Jerry Moos writes:
> Well, Tom Simpson certainly was committed enough, but he evidently took a few
> too many drugs. But I think the general lack of British contenders can be put
> down to the same cause as the lack of Americans until Lemonde. Massed start
> road racing was not traditionally popular in either US or UK. In America, the
> traditional form of cycling was track, while in Britain it was time trial. Each
> nation has produced many world champions in its preferred form of the sport.
The evidence thoroughly disproves this comment. I went through the men's results of the track world championships and took note of the various podium finishes for each country up to and including 1983 (CR cut-off limit). Since the team results on the UCI site (www.uci.ch) do not give the individual components of the team, I simply wrote down the country, whereas with the individual riders, I kept track of the number of different names in each discipline. So if one particular 'star' rider repeated, he is given the same value as somebody who had a podium finish once only. (I may have missed or noted a rider twice by mistake, but in general lines the results are the ones stated.) Just as noted in road race results, neither Britain, nor much less so the US, ever produced any appreciable number of World Champions or even podium finishers in the classic era of cycling (as determined by the CR cut-off limit of 1983)
I was able to find 3 British professional pursuit podium rider, 2 sprint podium riders and one team pursuit podium team. Among the Juniors, they had one points podium rider and one team sprint podium team. The USA was even less visible with one jr. team podium, Lemond's Jr. pursuit podium and 4 sprint podium finishers prior to WWI.
You can commpare this to Germany with 23 pro team podiums and 10 junior team podiums and 37 different riders making it to discipline/podiums (these results are inflated as Germany used to send two distinct teams). The USSR had 21 team results and 10 individual results (no pros!) Italy 11 team results, 26 individual results. France 2 teams and 27 individual results. The Netherlands 17 individual results. Belgium 13 individual results...
--
Steven Maasland
Moorestown, NJ
>
\r?\n> Regards,
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Jerry Moos
\r?\n> Houston, TX
\r?\n>
\r?\n> brucerobbins wrote:
\r?\n> Since David Miller's drugs entanglement and his disappearance from the race,
\r?\n> my guess is that there are no Brits there because we don't take enough
\r?\n> drugs.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Bruce
\r?\n> Dundee
\r?\n> Scotland