LAHORE – The Punjab Cycling Championship will commence tomorrow (Wednesday) here and will be participated by 13 teams, said Punjab Cycling Association president Chaudhry Kamran Amin in a press conference on Monday.
PCF secretary Idrees Haider Khawaja was also present on the occasion. Kamran Amin said during the four-day event, five track and two road events will be organised. The track events would be held at cycling velodrome.
The teams which participating in the event are Lahore, Kasur, Sahiwal, Multan, Muzaffargarh, Layyah, Rahim Yar Khan, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Rawalpindi and Gujrat.
He said the events to be contested are one kilometre time trial, sprint, four kilometre individual pursuit, team sprint, elimination race, 20 kilometre individual road time and 30 kilometre road race.
The PCA president said they would soon be organizing Punjab women championship to continue their efforts for the cause of cycling among women.
To a query, he replied the PCA is the only genuine body and a parallel Pakistan Cycling Federation has illegally formed an ad-hoc body in the presence of an elected body. "We will continue our activity plan for the further promotion of cycling in the province,” said the PCA president.
Idrees Haider Khawaja said the parallel PCF organised a national junior championship which was only participated by three teams and the event continued only for two days. "On our request Pakistan Olympic Association has formed a new arbitration committee to resolve the dispute in PCF and its first meeting will take place on February 1 at POA house," he said and added: "We welcome the move of the POA for resolving this issue amicably and we believe that the commission will decide it as soon as possible."
He said that the parallelism had ruined the game and cyclists were suffering because of existence of two factions of the PCF.
"In order to continue our development plan for cycling we will be organising an international cycling race from Lahore to Shaiwal on March 23 and four foreign countries have confirmed their participation and we will be sending air tickets to the foreign teams," he said.
The winner of the race will receive a cash prize of Rs 100,000.