“Cycling dismay as Chris Hoy * events frozen out for London 2012” says the headline in the Guardian.
The bottom line of the article is that there will still be the same number of women’s track events in London – three, sprint, pursuit and team pursuit.
The men get seven; the three named above plus madison, points, team sprint and keirin.
Now that GB is the numero uno force in world track cycling we want as many races as possible for our boys and girls to bring home the precious metals from.
Ironically, the best thing that ever happened to Chris Hoy was the dumping of the kilometre in the Olympics; if it had still been around in Beijing it’s unlikely he’d have ridden the sprint and keirin.
The problem I have with jumping up and down about races not being added or being ‘dumped,’ is that when the TTT was chopped from the Worlds and Olympics, not a cheap was heard from the BCF.
The argument for it getting binned was that there were very few nations with a chance of winning it.
Check out the medal tables for Beijing and you’ll see that the same argument certainly now applies to track sport.
Anyway, we should think ourselves lucky; “when I were a lad,” the IOC top man was Avery Brundage.
Old Ave was keen to get cycling out of the Games altogether, on the grounds that “sport is about men – not machines !”
*Chris Hoy was an ambassador for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Chris Hoy led Team GB out as the team’s flag carrier at the opening ceremony. He then went on to win gold in the team sprint with Jason Kenny and Philip Hindes, setting a new world record in the velodrome and becoming Team GB’s joint gold record holder with Sir Steve Redgrave‘s tally of five gold medals with a total of six medals (5 gold, 1 silver).
