SVG Cycling Union members still in shock

Members of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Cycling Union are still trying to come to grips with the loss of one of their own – Randy Wilkinson, otherwise known and “Bom” or “Tall Boy”.{{more}}

This, after 40-year-old Wilkinson was reported to have been electrocuted last Thursday, while working at a construction site in Mount Pleasant, Bequia.

Peter Durrant, with whom Wilkinson has had many duels on the road during races put on by the Cycling Union, recounted being almost numbed on hearing the news of Wilkinson’s passing.

“I had to ask again, if I were hearing right,” Durrant recalled.

Durrant said that whilst one cannot determine how one dies, he may have been able to get it over, had he died on the road while riding, as according to him, “ that is part of cyclists’ danger and we all have accepted that.”

Although saddened by Wilkinson’s sudden death, Durrant said the cyclist left behind a lesson for many, as he was “very humble”.

Another cyclist, Orel George, was also shaken on hearing the news.

“You come into this world, but you don’t know how you are going to leave it,” George said.

Meanwhile, Cammie Adams remembers Wilkinson as “kindhearted and very cool.”

“He was one of those persons who will go out of the way to help you…. That was Bom,” Adams noted.

As fate would have it, Wilkinson’s death came at a time when he was enjoying his best year in the sport. Wilkinson was destined to take the Masters category of the cycling awards for 2016, whenever the union decides to do so. This honour, however, will have to be bestowed on him posthumously.

Wilkinson was rewarded for his form, when he was part of a St Vincent and the Grenadines cycling team that took part in the Tobago Classic, which ran from late September to early October.

At the Tobago outing, Wilkinson docked in seventh in the Masters’ category.

SEARCHLIGHT joins others who are expressing condolence to Wilkinson’s immediate family, relatives, co-workers and the cycling fraternity, in the period of bereavement.

(RT)