British Cycling report analysed
Why lessons need to be learned at the highest level
A quick look at the comments section on any of the myriad of stories about the culture at British Cycling over the last 14 months will reveal a substantial number of opinions along the lines of: “It’s elite sport, it’s not meant to be easy. Toughen up. This is what you’ve got to do to win.”
But Germany, USA, Denmark, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy and China all also won cycling medals at the last two Olympics; are we to assume that they also had a programme that some of their athletes would characterise as a “culture of fear”? We don’t know but it seems unlikely that the flawed BC system uncovered by Annamarie Phelps’s review into BC’S culture published last week is the only path to success.
What the review does make clear is it was a path adopted when winning was prioritised above everything else. For the riders that won gold medals, the price was probably worth it; for others it wasn’t and we’ll never know how much talent was wasted with this approach.
If you’re reading this, the chances are you love the sport and may have young sons, daughters, nephews, nieces or even brothers or sisters that you might want to encourage into it. We should all want to see an elite side of the sport that we’d be happy to see our loved ones enter.
That might be a hard place to be but it shouldn’t be one characterised by behaviour that most of us in less glamorous jobs wouldn’t put up with. Not least because for Olympic hopefuls there isn’t another builder, law firm, hospital or publisher to go and work for. If you’re British this is the only firm in town.
There’s also the staff, “a significant number” of which were demoralised by the programme without the shiny benefit of medals for themselves.
Last week’s independent report into the culture at BC forces us as a nation to look at the culture surrounding elite sport and ask what price we’re willing to pay for success. In my experience, cyclists are usually smart and compassionate people, ever willing to offer a spare tube to those with a puncture at the roadside, for example.
The price of success shouldn’t have to be the dreams of a few being crushed by those there to support them. BC will have to make a success of its pledged reforms and UK Sport also needs to overhaul its approach to funding. More broadly, cyclists need to assess what we expect of our icons in elite sport.