March 23rd, 2006
Hell Hath No Fury
There’s no need for the British National Champion, Jenny Copnall, to express her disgust at being scorned by the BCF selectors for the MTB race at the Commonwealth Games. Every cycling forum here in the UK is hot with indignation on her behalf (see, for instance, Singletrack and XCRacer.com).
If she’d been Welsh or Scottish then she would undoubtedly have been sent by the relevant National Federation.
For those who also disagree with the BCF bias towards road and track and think that Jenny should have been sent you can give feedback directly here.
Remember, UK readers, they are funded not only by membership fees, but by your tax and your lottery money.
Update: 24 March 2006
From the official BCF selection policy:
The Commonwealth Games Council for England (CGCE) will need to be satisfied that all selections have real medal potential.
My emphasis on the woolly weasel words.
If all countries used this ‘medal potential’ criteria for sending someone then we could just get all the blazers from all the relevant organisations round a big table and they could decide who to award the medals to without anyone having to go to the trouble of racing.
Neater all round and if we hold these sessions somewhere posh the blazers who normally travel to “ensure we’re getting value for money on our investment” and other such feeble excuses would still get their jolly.
No disrespect to Simon Richardson, but the same ‘medal potential’ criteria don’t appear to have been applied to the men. Sexism? Surely not. I suspect it is though.
The fact that the BCF is having to defend it’s selection policy in it’s report of the Games shows that they are feeling some guilt that they got it wrong.
The following quote (my emphasis) is revealing too:
England’s Amy Hunt finished fourth, an amazing result by the 19 year old who, although having originally emerged through Mountain Biking, has spent the majority of her time riding the Track and Road in the last 18 months.
Frankly Track and Road are all the BCF understands.
England have potential in MTBing, but the BCF won’t exploit it, so we don’t get results, so we don’t send anyone. It’s a spiral we need to break out of.
Fortunately other countries are more sensible. Sending the National Champion seems to be a matter of course.
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