British Cycling President, Brian Cookson has spelt out the organisation’s aims for a professional British Cycling road team. The first is no surprise, a British team to contest the 2010 Tour de France, there has even been talk of getting in for 2009. Getting to the Tour is one thing, winning it is quite another which is why Cookson, speaking to the Reuters News Agency, reckons it will take the team 10 years to achieve that. The stunning performance of the country’s cyclists at the Beijing Olympics, where eight gold medals were won, has sparked a wave of interest and moves are under way to form a professional road cycling team capable of challenging in the major tours. "There is a very strong possibility that there will be a British team in the 2010 Tour de France," Cookson, who has helped to turn around a struggling sport in his 11 years as president, told Reuters on Thursday. "It’s not a done deal yet but we want a fully professional team for the 2010 season competing in the highest level tours. That that would obviously include the Tour de France. "We are ranked the number one nation in cycling because of all the Olympic success but we will never be truly number one until we have cracked road racing as well. We have never reached the heights of a Tour de France contender. "There is a real will to get this off the ground. I said a while back that we would have a Tour winner within 25 years, now I say 10 and we’ll have a major contender in five." Cookson said British Cycling’s highly-respected performance director Dave Brailsford had made the formation of a professional road team a priority in the next two years. He said potential partners for the British team, which would feature mainly home-grown riders, had been identified although the current economic climate made funding the five-million-pound per year project more difficult. "We are not just talking about the Tour de France, it’s about all the other major Tours and road classics," Cookson said. "We are looking at what we would need to do and to put in place to make it work. "Although we are in troubled times and it may not be as easy as it would have been a year ago…on the back of the Olympic success I think we have a very good chance of pulling this off." Britain’s current top Tour rider, Mark Cavendish, winner of four stages on this year’s Tour de France (as well as four at the Giro), would ideally be in any British team, said Cookson. However, he admits that securing his services would not be easy. "It’s complex because people like Mark are already performing at the very highest level and are under contract with existing teams," Cookson said. "Until we have a team we don’t know what we can offer him. "But the main things is we want a structure where talented road cyclists can compete in the highest level tours and the most difficult road races. "We want to offer our riders a chance to go all the way through, not take them part of the way and then have to farm them off to pro teams on the continent or America."
British Cycling aims to win Tour de France in 10 years
First Published: Sep 18, 2008
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Latest Comments
I hope the government displays the correct 'moral fibre' attitude and also piles on the Fuel Price Escalator
I can't leave this 'ER' stuff unchallenged! We do not say ER!!
I was around in 1973 and remember the impact that the oil crisis and the subsequent oil price hikes had. That was a missed opportunity; this may be the second chance we've been waiting 52 years for. Hasn't come to that yet, but we need to be ready if it does.
[placeholder for obligatory picture meme of Inigo Montoya]
I think you're going to need to be more specific, because no-one can tell who or what you're responding to.
That word… it doesn’t mean what you think it means.
"I see many children in the ER with life altering injuries caused by crashing bikes while not wearing helmets. I also hear stories from paramedics about children who don’t even live long enough after a crash to get to the ER. Same with adults, but less so." Again, observer bias writ large. Do you also see the many, many more people who die because of obesity and associated illnesses because they didn't cycle? The health benefits of cycling outweigh the negatives by a huge margin, but this is never acknowledged by ER staff who only see dead/injured cyclists not the people who die from not cycling. Just because you see something doesn't mean it is universal, and there is much more too it than just ER. "Listen to the people whose job it is to scrape you off the road." Why would I listen to people with such a narrow viewpoint that they can't acknowledge that there is more too it than just what they see? People who literally don't understand that it's far bigger than them and their skewed views. "Wear a helmet, don’t trash people who do, and don’t nitpick about whether a helmet saved a life – if she thinks it did, that’s her right." No, I won't wear a helmet, that's my choice and having read a lot about it, that is completely justified. I don't tell people what to do, maybe you could do the same? I do suggest that they go and look at the evidence and data, otherwise, like you, they might be arguing from a false premise. She is entitled to think that a helmet saved her life, and it isn't nitpicking to say that is extremely unlikely, given the data. It also isn't nitpicking to point out that her sponsors likely include the company that made the helmet.
I'd rather listen to the people who are working to prevent so many traffic collisions. There's no clear evidence that helmets do anything to make cyclists safer (though there is limited evidence to suggest that bike helmets make cyclists less safe) though they do provide a small amount of protection that is likely ineffective in multi-vehicle collisions. You're using a strange logic really. I wouldn't head straight to rubbish collectors to inform me about the best shopping decisions, though it is clearly their job to collect the remnants of my shopping. Similarly, I wouldn't go to a sewer engineer to get the best health advice to keep my toilets regular etc. To be honest, your mention of "children in the ER" seems like an emotional distraction technique to prevent people from thinking clearly.
I see many children in the ER with life altering injuries caused by crashing bikes while not wearing helmets. I also hear stories from paramedics about children who don't even live long enough after a crash to get to the ER. Same with adults, but less so. Listen to the people whose job it is to scrape you off the road. Wear a helmet, don't trash people who do, and don't nitpick about whether a helmet saved a life - if she thinks it did, that's her right.
Likely due to the right wing oligarchs that almost all our media. Even the BBC is right wing and will even frame questions using a far right wing world view when interviewing Greens or Lib Dems (are they even still around?).
1 thought on “British Cycling aims to win Tour de France in 10 years”
Tour win in 10
Sounds great, and if Brailsford and co say they are going to do it you wouldn’t bet against it, but isn’t aiming for the Tour going to take some of the focus away from winning a sackful of track golds at 2012 – which is how British cycling earn their money these days?