CYCLING IRELAND PLAN'S FOR LONDON 2012

Cycling Ireland is facing an uphill battle to ensure that its riders win medals at the London 2012 Olympics due to a lack of training facilities, limited financial resources and the carding scheme which funds its high performance athletes.

The challenges which the organisation is now working to overcome were outlined at today’s launch of its ‘High Performance Strategy 2009 – 2012’ which has been framed to harness the grassroots infrastructure supporting the sport and to develop medal winners.

“The problem is not finding the talent but the cost of nurturing and developing that talent. We do that on a shoestring compared to other countries,” said Dr. Phil Leigh, Cycling Ireland’s High Performance Director.

“Our annual budget is €500,000. Compare that to British Cycling who had a staff of 250 and a budget of over €22 million for its target of 6 medals at the Beijing Games,” he added

“We are responding to that reality together with Irish Sports Council who have been tremendously supportive of our efforts to develop cycling and to prepare for the Olympic Games even though its own annual budget has been reduced to €53 million,” he said.

“We know that we can produce winners and our High Performance Strategy is about being creative in using all of our resources to meet the high costs of having to travel abroad to train and compete at elite level,” Dr Leigh continued.

Cycling Ireland’s High Performance Strategy for the London 2012 Olympics is focused on performance rather than participation and it aims to identify and prepare a group of riders across the road, track, MTB, BMX and Paralympic disciplines to improve upon the performances at the Beijing Olympics.

It sets our procedures for identifying riders for the squad through Talent Identification and Talent Transfer programmes. These riders will be “fast-tracked” into High Performance support through structured Pathway Programmes of coaching and competition

Metrics and targets will be set for each discipline and will be reviewed annually. The strategy takes account of the necessity to travel to other countries to train in elite facilities and to compete at the highest level and the drain that this places on Cycling Ireland’s annual budget.

The strategy expresses a desire to move away from the existing carding scheme of funding individual athletes to a model of providing funding for a squad of riders across each competition programme. The proposal is intended to create a budget to ensure that all riders committing to training programmes as part of the high performance squad are rewarded.

“We are not criticising the carding scheme but we would question why Pro-Tour riders who are effectively beyond development seeing that they are on Pro-Tour teams are carded while emerging riders have no direct source of financial support. We want to develop a succession of talent. Riders should be aware that when they get to the top level that they will drop off the programme and that their funding will also drop off at that point,” Dr. Leigh said.

“This strategy is about identifying, nurturing and developing talent from grass roots level through to high performance and Olympic level. It is structured so that young, aspiring cyclists can see a pathway for development and see what is achievable. It includes building and leading a strong support team behind the athletes. This process is almost in place and we also receive excellent athlete back-up from support services within the IIS, PCI and SNI,” he added.

“There is no question that the talent exists in Ireland. Our track pursuit team were 4th in the Copenhagen World Cup in February while Sam Bennett was the 2008 European Junior Points Track Champion. We won medals at the Paralympic Track World Cup in Manchester this May pushing Great Britain very close and were within 5 seconds of a medal in the women’s time trial at the 2009 Para Cycling World Championships in Italy. We are competing with the best but there are enormous costs associated with travelling to qualifying World Cup track events in Manchester, Columbia, Beijing and Melbourne,” he explained.

Track racing will continue to be the priority for the High Performance squad and athletes from all disciplines will be provided with year long competition and coaching programmes which combine road, track and MTB racing activity.

“This is about laying the foundations for success. Anything is possible but it goes without saying that the delivery of this strategy through to London 2012 is dependant on continued funding and support from the Irish Sports Council, Sport Northern Ireland, the Paralympic Council of Ireland and the Irish Olympic Council,” Dr Leigh said.

“Our ability to achieve success internationally runs in close parallel with our ability to maintain our financial resources at a time when sport in Ireland is living under the constant threat of being a soft target for cuts in Government spending,” he concluded.