How many top sports people are difficult, yes she was good enough but if she didnt fit in with the team then tough luck.

Brailsford made the choice and they won gold, she didn’t have a divine right to get the ride.

There are more issues about TEAM selection than merely speed. Things like attitude and team spirit definitely come into play as well. Wendy the Whinge has definitely demonstrated perfectly why you wouldn’t want her in your team.

Perhaps some introspection might be in order.

😆 @druidh!

She went a bit early with the argument, irrespective of the rights or wrongs.

Trott has a couple of events still to go in the omnium. If she doesn’t win then there are questions for the team about having failed to take the opportunity to give her a rest through squad rotation. That’s when WH might have had a point.

If Trott wins gold, then DB doesn’t need to say a thing.

There are more issues about TEAM selection than merely speed. Things like attitude and team spirit definitely come into play as well.

^^^ this

However, I can understand why she’s gutted and not taking it well. All the sacrifice and hard work, then not even getting the chance to compete must be incredibly frustrating.

In my opinion, the decision to exclude Wendy completely, taints every medal Team GB have won on the track.

I hope you get some counselling 😉

My totally ill informed view is that BC AKA Shane and Dave decided to keep the winning teams together if they performed. Wendy wasn’t in the starting three and so it’s tough. The starting three would have been selected for a number of reasons with a particular strategy in mind.

From the little titbits I hear (could be toatlly made up) BC is not the clean cut, devastatingly professional outfit everyone makes out. Office politics, backstabbing and blame culture stalk the corridors of the NCC.

Wendy has a bit of a reputation as a choker in finals (she should have pushed Romero a lot harder for example) and regularly gets silver in competition (no mean feat but not good enough with the other athletes available).

No-one has mentioned that exactly the same happened to Andy Tennant in the blokes team pursuit, did that taint the medals as well?

However, I can understand why she’s gutted and not taking it well. All the sacrifice and hard work, then not even getting the chance to compete must be incredibly frustrating.

+1

Didn’t the three that raced beat the world record every time they went out? I think if I was one of those three I wouldn’t have wanted to change that.

I see the French are accusing GB of suddenly becoming very good and having a ‘secret’…

To be fair, their coach has stated very clearly that they’re not suggesting doping, just that they’re a bit dumbstruck by why they can’t beat the Brits. I think that GB have got in their heads now…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/06/london-2012-olympics-cycling-jason-kenny?

A tweet from his team-mate François Pervis revealed another level of French thinking: “La sodomie continue.”

🙂

Where do you draw the line? Team GB could probably have placed gold and silver with the 6 girls in the long list last year, 2 of them didn’t get the chance either including Sarah Storey who would have had a very good shout at being the 1st paralympian to win gold in the Olympics.

WTFU Wendy.

Must be frustrating for WH, but what if she had been subbed in for the semis just to give her the medal and then f*cked it up?

There are more issues about TEAM selection than merely speed. Things like attitude and team spirit definitely come into play as well.

Maybe, but at that point it’s no longer the fact based objective selection procedure you lot seem to be lauding them for.

mike doesn’t need to know. He only wants to hold a different/controversial opinion as he’s still smarting from the Critical Mass “kettling” thread.

Have you any idea quite how boring that makes you sound? Probably not.

I like the attitude of no favours adopted by British cycling. Without it we wouldn’t have achieved on the track and on the road. However, and it’s a biggie, WH could definitely been included at some point without jeopardising the goal. She wasn’t, it’s obviously for reasons that the team don’t want to discuss and it’s backfired.

I’m guessing none of us has ever run a pro cycling team so it’s probably a bit more complicated than it looks.

To be fair, their coach has stated very clearly that they’re not suggesting doping, just that they’re a bit dumbstruck by why they can’t beat the Brits. I think that GB have got in their heads now…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/06/london-2012-olympics-cycling-jason-kenny?

A tweet from his team-mate François Pervis revealed another level of French thinking: “La sodomie continue.”

Impressive brass neck from the big man (Bauge) in that article – banned himself for swerving a dope test and asks Kenny if he’s going to keep a low profile!

Maybe, but at that point it’s no longer the fact based objective selection procedure you lot seem to be lauding them for.

