So what if Barry Forde has retired?
Local cycling certainly isn’t ready to call it a day.
Barbados Cycling Union president Keith Yearwood says the governing body has long earmarked a group of junior riders as emerging athletes that could potentially fill the void in the Barbados Olympic Association’s elite programme.
Yearwood was making the comments while finalising Barbados’ team to this weekend’s Pan American Cycling Championships in Argentina.
“There is a crop of good youngsters there that are either in their late teens or early 20s [but] what we’re looking at are people who have the ability to do what they should do at the next level,” said Yearwood of the BCU’s plans going forward.
“We have Darren Matthews training very well in Colombia and we have Shane Weekes who is still one of our top cyclists.
“We also have some good up and coming youngsters like Jamol Eastmond, Javed Mounter, Renaldo Carrington and Dwayne Bellamy.”
This comes just two weeks after the 34-year-old Forde, the country’s most decorated rider, stunned the local cycling fraternity by announcing his sudden retirement from the sport after testing positive for recombinant EPO, otherwise known as erythropoietin.
It was the third time Forde failed a drug test, having tested positive for ephedrine in 2003 before being banned for two years after showing high levels of testosterone in 2005.
“Because Barry Forde has retired it does not necessarily mean that we are going to throw our hands in the air and give up,” Yearwood exclaimed.
“We will still fight to the bitter end to make sure we get athletes up to the kind of standard that is equal to his or surpassing.”
And some of those riders are already showing the potential that they can.
Just last year, Mounter accounted for two Barbados records in his first outing at the
Pan American Cycling Championships in Mexico.
This coming before Matthews established himself with breakout performances at debut appearances in the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) and Commonwealth Games.
In July, Matthews finished sixth in the CAC Games’ scratch race before coming just two seconds behind the road race champ in Puerto Rico.
He then followed up that performance with ninth and 14th place finishes at the Commonwealth Games’ scratch and points races, respectively, in Delhi, India.
“The sky is the limit for our young riders,” said Yearwood.
“If you’re one of our riders and you do well we will go all out to make sure we get a budget in there for you. You might get some support from the BOA and the National Sports Council as an emerging athlete.
“[But] we have to look at getting a full time coach again because all of our coaches in Barbados are working people.”