How come...

Jamey

...we (Britain) can win all these cycling golds at the Olympics, yet we don't produce any serious contenders for the tour?

redddraggon

Jamey wrote:

...we (Britain) can win all these cycling golds at the Olympics, yet we don't produce any serious contenders for the tour?

What do you mean?

Nicole Cooke has won the women's version of the Tour more than once. So there's the womens road race gold covered........

Track Golds? Well the Track isn't road racing and is nothing like stage racing so the skills aren't that transferable - Cav won four stages in the Tour though helped probably by his track sprinting skills. Remember there aren't many hills on the Velodrome but the Tour has the Alps and Pyrenees to deal with.

Bronzie

It's a numbers game - the more juniors etc you have competing, the more the chance you have of discovering the freaks of nature that are capable of winning a 3 week tour. (Not diminishing Cav's amazing achievement of winning EVERY flat sprint this year apart from the Champs Elysees - but I suspect you mean winning the Tour overall).

In the UK we have relatively few juniors coming into the sport, hence the chances are that Britain's most physiologically gifted juniors are sat in front of a Playstation or parked in Tesco's carpark in their Mum's Nova rather than racing bikes. Sad really.

Country's like France, Belgium, Italy and Spain have more of a cycling culture and hence higher chance of getting those gifted individuals into the sport.

andrewgturnbull

Hi there.

It's a lottery. Literally.

After C Boardman's success and the subsequent building of the Manchester Veledrome, Peter Keen secured millions from the lottery funding for British Cycling. After a minor coup to oust all the traditionalists in the then BCF he decided to concentrate on track cycling as there were less variables compared to road racing.

But also for one other important reason. Everyone knows road racing is and always has been rotten to the core with performance enhancing drugs. If a high profile publicly funded cyclist failed a drugs test then the plug would soon be pulled on the lottery millions. Hence track cycling was and is the focus.

On the other hand, with the exception of Australia no other nations take track cycling as seriously.

Cheers, Andy

ps Read Richard Moore's Heroes and Velodromes book for the full back story.

iainf72

CFA post a little bit on it yesterday which is relevant.

Somehow it rankles how the British track team seems to thrive in part due to their big budget. How many smaller and less-funded countries can't afford to win gold medals? Winning takes money, and we shouldn't forget that as we watch the Olympics

So it's as AGT says, they spend a big budget on a sport which isn't taken very seriously by other nations.

Edit - When I say "very seriously" I mean investing time and budget into it.

oldwelshman

iainf72 wrote:

CFA post a little bit on it yesterday which is relevant.

Somehow it rankles how the British track team seems to thrive in part due to their big budget. How many smaller and less-funded countries can't afford to win gold medals? Winning takes money, and we shouldn't forget that as we watch the Olympics

So it's as AGT says, they spend a big budget on a sport which isn't taken very seriously by other nations.

Edit - When I say "very seriously" I mean investing time and budget into it.

It is not just as simple as throwing money at it to produce winners.
First you need the infrastructure, then the next most important factor, is that you have the cyclists which is very dependant on the profile of the sport and having medal winners raises the profile and gets new people interested.
Then the next thing required come together, coaches, management and finance. When you get all of these you get success.
As for the OP, it is a different sport, Track to TDF. Ok, its two wheels on a bike and a rider but the skills, strenght etc required are totally different but the track will feed through riders.
You can be sucseesful on the track at a much younger age than in Pro road raacing. Pro road racing you need to be much stronger and it takes a couple of years to get the strength for this and I am sure we are getting better. Look at Wiggins, Cummings, Thomas and Cavandish, all came through track.
Out and out sprinters like Hoy, Kenny and Staff will never ever make road riders as they are pure short duration sprinters and not endurance riders.
Well thats my opinion for what it's worth

micron

Yes, most other teams who've been pretty good on the track in the past - Germany, Holland, France - would gladly trade all that success for a GT winner on the road

SteveR_100Milers

who cares if no one else takes it serioulsy, though I think this is somewhat mean spirited (though dare I say so typically a British reaction to sucess). All that really matters is that it's produced a haul of medals, and most likely will have contributed to 50% of the total in what just might be a if not a record performance for GB it will be one of the more succesful games.
Ultimately GB doesnt have the benefit of having a pool of 1/3 of the worlds inhabitants from which to develop and select a team, so we are going to have to be pretty selective. The interesting question is whether public opinion would agree that spending the money on cycling is better "value" than say track or field events....

milton50

I seem to remember someone saying during this year's TdF that there may be an all British team in the 2010 tour. Not sure if I imagined that or mis-heard.

