If we can't win then we don't enter...

[ColinJ]

The days of sending no-hopers are, happily, in the past, along with the good old "plucky loser" and "send for experience" routines.

In which case, why do 90% of the nations bother sending teams, since they don't stand much chance of a medal?

If they all took your attitude, there would be only be about 100 riders in the race!

 

[totallyfixed]

So, first it's wrong NOT to send a rider without much hope of a result, and NOW it's a weak team?
Take your pick.
But it's simply easier to blame someone who will have no comeback (even if they wanted to).
Learn something, sport in this country depends on results. With results come money from the government, via agancies. It's all in the public domain. So real world is podium places are required, to justify the millions spent. Not a difficult concept, to understand that the way to get to this point is by the hard road called perform or show potential, or out.
The days of sending no-hopers are, happily, in the past, along with the good old "plucky loser" and "send for experience" routines.

Well if you didn't understand what I was saying it's not surprising you replied in the way you did, I'll try and explain it to you, and this is not just my opinion, a weak team is one that is comprised of 4 riders instead of 6. This put GB alongside the traditionally "weaker" nations. If you are not in it you can't win it, you learn your trade at the top by competing at the top. As well as this the peleton is not made up of trade teams who know each others strengths with every rider having a role to play and therefore anything can happen and frequently does.
A big part of the problem as I see it is that the pedestal has been placed so high, everyone now expects a rider in a GB top to be somewhere on the podium, if not at the top, and as seen from the ongoing men's race it just isn't always going to happen. There will be some riders in there who didn't expect to still be around for the final lap, but they are, and I say well done to them because even if they "only" finish 20th they will be proud of that and so they should be. You can't win all the time, not a problem in my book, but you can't win at all if you are not there.