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Women’s cycling seemingly received a blow yesterday when British Cycling was told that there would be no more female cycling events at the forthcoming 2012 Olympics – unless the number of male events are culled, according to The Guardian.
The news means that female sprinters like Victoria Pendleton will, as in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, only be able to win one gold – compared with male opposite number Chris Hoy’s three.
The IOC said new events would only be considered "on condition that they replace events already on the programme".
British Cycling president Brian Cookson said: “We would be very concerned about the possibility of the loss of any men’s events. The IOC should think very carefully before reducing any men’s events.”
He added: "Longer term our objective is for equality in men’s and women’s events. Now the onus seems to be on the sport to lose events, but that’s not what we were looking for. There can be equality [in number of events] without increasing the number of athletes."
Pendleton had previously expressed her desire for equality in the number of cycling events in the Olympics: "There isn’t a reason why we shouldn’t have the same number of events as the men."
