Team GB medal hopes - Cycling

[Rafa Maciel 1,593]

3 minutes ago, mpjmcevoy said:

If I was being ultra objective, 2 men 1 woman would seem fair - GB have a lot of good men, and one brilliant woman. The woman may be the best (50/50) shout for racing gold, but several of the men are medal possible, whereas Beth is about it at the moment.

I would tend to agree that 2 & 1 would probably be a fair representation of where GB is in the sport. I do find it surprising that we don't have more female riders in the discipline though - I remember there was a lot of excitement about the event back in 2012 but it doesn't seem to have fed through into increased number of riders at the elite level. 

[Rafa Maciel 1,593]

Sienna Harvey takes 1st place in the women's junior event at the Vaucluse Provence. More importantly, she also picks up 25 ranking points and we start to chip away at Colombia's advantage. Hopefully she can repeat the performance tomorrow and is planning on taking part in some of the upcoming European Cup events. 

[RussB 189]

On 2/26/2024 at 11:39 AM, mpjmcevoy said:

If I was being ultra objective, 2 men 1 woman would seem fair - GB have a lot of good men, and one brilliant woman. The woman may be the best (50/50) shout for racing gold, but several of the men are medal possible, whereas Beth is about it at the moment.

 

i noticed over the weekend Cat Ferguson picking up a national Track medal - as you do in between snagging age grade medals on CX, MTB and Road.... In the understdable excitement over generational talents like Pidcock, Backstedt and Tarling, I hope we don't take our eye off Ferguson coming through

I tend to be in agreement with you on the quotas for GB. Obviously if Sienna shows some positive results in the juniors then we can hope they do enough to sneak a second quota.

 

British cycling is looking very strong at the moment in terms of current and future prospects, we seem to have a variety of riders who can excel across multi disciplines. Cat Ferguson was fantastic in the junior world race last year, and was extremely unfortunate not to win. 

[Rafa Maciel 1,593]

Sienna Harvey does the double in Vaucluse Provence.

[RussB 189]

Rafa how does this impact the standings? 

[mpjmcevoy 362]

On 3/2/2024 at 11:12 PM, RussB said:

I tend to be in agreement with you on the quotas for GB. Obviously if Sienna shows some positive results in the juniors then we can hope they do enough to sneak a second quota.

 

British cycling is looking very strong at the moment in terms of current and future prospects, we seem to have a variety of riders who can excel across multi disciplines. Cat Ferguson was fantastic in the junior world race last year, and was extremely unfortunate not to win. 

The GBR pipeline used to consist of ex-pursuiters (Wiggins, Boardman, Thomas, Armitstead/Deignan) and imports (Sciandri, Froome) with the odd (often Manx) Maverick (Yates, Miller, Cavendish, Kennaugh, Swift) thrown in. That's the GBR blueprint all the way back to the Beryl Burtons and Tom Simpsons of this world, and in a sense, even before the Keen revolution, it worked pretty well for a basically non-cycling nation with no high mountains.

 

Recently, however, the GBR youth scene seems to have come over all Oranje/Belge, with a steady stream of super quality riders over multiple surfaces - Pidcock, Savkstadt, Ferguson). It's a nice and useful change of pace.

 

From an Irish perspective it doesn't hurt to be so strong that people like Ben Healy take the Dan Martin route, just as we have an Eddie Dunbar and a Sam Bennett, and a handful of other interesting riders coming through home grown.

Edited March 4 by mpjmcevoy

[Rafa Maciel 1,593]

12 hours ago, RussB said:

Rafa how does this impact the standings? 

To be honest it doesn't have a huge impact - she should pick up 50 points for the 2 wins so it should cut  lead over  from 317 to 267. However, hopefully it means that she will be competing in a few of the European Cup events over the next few weeks so that we can have three active riders making up our score instead of just 2.

[Rafa Maciel 1,593]

First 2 rounds of the UEC BMX European Cup will take place this weekend.

 

Pretty much a full slate for the  men - Quillan Isodore, Kye Whyte and Ross Cullen are all down for the men's elite so only absentee will be Paddy Sharrock.

 

Different story on the women's side unfortunately - no Shriever in the women's elite and no Emily Hutt in the Under-23.

 

So, the only prospect of scoring points will be with Sienna Harvey in the women's junior event - but having done a bit more research, I'm not sure that the points from junior events will count for the Olympic qualification.  I now think that the points have to be won in either the elite or under 23 division. If I am right about that, it means that Harvey's double win last weekend will count for nothing and we won't add any points this week either  

[RussB 189]

Article on the female sprint team:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/68397869

[Olympicsnell 300]

Evie Richards smashed it today in the short track mountain biking, looked very good olympic race distance tomorrow