British Cycling publishes whole sport plan

Having outlined its growth plans for cycling earlier this year, British Cycling has today published the Whole Sport Plan, revealing how it aims to achieve a lasting legacy for cycling in Britain.

The Whole Sport Plan 2009-2013 sets out the work British Cycling will undertake with its partners over the next four years to grow cycling as a sport, recreational activity and as sustainable transport by leveraging the worldwide success of its athletes.

As part of the ‘inspiration to participation’ plan, British Cycling has set itself the following ambitious goals:

1. To assert Britain’s position as the leading cycling nation in the world by maintaining high performance of its athletes in international competitions and focus on the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games.

2. To support Sky, the principal partner of British Cycling, in creating a professional road team built on the same performance values as the GB team. Its aim will be to inspire more people to ride and produce the first British winner of the Tour de France.

3. To get one million more people cycling once a month and 125,000 more people cycling once a week by 2013. This will be achieved by rolling out a series of mass participation cycling events in partnership with Sky through the Skyride initiative.

4. To boost cycling at the grass roots level by expanding British Cycling’s highly successful Go-Ride programme, increasing the number of quality assured clubs, expanding support to volunteers and constantly improving the quality of coaching.

5. To boost competitive cycling by expanding the nationwide network of traffic free cycling facilities and creating a more satisfactory legal framework for access to the public highway to enable road racing to thrive.

6. To increase the international profile and influence of British Cycling by bringing more major international cycling events to Britain and further developing the relationship with the UCI, the world’s governing body for the sport.

7. To grow British Cycling membership from 28,000 to 100,000 by 2013 by positioning the organisation as an essential resource for all cyclists across all cycling disciplines and offering them a range of relevant new products and services.

Ian Drake, CEO of British Cycling, said: “The Whole Sport Plan is now available to view on our website so anyone can see what steps we will be taking over the next four years to grow our sport and chances of our future elite success.

“We have a once in a lifetime opportunity in the run up to London 2012 to really engage Britain with cycling and turn our ‘medal success’ into a ‘people success’ by inspiring mass participation in our sport.

“With increased funding and fantastic public and commercial partnerships on board, we have the resources in place to drive real progress in all areas of our sport, from our elite team to our volunteers.”

The Whole Sport Plan 2009–2013 is available to download and for more information about British Cycling visit www.britishcycling.org.uk.