Olympic cycling medals musings.

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snorri

Legendary Member
I haven't been following the 'limpics but couldn't help hearing about UK success in picking up cycling medals.
We often hear of links between sport and the real world so I wondered how other European countries had fared and thanks to a well known search engine discovered the following.
GB & NI 12 medals
Netherlands 5
Denmark 3
Belgium 2
Germany 2
Sweden 1
It looks almost like a reverse league table of the countries I would most like to be a cyclist in.:sad:.
 

srw

It's a bit more complicated than that...
Since GB & NI is where I quite happily live, I'm very happy to be a cyclist here.
 

winjim

Smash the cistern
I haven't been following the 'limpics but couldn't help hearing about UK success in picking up cycling medals.
We often hear of links between sport and the real world so I wondered how other European countries had fared and thanks to a well known search engine discovered the following.
GB & NI 12 medals
Netherlands 5
Denmark 3
Belgium 2
Germany 2
Sweden 1
It looks almost like a reverse league table of the countries I would most like to be a cyclist in.:sad:.
To quote Barney Ronay in the Graun,

More than £30m has been spent on cycling in this cycle. It is a brutally focused, entirely medal-based approach. Forget sport for all, forget participation: British sport is set on hammering away at the most visible, medal-drenched gains.
And that's only considering cycling as a sport, never mind as anything else such as a leisure activity or even just a mode of transport.
 
To quote Barney Ronay in the Graun,

More than £30m has been spent on cycling in this cycle. It is a brutally focused, entirely medal-based approach. Forget sport for all, forget participation: British sport is set on hammering away at the most visible, medal-drenched gains.
And that's only considering cycling as a sport, never mind as anything else such as a leisure activity or even just a mode of transport.

That is what is needed to win. If you're focusing on accessibility in sport, and participation for all. Then there's less time with the elite athletes. As bad as it seems, pure performance based analysis for access to the available funding, is how you get so many successful athletes.
 
OP
OP
snorri

snorri

Legendary Member
Yeah but, reverse league?
I found it interesting that the least cycle friendly country had won more medals than other more cycle friendly countries.
This wasn't meant to be a scientific investigation, which is why I added "musings" to the thread title:smile:
 

winjim

Smash the cistern
That is what is needed to win. If you're focusing on accessibility in sport, and participation for all. Then there's less time with the elite athletes. As bad as it seems, pure performance based analysis for access to the available funding, is how you get so many successful athletes.
Yes, but one needs to decide whether that's a desirable outcome worth £30Mm. I enjoy GB&NI winning all those medals but really all I get out of it is that for a couple of weeks every four years I get to sit on my sofa and go "whoo hoo!" once in a while. I don't see it actually benefiting my cycling. Indeed it's possible that it just reinforces the idea of cycling as purely a competitive so you just end up with hundreds of FPKW MAMILs on carbon fibre twatmachines getting in @User 's way on Box Hill. This doesn't I think add to the promotion of cycling as a normal utilitarian mode of transport which I gather is more the case in the countries mentioned in which @snorri would rather cycle.

So as fun as Olympic medals are, in terms of day to day cycling there might be more beneficial ways to spend £30m.
 

Globalti

Legendary Member
There's a thread going on UKClimbing at the moment about people who climb big dangerous mountains without the right equipment or training, my belief is that it's because the media show climbers teleporting magically from the bottom to the summit in perfect weather without showing the sweat and toil and the dangers involved in climbing the damned thing. The same will happen in track cycling as folk will book tracks then be disappointed that they can't fly round like Laura Trott and Jason Kenny. Luckily velodromes are better staffed than mountains.
 

shouldbeinbed

Rollin' along
Location
Manchester way
There's a bit on road cc about the other nations repsonse to GB & NI success, focusing on Anna Meares initial comments and mentioning Australian cycling budget was £18.6 million to UKs £30.2

Pound for Pound GBNI 11 medals come in at £2.75 million each vs Australia 2 medals at £9.3 million each is very good VFM comparatively.

But the amount of precious metal you could buy for £2.75 Million... :smile:
 
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