POSTED: November 16th 2010

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NEIL WILSON: Hoy and Ainslie at risk from game of Olympic number crunching

THE NEIL WILSON COLUMN / An exclusive, authoritative series from Sports Features Communications

LONDON, Nov 16: Why does the International Olympic Committee continue to allow three athletes in every track and field event when increasingly it restricts other sports to one?

The thought occurs to me because Jason Kenny, a British track cyclist, has won the keirin at the European championships, an Olympic qualifying event. Why so? Because it means that there is a possibility that Britain’s greatest ever track cyclist, Sir Chris Hoy, will not be able to defend his title in London in 2012.

In 2008 both Hoy and Kenny contested the individual sprint in Beijing. Hoy won gold, Kenny silver. Hoy was also to win gold in keirin and team sprint. Now, under pressure from the IOC, the UCI has ruled that in future only one from each country can compete in each event.

Cycling has joined the list of sports restricted in this way. Sailing is another. So Britain’s greatest ever dinghy sailor, Ben Ainslie, may also not compete in the 2012 Games. Imagine the outcry in Britain – heroes Hoy and Ainslie on the sidelines at the home Olympics.

In the Finn class, which Ainslie has won at the last two Games, Britain has the present world champion and world No1, Ed Wright, and the present world number three, Giles Scott, as well as Ainslie.

Scott beat Ainslie in the Olympic waters of Weymouth in the Sail for Gold regatta this year, the first to defeat Ainslie in the Finn class in six years. Ainslie was rusty, perhaps, after being distracted by his commitments to America’s Cup racing but who is to say he will qualify now for a bid for his fourth straight Olympic gold medal.

Selection controversy

Lord Coe, chairman of the London organisers, will appreciate the problem.  Athletics had three places to offer to Britain for selection for 1500 metres for the 1988 Olympic team but because of a wrong-headed selection policy and even more dumb-headed selection, Coe was still not found a place. Many still believe he would have risen to the challenge in Seoul for his third straight gold.

IOC president Juan-Antonio Samaranch intervened personally to say that he favoured Coe being awarded a special place as defending champion, a gesture reversed only when the Britain Olympic Association and other athletes opposed special dispensation.

Perhaps the wise old man was right all along. Perhaps defending Olympic champions should all be allowed their place. The IAAF takes that view in its own events, allowing defending world champions automatic dispensation from national selection policies.

Certainly, it makes a lot more sense in those sports where the IOC cuts numbers to the bone to keep overall numbers to 10,500 while maintaining them at two or three in a favoured few.

NEIL WILSON reported his first Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. He has since covered another nine summer and nine winter Olympics for various newspapers, including The Independent and the Daily Mail with whom he has worked for the last 19 years as Athletics and Olympic correspondent. He was Britain's Sports Journalist of the Year in 1984 and is the author of seven books   

Keywords · Neil Wilson · IAAF · Coe · Samaranch · Kenny · Hoy · Ainslie

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