I think it's mainly a question of culture. People in France, Spain, Italy, Germany etc grow up watching the grand tours and then go out and cycle on the same kind of terrain. For most people in Britain cycling is a long way down the list of most desirable sports and even if you do get into it you're likely to be diverted to track cycling.

iainf72

Milton50 wrote:

I seem to remember someone saying during this year's TdF that there may be an all British team in the 2010 tour. Not sure if I imagined that or mis-heard.

That's the idea. But if it's going to be a British only team they're very very misguided. You don't just magic road talent from nowhere. Sure there are some good guys but who says that's ride for that setup. Cavendish might be happiest at Columbia and Millar part owns Garmin.

As for track cycling being better value than track and field. That may well be but surely you all remember what happened in Athens - As soon as Kelly won an athletics event it was as if cycling didn't exist. To Joe Public, sadly, those events are the main draw.

richa

iainf72 wrote:

remember what happened in Athens - As soon as Kelly won an athletics event it was as if cycling didn't exist. To Joe Public, sadly, those events are the main draw.

Fair. But in Athens the track squad got 2 golds (+1 silver +1 bronze) from 9. Kelly won two Golds herself.

Here the track team can have a huge impact. So far it is 5 Golds from 11. It could easily be 9 from 17.

Interestingly(?)... UK Sport are targeting 8th at these games, then 4th at London2012. [GBR were 10th at Athens & Sydney]

We currently have 11 golds. +6 more would be 17 Golds.
17 Golds would have got us 4th (or better) in the medal table in every post war games.

So, IF the cyclists can get 4 more, surely everyone else can get another 2? [Team Pursuit, Sprints x2 & BMX]

milton50

You don't just magic road talent from nowhere

Oh absolutely and I don't think they'll be expecting much success straight away. I also don't think having solely British riders is a particularly good idea.

But if it serves its purpose and breaks the stranglehold of track cycling from a British point of view then I hope it goes well.

victorponf

Jamey wrote:

...we (Britain) can win all these cycling golds at the Olympics, yet we don't produce any serious contenders for the tour?

Because allways is raining (I was living for a year in Canterbury and it was the most cloudy year of my life) and too much butter!!

Seriusly, i thind the key is the tradition, for a spanish or italian boy win a GC is a dream, is it for a british?

FJS

Like most say, having a cycling tradition is obviously key. BUT that can change. Take Germany, that really does not have any long standing cycling tradition, like France, Spain, Belgium, and Italy, but is now a big country in road racing, both in quality and quantity. That happened especially after Ullrich won the TdF, so there's hope for one big name igniting something. Whether that could be done for Britain by a sprinter like Cavendish, or track golds, or would really require a TdF win, interesting question...

On reaching success in track cycling vs road, Olympic funding and the presence of the Manchester velodrome obviouslyt helps. But I wonder, would the perceived (or real) danger of riding on the roads, and letting your kids do so, with car drivers not too much used to cyclists, be a factor too? No cars on the track....

Bronzie

victorponf wrote:

for a spanish or italian boy win a GC is a dream, is it for a british?

Yes, but just less people doing the dreaming!

knedlicky

FJS wrote:

Take Germany, that really does not have any long standing cycling tradition, like France, Spain, Belgium, and Italy, but is now a big country in road racing, both in quality and quantity. That happened especially after Ullrich won the TdF

What caused a surge in cycling’s popularity in Germany happened earlier than Ullrich - it was a combination of top, well-publicised amateur and profi races being created in the late 60s, and then, in the 70s, Thurau doing well in the TdF, and the BDR (German Cycling Federation) introducing ‘tourist trials*’ along the lines of the ‘randonnees’ which existed in France under the auspices of the FFCT (French Cycling Federation).

Also, there was a tradition of sorts - cycling was never ridiculed in Germany as something for eccentrics, like happened in the UK in the 60s; cycling for daily travel and weekend recreation has always been common. So as a sport, road racing easily became popular and even fashionable. Nowadays there are over 2500 cycling clubs in Germany (compared to 150 in the UK?), not including local groups of the German version of the CTC.

(* by tourist trials, I mean events like the UK sportives, except without the timing aspect. There are over 1000 each season in Germany, and 3500 in France. Germany also has about 15 ‘true’ cyclosportives along the lines of the Marmotte, etc (mass start, competitive atmosphere, prizes), although fewer than in France (which has perhaps 60-70?). As far as I know, these ‘true’ sportives don’t yet exist in the UK (right?). There are also about 700 events for licenced amateurs, 80-85% being road races, the rest track. TTs are not common.

SteveR_100Milers

knedlicky wrote:

Also, there was a tradition of sorts - cycling was never ridiculed in Germany as something for eccentrics, like happened in the UK in the 60s;

Nail on the head. Dressing in Lycra is enough to marginalise cyclists in mosts people's eyes, even between MTB and road cycling it's a divisive issue. Maybe after Beijing, lycra will become cool for a while, or at least socially acceptable.