Why are British cyclists so much better than Australian cyclists?

[53 x 11]

lol You tell 'em Irish. Then again, Aussie's aren't renowned for their logical reasoning.

Unlike the Irish.

 

[LugHugger]

Unlike the Irish.

LOL Then again, they probably wouldn't accuse Melburnians of sinking Greenpeace ships. They would know it was the French!

 

[Irish2009]

Yeah ...if theres one thing that annoys an Irish man it's being called English....Scottish or Welsh ok but English..aaaaaagh.

But using Movingtargets logic South America have won the tour 10 times with Lemond and Armstrong(all being from the same Island America)

And...yes..... Rainbow Warrior ... in Auckland ...by the French(pity their Navy gets on the wrong side every time).

 

[180mmCrank]

At the risk of being boring here (that's dull rather than drilling holes in people's arguments - by the way if you look up boring in the Yellow Pages it says see Civil Engineers )

Anyway back to the point... No one has mentioned the advent of Lottery funding in the UK. From the mid to late 90's onwards the UK (and N. Ireland!) instigated a national lottery. While these are extremly common in other parts of the World - this was a first in the UK. The funding was to be used to promote sport and the arts.

This was a slow burn at first and while some money was invested in capital projects and infrastructure it took a while for sports to really understand how to leverage the funding.

A few sports got there act together and managed to secure some significant funding - rowing, sailing and cycling being the ones that really seemed to get ahead of the pack. The funding is performance based so those sports got ahead, invested and now have moved head and shoulders above the rest. Swimming has just started to catch up. And it seems to have had a knock on effect in other more minority sports - Athletics is still a disaster.

To get the funding you had to put together some very detailed development and high performance programs. It involved talent ID, hiring a whole bunch of coaches and funding equipment and stuff. The funding also included putting in place a world class set of athlete services - the EIS (English Institute for Sport) was not so much a place as a network of phsiologists, psychologists, nutritionalist and medical support. It took a few years for these programs to kick in but by the Sydney 2000 games you could see some real differences. There was a step change to Athens and Beijing was another leap in performance.

The point is that the stimulus for this was the Lottery (and then more recently London winning the 2012 Olympic bid). It allowed Brailsford and his team to transform the sport of cycling from a collection of individual and fairly isolated hot spots of talent to a coordinated sustainable National High Performance Program.

This is something that is going to continue for a few years yet - look out Aus the Pommies are (still) comming

 

[LugHugger]

At the risk of being boring here (that's dull rather than drilling holes in people's arguments - by the way if you look up boring in the Yellow Pages it says see Civil Engineers )

Anyway back to the point... No one has mentioned the advent of Lottery funding in the UK. From the mid to late 90's onwards the UK (and N. Ireland!) instigated a national lottery. While these are extremly common in other parts of the World - this was a first in the UK. The funding was to be used to promote sport and the arts.

This was a slow burn at first and while some money was invested in capital projects and infrastructure it took a while for sports to really understand how to leverage the funding.

A few sports got there act together and managed to secure some significant funding - rowing, sailing and cycling being the ones that really seemed to get ahead of the pack. The funding is performance based so those sports got ahead, invested and now have moved head and shoulders above the rest. Swimming has just started to catch up. And it seems to have had a knock on effect in other more minority sports - Athletics is still a disaster.

To get the funding you had to put together some very detailed development and high performance programs. It involved talent ID, hiring a whole bunch of coaches and funding equipment and stuff. The funding also included putting in place a world class set of athlete services - the EIS (English Institute for Sport) was not so much a place as a network of phsiologists, psychologists, nutritionalist and medical support. It took a few years for these programs to kick in but by the Sydney 2000 games you could see some real differences. There was a step change to Athens and Beijing was another leap in performance.

The point is that the stimulus for this was the Lottery (and then more recently London winning the 2012 Olympic bid). It allowed Brailsford and his team to transform the sport of cycling from a collection of individual and fairly isolated hot spots of talent to a coordinated sustainable National High Performance Program.

