FOLLOWING his emphatic victory in the feature event around the inner circuit of the National Park the previous day, Carlton Wheelers Cycle Club’s Robin Persaud completed the double when he took the Banks Malta 50 mile

cycle road race on the West Bank of Demerara yesterday morning, amidst a controversial finish.
Fifty-two (52) cyclists were sent on their way for the journey which saw the senior and junior competitors proceeding to Bushy Park, Parika and returning to the Demerara Harbour Bridge for the finish.
As they made their way up, both Raynauth Jeffrey and Geron Williams suffered punctures to their back wheel, but worked in tandem together to reconnect with the peloton who stayed together all the way to the turn back point, while the Veteran, Upright and Female cyclists turned back at Uitvlugt.
Several mini breakaways occurred during the downward journey, but all were in vain as the peloton who had the front runners in sight, wasted little or no time in reconnecting, before Persaud, Jeffrey, Williams, Alonso Greaves, Orville Hinds, Rastaff O’Selmo and Raul Leal made a move to front, as they approached Leonora.
Paul De Nobrega and Enzo Matthews connected with the front runners just before they entered Blankenburg, while the chasing peloton which included Junior Niles, Raymond Newton, Walter Grant-Stuart, Eric Sankar and Jude Bentley, just to name a few, joined them shortly after.
From there onwards it was all for one and one for all, until the turn for home which saw Persaud and Greaves, two of Guyana’s senior cyclists, making their sprint for the finish line which was approximately 250 metres away.
At this stage of the event, many had commenced cheering for Greaves, who was celebrating his 24th birthday yesterday and is known as one of the better sprinters in Guyana, as the Roraima Bikers Club cyclist held a bicycle length advantage over his bitter rival in Persaud.
But he failed to hold his line and veered into the left hand side of the road, temporarily blocking Persaud’s sprint to the finish line, resulting in the CWCC cyclist having to take his right hand off the handle bar and push Greaves out of the way, a mere 25 feet from the finish line.
Persaud crossed the line first in a time of 1h.52m:01secs, much to the dismay of those gathered to witness the sprint for the finish, who publicly called on race organiser Hassan Mohammed to disqualify the eventual winner for unsportsmanlike conduct.
However, Mohammed kept his composure and consulted his Race Commissar in Malcolm Sonaram and race official Joseph Britton, following which he publicly declared Persaud the winner, but not before giving an explanation to the rules of the sport.
‘The rules of the game states that once a cyclist starts the sprint for home within the 200 metres mark, he must hold his position and not endanger the lives of his fellow competitors and that’s what we did not see today.
I am not taking sides, but at the same time, Persaud had no right to take his hand off the handle bar during the sprint for the finish, but when one look and see his life was being endangered, he did it to protect himself and that of the other cyclists in the race,” stated Mohammed.
He added, “I will not disqualify no cyclists from their respective finishing position today, but I will have another meeting with the race officials, following which penalties-if needs to be-, will be meted out on the guilty officials.”
According to Mohammed, the fifth annual ‘Ride for Life’ five stage cycle road race will pedal off shortly, an event in which both Greaves and Persaud will be spearheading Team Guyana’s challenge to bring back the trophy.
With such, Greaves took the second spot in the senior category, with Leal, Sankar, Niles and Bentley rounding off the top six positions, while Hinds took home three of the eight sprint prizes that were up for grab, with the others being shared equally between Newton, Persaud, Jeffrey, Williams and Bentley.
Leal’s third place finish guaranteed him the top spot in the junior category ahead of Jeffrey and Akeem Arthur. Julio Melville took the Upright category from Hamza Eastman and Nial Kingston, Talim Shaw carted off the Veteran’s category from Kennard Lovell and Devindra Ramnarine respectively.
Naomi Singh finished ahead of Alfie Sonaram to take the Boys and Girls title, while Walter Isaacs was declared the first Over-60 competitor to cross the finish line.