Originally Posted by
swingaleg:
“So.........GB fails to win a gold medal at the track world championships for the first time since 2001
Is this just a mid Olympic cycle trough or have the other main nations caught us up now ?
I fear it's the latter........
It does seem as though the other countries have taken on board the advances made by GB over the last 15 years and their own national programmes are now reaping rewards
One of the commentators mentioned the New Zealand national centre which appears to be a copy of the Manchester programme........get all the decent cyclists in one place to train with each other and share the specialist coaching and medical expertise which has been brought together in one facility. No doubt other countries are doing the same.
.”
I think its a mixture of things, other nations have obviously caught up and perhaps even surpassed TeamGB in some respects though you could argue the Australians have been using dedicated sports institutes for training campuses for years, TeamGB didnt invent the manchester concept as such.
but you need the raw talent to go with it, and obviously losing the likes of Hoy and Pendleton from the sprint disciplines the next group coming through arent quite at their level, maybe they never will be, but you cant really tell without access to the data/times whether its just the team were off their best achievable performances, or that the rest were just better.
I mean in the Womens team pursuit, the Australians knocked 7 seconds of their national record & 3 seconds off the world record, TeamGB matched their own world record to within a 10th at least,went faster than theyd ever been at sea level and were down to 3 riders for a good chunk, which I still cant work out was intentional or not, only 1 other team posted under 4:20. so where do you pick out the bones from that, if thats our best chance at a Gold medal.
I think Id be more worried if TeamGB were sweeping the boards now, & setting world records in everything, because youd not sustain that kind of form till the Olympics, and there are things they can go away and look at and theyve still got the time to improve
but almost certainly wont win the same haul of medals in Rio as at Beijing/London, but you know its like count how many medals we won in the 14 years prior to 2001.