This is something that is going to continue for a few years yet - look out Aus the Pommies are (still) comming

Actually, we have, way back somewhere in the last 23 pages brought this up, It's interesting (some might say ) that per capita spending on cycling in the Uk and Oz is very similar. I did some research (gotta love temp unemployment in pursuit of internet fulfilment) related to another thread and found through AIS and Sport England/Lottery budgets that per capita spends are within 10%. the Sky funding now massively sways this in the favour of the Poms, so we better generate some more road results otherwise there's a whole heap of abuse coming our way

 

[elapid]

At the risk of being boring here (that's dull rather than drilling holes in people's arguments - by the way if you look up boring in the Yellow Pages it says see Civil Engineers )

Anyway back to the point... No one has mentioned the advent of Lottery funding in the UK. From the mid to late 90's onwards the UK (and N. Ireland!) instigated a national lottery. While these are extremly common in other parts of the World - this was a first in the UK. The funding was to be used to promote sport and the arts.

This was a slow burn at first and while some money was invested in capital projects and infrastructure it took a while for sports to really understand how to leverage the funding.

A few sports got there act together and managed to secure some significant funding - rowing, sailing and cycling being the ones that really seemed to get ahead of the pack. The funding is performance based so those sports got ahead, invested and now have moved head and shoulders above the rest. Swimming has just started to catch up. And it seems to have had a knock on effect in other more minority sports - Athletics is still a disaster.

To get the funding you had to put together some very detailed development and high performance programs. It involved talent ID, hiring a whole bunch of coaches and funding equipment and stuff. The funding also included putting in place a world class set of athlete services - the EIS (English Institute for Sport) was not so much a place as a network of phsiologists, psychologists, nutritionalist and medical support. It took a few years for these programs to kick in but by the Sydney 2000 games you could see some real differences. There was a step change to Athens and Beijing was another leap in performance.

The point is that the stimulus for this was the Lottery (and then more recently London winning the 2012 Olympic bid). It allowed Brailsford and his team to transform the sport of cycling from a collection of individual and fairly isolated hot spots of talent to a coordinated sustainable National High Performance Program.

This is something that is going to continue for a few years yet - look out Aus the Pommies are (still) comming

This is a good topic for a thread. I wrote a similar post but less eloquently in this or another thread. The Aussies developed an infrastructure which identified talented individuals, provided them with support as they progressed through the ranks and age groups, and then fine tuned them when they were on the brink of national selection in the 1980s to 2000s. We obviously didn't invent this system, but the Poms did copy us to some extent and definitely pilfered some of our coaches! One sport you didn't mention was cricket, for which the English have definitely benefited from the Australian-style cricket academy. Well, at least until the Headingley test! Regardless, it will make for some interesting conversations in the years to come.

 

[53 x 11]

I think this is making too large an assumption. In the last two years the British cycling programme has received a lot of funding from lotto money, however Australia invests very heavily in our sporting programmes as sporting success (particularly in the Olympics) is linked so closely with our attempts at forming some kind of coherent national identity. Just because they have a larger economy does not mean that they will automatically invest more money.

I would be surprised if our dollars per taxpayer invested into national sporting programmes weren’t much higher than similar countries.

In the words of Jim Carry, IT WAS ME!

 

[LugHugger]

This is a good topic for a thread. I wrote a similar post but less eloquently in this or another thread. The Aussies developed an infrastructure which identified talented individuals, provided them with support as they progressed through the ranks and age groups, and then fine tuned them when they were on the brink of national selection in the 1980s to 2000s. We obviously didn't invent this system, but the Poms did copy us to some extent and definitely pilfered some of our coaches! One sport you didn't mention was cricket, for which the English have definitely benefited from the Australian-style cricket academy. Well, at least until the Headingley test! Regardless, it will make for some interesting conversations in the years to come.

Agreed, although cricket has a very different funding stream in the uk. i know, I'm a level 3 cricket coach. congrats on retaining the ashes

 

[hayleyy]

i have no idea what cricket has to do with cycling... but anyway,

 

[TrudyTas]

i have no idea what cricket has to do with cycling... but anyway,

test cricket and stage racing are two of the few sports which continue over more than one day (or even a few hours) ...?

