CYCLING: BOLTON ace Jason Kenny’s hopes of winning an individual gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics have been dealt a blow in a radical overhaul of the qualification system.
Kenny bagged a team sprint gold medal and an individual sprint silver behind gold medalist Chris Hoy in the 2008 Beijing Games when Britain dominated the track racing events by winning seven out of 10 events.
But cycling’s world governing body, the UCI, have announced there will be a maximum of one athlete per nation per event in London, and the qualification programme will include the European Championships, which have previously been only an under-23 event.
Britain had already seen their medal hopes diminished by an overhaul of the track programme to create gender parity, as the UCI opted to remove traditional endurance events, the individual pursuits, points races and Madison from the programme.
Twenty-two-year-old Kenny still has plenty to aim for this year with the Commonwealth Games in India coming up in October and a new World Cup series starting in December. Both Kenny, Hoy and Mancunian Matt Crampton suffered a disappointing end to their UCI World Track Championships campaign in the Danish capital Copenhagen in March when the team-mates were left to slug it out for the minor placings after they were all beaten in the quarter-finals.
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