The State of British Cycling

I was promoted to write this post in addition to the previous one by this video. It is an interview with David Brailsford, the head of Team Sky and British cycling and the master mind behind the UKs success in track cycling.

British cycling is in a very good state at the moment, especially relative to the past. In fact it is going thought somewhat of a golden period at the moment with riders such as Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish etc performing on the big stage. The future is also bright with riders such as Geriant Thomas and Chris Froome who look like they could potentially win classics and grand tours. For a long time fan of cycling (since the early 90's) seeing British riders in the peleton let alone wining is quite something.

This year alone we have had

-       A winner of the Criterium du Dauphine, one of the, if not the most prestigious of the (roughly) one week stage races – Bradley Wiggins

-       A winner of the Green Jersey in the Tour de France – Mark Cavendish

-       Two spots on the podium of the Vuelta a Espana – Bradley Wiggins/ Chris Froome

-       Ranked fifth on the UCI WorldTour Ranking 2011 ( first time in top 10 for a while)

-       Eight ranked riders on UCI WorldTour Ranking 2011

And we may yet have a World Champion this year (Mark Cavendish), although I will talk more about the World Championships (road and time trial) in a blog post coming soon.

 

We also have had the coming of age of the only British WorldTour team Team Sky, who have had a decent set of results this year after a turbulent first year (they are ranked 3^rd at the moment, although this may drop a place or two in the next month, compared to 15^th last year). The existence of a British WorldTour team of this calibre is good for British cycling as it provides a route to the top tier of the professional scene for British Talent.

As I said in the last post we also have a very good home race.


So where do we go from here ?


Whilst all of the above is good there is still some distance to go. It would be nice to see one of the British UCI Continental teams being promoted to UCI Pro Continental status. This would give them the chance to race in WorldTour events (such as Tour de France, Paris Roubaix etc although entry to these races would not be guaranteed).

It would also be nice to see the creation of a Classic in the UK (maybe a Giro d'Lombardy warm up race) like those created in Canada this year. This should be easy to accommodate into the busy cycling calendar and an excellent race similar to Liege-Bastogne-Liege/ Giro d'Lombardy (so a hilly classic) could be held (especially in Yorkshire with its abundant short and steep climbs). (I also think an excellent classic could be made by using parts of the Ridgeway)