Prior to the Olympics in Beijing you would have struggled to find much coverage of track cycling on the BBC. Last week however saw the Beeb broadcast seemingly non-stop action from the Track Cycling World Championships in Copenhagen, presumably because of the recent success of Sir Chris Hoy and company. Viewing figures were not particularly high in comparison to other shows on around the same time, but no doubt the BBC are playing on the recent wins by the Great Britain cycling team and attempting to drum up more interest with a view to attracting more of an audience when the Olympics come to London in two years time.
The British riders actually had a fairly successful World Championships, coming away with 8 medals. Sir Chris Hoy, Ed Clancy and Victoria Pendleton all came away with an individual gold medal. In both the mens and the womens team pursuit, Great Britain had to make do with the silver medal.
Cycling Performance director for the British team Dave Brailsford stated that he was pleased with the team’s performance across the events. “We just came here to ride those events and see where we are at, with relatively new line-ups in some of them. And we are very much in the mix in all of them, with plenty of depth across the board.”
With the London Olympics getting nearer and nearer, you can fully expect to see more Olympic sports being broadcast on the BBC. The screening of the Track Cycling World Championships may just be the beginning of events other than athletics being readily available to watch outside of the Olympic Games.
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