Care to explain the highlighted bit, or just the usual vitriol towards those who may even agree with your viewpoint at times?
Yes, sorry that was a bit over the top by me.
Proto - Pooley has been putting her effort into Ironman Tri. The prize-money is far better and it suits her talent set far better, a logical move no-one would deny her. None of us have access to her training diary but join strava and a wealth of information is available on all manner of people. Any athlete would be defying logic if, having specialised in one field of athletic endeavour for many years they switched to another and conducted specialised training in that field, if they could maintain performance in the first field. It just does not happen. A narrative convenient to the current misrepresentation, is to start the clock "Pol Pot" style, at the time it became convenient for British Cycling and their camp followers in the English speaking cycling media, to invent women's road cycling. Necessary to that group-think is that standards have improved, since year zero. Iron man Tri is never going to get to the Olympics in Pooley's competitive life span and Olympic Tri does not suit her talents, so cycling opens the only door to converting silver into Gold. It does Pooley no harm to subscribe to the currently convenient narrative pushed out by the BC establishment and she was, after all, BC's favourite for resource and support for a significant period in the past.
Viking - I have a lot of time for Dani King but Rochelle Gilmour only ever plays an obvious media card, in the style that has so badly served the sport through the last 40 years. King, had recently both lost her place in the TP squad and her place on the Podium Program and was thus only an outside chance for the road selection. When the spat blew up between Sutton and Varnish, it was noticeable that both Brailsford and Wiggins, the two most powerful voices who could have spoken up for Sutton, were both silent. Similarly it was interesting to see who actually spoke up for Sutton. I can have no idea but King's early experience with BC would not have made her a front-runner for becoming a leading spokesman for the "support the Australian one" campaign, rather the opposite. That she spoke up so strongly and that her view had such widespread media attention, ie circulated to the press - had the finger prints of a stage managed piece by Gilmour all over it. A cynical move to ingratiate this rider with the BC establishment ? An extension of a campaign run by Gilmour to influence selection run for several months ?
Removing myth from fact over relative capability to support Armitstead on this course is going to be difficult. Amitstead and in her conversations with the selectors will intimate that they are both hoping that Pooley is capable of a single substantive attack that causes her rivals to consume significant resource on a counter move and thus tip the scales in her favour. If so it might be worth while pondering the Wolrd Championships at Zolder in 2012 when Pooley did have great form on the bike and the race was on a course that did suit her. This was going to be her best ever shot at the RR title. Pooley needed the assistance of Armitstead to play the role Armitstead now seeks for Pooley, but this meant Armitstead playing second fiddle. Armitstead had some library books she needed to take back that day or somesuch and could not attend. At the time I was astonished. That nobody in the cycling press picked up on it, I found depressing but expected.
