My man Chris Hoy.

[Tamthewasp]

Chri Hoy is the man. I know there is a few cyclists here on the site. An I struggle to work out the rules of tour de france. Complex. I do love the Veledrome stuff its intense, An my boy Chris Hoy has become A legend. 6 Gold medals at the Olympics.

But My Question to the Road Cyclists is why does britain dominate the Veledrome and not have much success on the road?

[Amazing Matheja]

http://www.intertopspintour.net/forum/v ... hp?t=16800
Why the hell didn't you use this topic ? It's a topic about cyclism in general...
:/

And to answer you I suggest you take a look at who is #1 at the UCI Pro Tour ranking... And also, by the same time, you can take a look at who won the Paris-Nice race, the Dauphiné-Libéré race, the Tour De France,...
Ok... I'll help you a bit : It's a britain who leads that UCI Pro-Tour Ranking, Great Britain is top 3 in National Teams ranking, and it's a British team which leads the Pro-Teams ranking...
And the best sprinter of all time (recently "officialised") is british : Mark Cavendish...

[SlicerITST]

Hoy is a legend. I especially like the fact he used to be a sprinter(standing start). But this event got canned for the London Olympics so he switched to another discipline(rolling start sprint). Which is hard to do in track cycling.

They dominate track cycling because of three reasons. Money, tradition and training locations. First up is the London olympics. A lot of money went into this sport. Cycling was to be the main focus for getting gold medals.

Next is tradition and location. Great Britain and France are really the only countries where track cycling is popular. Where in other countries road cycling is getting more and more popular track cycling is only during the summer olympics. This translates in larger audiences for track cycling events and thus more events in the entire country. For a young British cyclist picking track cycling is actually a good career choice.

You say they dont dominate the road cycling. They had the best two riders in this years TdF. Wiggins and Froome could win all major tours (giro, vuelta and TdF) if fielded there. Just not in 1 year. And Cavendish is by far the best bunch sprinter out there. Everywhere he is in a sprint he is one of the big favorites. He is one of the best, if not the best ever, road sprinter. What more do you want? Cycling is not like tennis where only a few can win. There are a lot more factors that determine a winner.

What they lack is a good one day event rider. But as that was not destined to be needed in the olympics (cavendish was to win a bunch sprint in the main event) i am sure it was not a focus point for the flow of money.

[Tamthewasp]

Cheers boys great answer. Its not what more do I want. Its trying to understand a little more. I knew about Cavendish for a few years, I just dont understand road cycling like how a race has lots of little races (stages) and so on. An the field I think is more broad in road but your answers helped.

Got the 2014 commenwealth games here soon an the Veledrome is 10 minutes from my house. So trying to get in2 it a little more. Like most people do when a country man is the greatest or a least 1 of the best in his discipline it creates a buzz.

Cheers guys