August 24, 2005
Sport England obfuscation
The following, via information from Gareth of Little Man in a Toque, will prove to be an embarrassment to Sport England who have insisted that England can not be represented in the Tour of Britain cycle race because the UCI does not allow it to do so. Sport England have been mailing concerned people with the following response:
The English riders are not allowed to ride in Team England because the UCI doesn't allow one.This, seemingly, is obfuscation. Phil Ingham, from British Cycling, was asked:
Can you confirm whether or not the UCI's rules also preclude the participation of an English team?He responded:
I'm sure they [UCI] don't preclude the inclusion of an England Team in a stage race of this standard (i.e. sub pro-tour)...His response would seem to be in line with the UCI policy of not discriminating on the basis of nationality.
The whole shooting match (or cycling race) seems to be boiling down to one of funding and of historical happenstance. Phil states the following:
The Welsh, Scottish Feds [cycling federation, which needs to be present for proper English representation at this level in the sport it seems] question is an historic one - both were set up before current funding structures and to establish an English Fed now would be extremely costly an contrary to the way we wish to develop the sport in the UK i.e. to pool funding and resources to the betterment of the sport rather than dilute them in the interests of home nation national identity in 1 or 2 events per year, when virtually every event we send a national team to requires it to be GB.This is all fine and dandy I suppose. After all, Great Britain is the generally accepted team we put out at a large proportion of international events. However, the whole issue does serve to highlight the way that devolution has and is going to continue to work in the UK.
If British Cycling and Sport England think that they will eventually manage to absorb the Welsh and Scottish cycling federations into a greater GB team for the Tour of Britain then they are dreaming. Indeed, I would be extremely surprised if this is something that they will even attempt to do because any attempt will be doomed to failure. Why? Because the Welsh and the Scottish have representation which is specifically there to further their interests, both political and structural (federations etc).
So we are left at exactly the same point where we began. The agenda of Sport England does not seem to be to further the interests of England as a sporting nation in the discipline of cycling. The reason has nothing to do with the UCI and much more to do with the fact that there is no English cycling federation.
Two questions need to be asked now. Why did Sport England think it appropriate to use the UCI as an excuse and what exactly are they doing to bring into existence an English cycling federation?
