Rio 2016 cycling: How are Team GB shaping up as Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish and Laura Trott go for gold?
The departure of Shane Sutton threatened to destabilise British Cycling at the worst time, but Team GB have enough talent to ride through the adversity
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Your support makes all the difference.British Cycling – such a medal machine over the last two Olympic Games – has always taken pride in its attention to detail, those little factors that could shave off a hundredth of a second: the marginal gains as it refers to them. A key player has been the now departed Australian coach Shane Sutton. From marginal gains to a major loss?
It remains to be seen, but it is hardly ideal preparation to lose your technical director just months before the Games – unless the culture that person has created has become poisonous and intimidatory. Sutton denies it had, denies any wrongdoing and is awaiting a formal investigation to be concluded by British Cycling.
Team members who are Brazil-bound are keeping mum on the Sutton effect (possibly because they were encouraged to in an email by Andy Harrison, the interim boss). Only those who have missed out on selection (Jess Varnish, Dani King) or those who’ve retired (Victoria Pendleton) have been critical of the environment.
Harrison, according to those that know him, is a calmer character all together than the tub-thumping Aussie Sutton. But is that a good thing? Well, despite the less than perfect preparation, Olympic hopes are high again despite a rocky period since London 2012 including two awful World Championships in 2014 and 2015.
There is a mix of vast experience (Sir Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome, Lizzie Armitstead) and exciting debutants (Becky James, Callum Skinner) and as such UK Sport has set cycling a target of eight medals – they are adamant that the Sutton shenanigans will not hamper gong glory. Sir Chris Hoy, who knows a thing or two about picking up medals, feels it’s attainable: “I think Team GB will be the top nation in the cycling,” he said recently. “They won’t dominate in the same way that we have at the last two Games before Rio 2016 but I am expecting four gold medals (with the potential of five) and maybe three minor medals. They will play that down,” he added, “but that is what I think they can achieve.
“Four or five gold medals are not unachievable at all and if they do that then they will be the top performing nation.”
On the track, the omnium may offer the best hope of double gold. Mark Cavendish, who many had written off, zooms from a happy Tour de France where he won four stages to move to second on the all-time ladder, and wore yellow for the first time, to Rio. He is in the form of his life and could finally win Olympic gold having last competed in Beijing. For the women, Laura Trott is all but unbeatable in the discipline. The Essex girl is world and Olympic champion.
Hoy also sees the men’s and women’s team pursuit as golden chances. Wiggins (looking to become GB’s most successful Olympian with an eighth medal), Ed Clancy, Owain Doull and Steven Burke go for the men and Trott, Elinor Barker, Joanna Rowsell-Shand and Ciara Horne go for the women.
The team sprint offers hope for the men – the women didn’t qualify – in the shape of 2012 gold-winners Philip Hindes and Jason Kenny and newcomer – and Hoy’s replacement –Skinner. If Skinner can perfect the start, gold is a possibility.
Kenny, world title winner in London in March, will also have high hopes of gold in the individual sprint. Becky James perhaps less so as she has been dogged by injury.
On the road, Froome is obviously in wonderful shape, although it remains to be seen how much the Tour de France takes out of him. Armitstead could go one better than the silver she won in the 2012 road race as she leads a pack containing Emma Pooley - the controversial selection ahead of King. Pooley has thrown her efforts into triathlon over the last few years but is also a specialist in the hills that the Rio course throws up.
All in all, Team GB are in much better shape than they could have been and it’s highly possible the Sutton saga will be forgotten in the volume of the velodrome and the glow of the gold… But if the wheels come off the recriminations could rumble.
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