More Olympic Track Changes

Sometimes being on chifg can actually pay off. I was just on there reading about the the IOC and the UCI's proposed new changes to the Olympic track programme. What the hell are they smoking in Switzerland?? First they cut the points race and the madison, two of the more exciting races, from the Olympic schedule, and now they're limiting the number of riders a country can enter in the individual events to just ONE!

British duo Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny battle it out in the final of the Men's Sprint at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. New UCI changes mean you won't be seeing these guys race against each other in the Olympics anymore. DANIEL GARCIA/AFP/Getty Images

Okay, so, cutting the points and madison was done to facilitate an increase in the number of women's events without increasing the number of events overall. I understand that. Women racers should have parity with men. It's a pity that the UCI wasn't able to achieve that parity and keep the points and madison races, but so be it. This new change, however, is really strange. Each country is now limited to entering just one rider in each event, which means that only a country's top qualifier will be entered, and to hell with the rest of the squad. This is terrible news for the big track cycling countries like Britain, France, and Australia, who each have multiple riders capable of competing at the highest level. So, with fewer riders from these "big squad" countries able to compete, the numbers will be made up by riders from other countries, riders who are not going to be as good as the excluded riders. For example, here's the list of the current top ranked men's Sprint riders:

1. Kévin Sireau (France)
2. Shane Perkins (Australia)
3. Matthew Crampton (Britain)
4. Grégory Baugé (France)
5. Maximilian Levy (Germany)
6. Chris Hoy (Britain)
7. Jason Kenny (Britain)
8. Daniel Ellis (Australia)
9. Robert Forstemann (Germany)
10. Michael D'Almeida (France)

As you can see, four countries dominate the men's Sprint scene at the moment: France, Australia, Britain and Germany. In the next Olympics, only one rider from each of those countries will be allowed to enter the men's Sprint. That means that more than half of the top ranked men's Sprint riders in the world will be excluded! On the current standings, Sireau, Perkins Crampton and Levy would be in, but Baugé, Hoy, Kenny, Ellis, Forstemann and D'Almeida would be out! Their places would be taken by slower riders, meaning that while the Olympic track programme will now have a wider national representative pool (good) it will also no longer be a competition between the fastest riders in the world (bad). Can you imagine a similar change happening in swimming? Do you think the USOC would sit quietly by while the IOC decided that countries could only enter one individual swimmer per event? Why is the IOC putting pressure on the UCI to make these changes? Do they really care about representation, or is this just another example of putting the squeeze on a minority sport? Is the UCI tired of the Track World Championship being seen as a second tier event compared to the Olympics, and so it's sabotaging the legitimacy of the Olympic track programme?

From my own perspective, I think its great that smaller cycling countries might have the chance to put a rider into the big show, but I think it's a pretty lame way to make that happen, and I'm sure that riders who qualify because of this rule will feel like they're taking the place of someone better and faster. The level of competition will be much more uneven too, which will probably make for less exciting racing. Seriously, what is going on in Switzerland?