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?
3 comments:
Hey, Simon. Great post!
The Points and Madison are not completely removed from the Olympic games. They've been put into the Omnium event which the UCI announced recently. Yep, I've got issues with that too and you can read my rant here:
http://www.ridetheblackline.com/post/587444891/olympic-omnium-format
In regards to the Sprints, not only are they only allowing one rider per country, they're also making it so that only 8 sprinters qualify for the tournament (as opposed to usual 18 sprinters). Don't blink or you might miss the whole thing!
You asked why this is happening. A lot of people are thinking it's because they want to eventually phase out track cycling from the Olympics completely. I'm not sure if that will happen but they sure are downsizing it and it really sucks.
No doubt about it: World Champs > Olympics.
They made it hard enough to watch the track races in Beijing. You had to long into the Olympic web page at the same time it was starting and half the time the up load was very choppy (unwatchable).
They would never pull this with the road races. Think of what would happen if the USA only could have Lance or Floyd as the rep. It just wouldn’t fly.
Now they want to take out my favorite riders and loss my interest in the Olympic track races all together.
Thanks for the info, Kieron, and I liked your rant too. I think you might be right, with bigger sports like golf clamouring to get into the Olympics, it's only a matter or time before the IOC start to try to get rid of smaller sports like track racing. These change could be (and probably are) step one in that process.
DannyJake, yeah, it was nearly impossible to watch the track races. At least the World Champs are a dedicated event, so you can usually watch the whole thing online somwhere.
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