 

[auscyclefan94]

This is a good topic for a thread. I wrote a similar post but less eloquently in this or another thread. The Aussies developed an infrastructure which identified talented individuals, provided them with support as they progressed through the ranks and age groups, and then fine tuned them when they were on the brink of national selection in the 1980s to 2000s. We obviously didn't invent this system, but the Poms did copy us to some extent and definitely pilfered some of our coaches! One sport you didn't mention was cricket, for which the English have definitely benefited from the Australian-style cricket academy. Well, at least until the Headingley test! Regardless, it will make for some interesting conversations in the years to come.

Cam Meyer, Leigh howard, Rohan Dennis and Jack bobridge are coming on the scene. Hey the aussies are back to owning the poms in the cricket. we can be happy about that. Still Britain would have more money to put into cycling especially with the olympics coming up for them and being a having a bigger economy than us. We do pretty well for such a small country.

 

[movingtarget]

Apologies

Apologies to the Irish about including Stephen Roche. At least I left Sean Kelly out.

Aussies are not known for their logical thinking ? Uh based on what ..................I mean apart from my slip up. Call it post Tour brain fade. Don't be too critical we could be relatives.

 

[Irish2009]

No worries Movingtarget, oh and welcome to the board

 

[workingclasshero]

I guess the question remains, does the better beer, wine, food and women make us Aussies better or worse cyclists?

who cares about the cycling when you've got the drink, food and birds, this fella has got it right:

I think once you have good wine, food, beer and good women cycling starts to take a distant fifth place.

Oh, well Im off into the beautiful sunny day in the middle of winter, life just sucks here

h&a > corrie & eastenders (for birds)

 

[Anonymous]

Hmmm, David McCann.

i had to google him... good spot.. any others?

 

[elapid]

who cares about the cycling when you've got the drink, food and birds, this fella has got it right

Totally unrelated to cycling, but interesting survey out of Great Britain: one in six would rather watch a TV program they don't like than get up and change the channel, and three-quarters of couples don't have enough energy to shag. They need to get on their bikes more!

http://www.theage.com.au/world/brits-too-shagged-for-sex-20090810-efk7.html

 

[Boeing]

... A mobile?

 

[Cobber]

Well.... we may not be better than the British, but at least we can beat all the US riders!

 

[hayleyy]

Well.... we may not be better than the British, but at least we can beat all the US riders!

I'd rather an aussie beat a brit than an american....

 

[thehog]

Well.... we may not be better than the British, but at least we can beat all the US riders!

Interesting comment.

I'd say the US riders get the award for the most corrupt and drug ridden in the last 20 years. Their legacy is a disgrace.

Hopefully things are turning around now with biological passport and there is not the need to the US riders to resort to such tactics.

 

[thehog]

Interesting comment.

I'd say the US riders get the award for the most corrupt and drug ridden in the last 20 years. Their legacy is a disgrace.

Hopefully things are turning around now with biological passport and there is not the need to the US riders to resort to such tactics.

Great Britain's cycling prowess has been recognised by the award of a maximum nine places at the UCI Road World Championships next month.
Bradley Wiggins finished fourth in the Tour de France last month, while Mark Cavendish picked up six stage wins.

As a result, Britain will be able to choose nine riders to participate in the World Championships road race in Mendrisio, Switzerland next month.

This places Britain alongside top cycling nations like Spain and Italy.
The race takes place on 27 September over a hilly 262km (163 mile) course, conditions far more likely to suit Wiggins than sprint specialist Cavendish.

 

[Anonymous]

We still have better teeth than the both of you.

 

[hayleyy]

What does teeth have to do with cycling?

 

[workingclasshero]

What does teeth have to do with cycling?

cheer up luv

and could you please send us a pic via pm

 

[hayleyy]

cheer up luv

and could you please send us a pic via pm

smile on the face
pm, picture? confused... i dont know how to do that....