Victoria Pendleton wants more events (and so do I)

Victoria Pendleton in her new Sky+HD team gear

So if any of you have been keeping tabs on Ms Pendleton, you will have seen this week that she has been banging her drum about equality in cycling. Now don’t get mistaken by thinking she wants to have equality by riding against Chris Hoy. It’s more to do with the fact that she wants there to be the same amount of races for woman as there are for men.

Reading through the various online news articles you can’t help but agree with what she has to say. At this year’s Olympics in Beijing, she spent most of her time just waiting around for her one event to take place, the individual sprint. To make things worse, the individual sprint was held over a paintakingly long three days when it could all have been done in one. Three events she has world titles in – the keirin, the 500m time trial, and the team sprint – were not included in the Olympic programme.

Good news is that David Brailsford, GB Cycling’s Performance Director, is backing Pendleton up on her concerns. He was supposidly meeting with Tessa Jowell, minister for the Olympics, with an intention to raise this subject with her again. As host nation, Great Britain can lobby the UCI, who in turn need to lobby the IOC for more cycling events in London.

Now I am in full support of this. More events for the girls, and more events overall for track cycling. I mean, what about more group events (for both men and woman). For example, at a local level we have ‘The Devil’ (last rider in the group to cross the line has to come off), the Scratch Race, as well as the 20Km. Back in the early 1990’s, we used to race the 1500 and 5km events too. Now by adding any of these events, I can guarantee it will create a lot more excitement for the spectators as well as for the riders.

For those of who have have been to local track will agree with me when I say that group racing is spectacular to watch on the track. Now if you’ve never watched track racing before, best get onto the phone to your local club and ask when the next event is on.

As WordPress have kindly started to offer a polling (or voting facility), I thought I’d take the opportunity and create a poll about having more events at the next Olympics. So, please cast your vote below. I’d be interested to see the response I get.

~ by Craig on November 2, 2008.