Huapango said:
All well and good but it still defies logic the way GB dominate at the Olympics. The Australians have amazing depth on the track but always get their bums handed to them at the Olympics with all their depth. Great Britain simply has no depth. This is the main reason they fail at worlds. Australia can and does put up a whole new team at worlds and still win. So it is no excuse for GB that they don't send their best. This is why I say it's very suspicious what happens every 4 years.
Cav had done enough Individual Pursuits before Rio to say it was not right to take 8 seconds off his PB and be rude enough to state after that he was hoping to break Wiggins' Olympic Record.
How many IPs had Trott done? Many yet takes seconds off her PB.
Skinner and Marchant grew a leg in Rio then both sadly dropped back to where they were before hand at this year's worlds. Well down the pack.
Jason Kenny went terrible by his standards between Olympics and was so frustrated he was talking retirement (no injuries) but then also grows a leg in Rio.
These incredible turn arounds in performances and unbelieveable performances stand out far more than any hill climbing feats that get widely discussed here. It's far easier to measure and compare rides on an indoor velodrome especially with most modern ones built by the same man.
I agree. The 4-year cycle theory is pure BS. That might explain the first year, but not the other years as well, with the exception being the Olympics when the team "peaked" after four years of training.
The Team GB track squad's funding is based solely on how many medals it gets at the Olympics. So it's not surprising that they throw everything at one week of Olympic racing every 4 years and lack focus for the other 3 years and 51 weeks. The incentives are massively skewed. No matter how much they stink the rest of the time the gravy train keeps rolling for athletes, coaches and managers as long as they smash it at the Olympics
Given Team GB's uber-Darwinian Olympic funding structure (win or die - as has happened to sports which fail to hit medal targets and have had their funding slashed or cut entirely) is it any surprise that athletes, coaches and managers are willing to exhaust
all avenues to keep the gravy train rolling? The politicians and UK Sport administrators who set up the win or die system might be naive enough to think it will just make the athletes, coaches, managers, etc try really hard at the Olympics so everyone can bask in reflected glory if/when things go well. But of course those athletes, coaches and managers, whose ability to pay the mortgage is at stake, might think trying really hard isn't enough. The temptations of unethical grey area dodginess and downright illegality are strong in such a system
Bear in mind that the good Dr Richard Freeman (just a footy doctor until Geert Leinders taught him everything he knew) was the Team GB track squad's doctor at the Rio Olympics (IIRC he moved over with Wiggo when Wiggo left Sky to focus on the IP - I bet he did!)
In that context it's interesting to recall the incredulous comments of athletes from rival nations who'd been blown away by the Team GB track squad at Rio. A penny for their thoughts now that the Wiggo's package saga has taught us so much more about Freeman, Wiggo and the GB win clean and ethically myth than we were ever meant to find out