I don’t think I did, and as both a coach and a team manager, I am fully aware of how hard it is to do what the Team management have to do. At the end of the day you will never be able to justify it to the athelete who misses out. What you do have to do is be able to wake up in the morning with a clear conscience, which I strongly suspect they can. The big issue here is not in fact the decision which demonstrably wasn’t wrong, it is the support and back up for the rejected athelete.

aracer – Member
There are more issues about TEAM selection than merely speed. Things like attitude and team spirit definitely come into play as well.
Maybe, but at that point it’s no longer the fact based objective selection procedure you lot seem to be lauding them for.

Which squares the circle nicely. QED and Bravo!

Team GB cycling are able to combine objective performance measures with more subjective understanding of team dynamics, timetabling, personalities etc. So who doubted the personal skills? 😉

So Brailsford for manager of the year in SPOTY (Team GB and Team Sky).

Poor Wendy. Not easy decisions but we expect professional ones otherwise the team starts to lose respect for their leadership. DB et al are not going to continue an argument in public though.

At least she won’t have to worry about the cash, never heard of a poor Dentist

What strikes me as different to the set-up of Team GB over the last few years is that it seems to be a ruthless machine modelled on the US, Russian and Chinese systems, win at all costs …. Seems it’s gold or nothing.

If that is true, then GB have failed big time outside of Olympics.
World Cup Classics 2011-12… only gold went to Hoy and a couple of GB Team pursuit/sprint
(can’t find 2010-11 results)
World Cup Classics 2009-10… just about bugger all for GB, except at Manchester. GB Team 4th overall.
World Cup Classics 2008-09… ditto (although the girls did a bit better) GB team 3rd overall.

Seems to me they target very well the most important competitions, and are borderline 2nd rate at other times. Most of the Golds tend to be Olympics and any round at Manchester and now London Velodromes.

edit: but it’s career over now for at least 1 more team member

, WH could definitely been included at some point without jeopardising the goal.

Could she have? The team for the first round had to go out and do a top preformance – hence the team which won the worlds, the next round Rowsell was apparently ill but the team had been declared so she had to start, the next round was the finals, Rowsell’s supposed illness seemed to make no difference to their performance, they rode to schedule – why would you pull apart a team breaking world records just to give the sub a ride. I’m sure the GB team would have had WH riding if they felt it was in the best interests of the team, they showed no sentiment in the mens individual sprint selection, perhaps they thought she wasn’t up to it, were in favour of continuity etc.

Seems to me they target very well the most important competitions, and are borderline 2nd rate at other times.

You can’t be at peak for every event (unless a little external dabbling is happening…) so it certainly looks like BC have accepted some failures in World Champs and focussed on the Olympics. Don’t forget the track season is typically over the winter rather than our ‘summer’ so to get training right for both would be difficult – maybe that’s why we’ve done so well where other countries seemed to have faltered.

The hard facts are the golds medals now are what is going to secure the funding, not the world cup wins. We can’t be far off a tipping point now where we can send a world champ winning, say, pursuit team to the World Champs and send a completely different one on a different training regime to the next Olympics.

Pendleton is retiring now and we ain’t got a replacement for her like we have for Hoy in Jason Kenny in the mens sprints. Hoy can’t really be thinking of the next Olympics so there could be 4 medals down already…

Seems to me they target very well the most important competitions, and are borderline 2nd rate at other times. Most of the Golds tend to be Olympics and any round at Manchester and now London Velodromes.

edit: but it’s career over now for at least 1 more team member

Because you have to peak and cant be on form all the time .The new members who come through also need to be blooded somewhere and probably wont win earlier in their careers

Job done. Well done Laura!!!!

As Hugh Porter just said, “sport reveals character.” Doesnt it just

Pendleton is retiring now and we ain’t got a replacement for her like we have for Hoy in Jason Kenny in the mens sprints. Hoy can’t really be thinking of the next Olympics so there could be 4 medals down already…

Jess Varnish, Kenny to do Keirin, Clancy as last man in the TS (he just did a <1:01 1km at the end of 4 hard days, and a flying lap faster than Hoy’s in the TS). Not certainties, but the cupboard is hardly bare.

I feel for her, but you can’t argue with the team performance that won.

In football, do the registered team, including the subs, not get awarded a champions league medal etc? whether they have played or not? seems fairer in team events.

Of course you couldnt have a team of 20 for a 3 person event 🙂