Olympic Qualifying On Track After Euro Medal Haul

Head coach anticipates high scores at Glasgow World Cup next month, reports Vern Pitt

- Vern Pitt

The British team is mostly assured of its places at the Tokyo Olympics after it left the first major competition of the track season with nine medals. British Cycling’s riders picked up two golds, four silvers, and three bronze medals at the European Championship in Apeldoorn in the Netherlands.

Head coach Iain Dyer professed to be very happy with the result. “Midway through the Olympic qualification cycle, we’ve got an eye on two things. The first one points that are still on offer this winter. Adding a nice chunk of points in the Euros in the Olympic events was good, but the other side of it is that the points that we gained last year have dropped off our tally. As it stands in quite a lot of disciplines we’re actually relatively assured of our Olympic spots.”

The one major Olympic event where they won’t be taking a spot in the women’s team sprint. The relatively under-powered arm of the squad didn’t enter a team in Apeldoorn and Dyer said it was some time ago that BC had given up any hopes of contesting the event at Tokyo 2020.

“The depth, currently at the highest echelons of the elite level, isn’t there,” Dyer added. He pointed out that in March sprint coach Justin Grace stepped away from the elite programme to focus on building a pipeline and system for finding young sprinters and bringing them through, a process that’s still on-going. “We need to make sure as a programme, we place our resources where they’re going to be most effective. Currently, at the elite level, that’s not the women’s team sprint,” Dyer added.