experiencing the ‘trickledown’ effect of this too,” said Dowdridge.
