On my Versus column Wednesday I wrote about the International Olympic Committee’s decision to turn track cycling upside down at the 2012 Olympic games. The UCI really didn’t help matters much either. As I stewed in velodrome juices over the course of the last couple of days, I felt the need to hit the subject again … here.

It seems that the heart of the matter stems from the fact that the IOC wants equality between events for men and women. At the 2008 games in Beijing, for instance, there were 7 events for men and 3 events for women. It seems that the IOC has demanded 5 events each. Additionally, the IOC has argued that the events excluded do not make for good TV coverage.

Regarding the notion that women and men should have the same number of events – fine – as long as the men’s program doesn’t have to change so dramatically as to exclude events that are the very cornerstone of track cycling.

As for the television argument, umm, I’m thinking Speed Skating, Track and Field, Equestrian, Rowing, etc. None of these are all that easy to film, yet the job gets done … pretty well in fact.

I remember watching the Olympics as a kid and reveling in the majesty of all of these weird sports – the ones that fall outside of the NFL, NHL, NBA, and Major League Baseball. I remember viewing the Olympics as the absolute pinnacle of sport – perhaps because I knew nothing of professional cycling and other sports at the time, who knows. In 1996, when mountain biking was added to the summer Olympic schedule, I had a distant, but real chance of making the team and I was more than a little motivated because of it.

So the IOC and the UCI have come up with a new schedule of events for both men and women:

Sprint
Keirin
Team Sprint
Team Pursuit
Omnium

Gone from the program are:

Individual Pursuit
Points Race
Madison

Guess what … the events that were nixed are all endurance disciplines. Hmmm.

Folks, I don’t know if you have noticed or not but cycling has changed over the years. I intend no disrespect to my sprinter friends here either, but gone are the days dominated by copious amounts of anabolic steroids and track cyclists who look like they should be entering a Mr. Universe contest. Modern track cycling is more of an endurance sport than the IOC and UCI are giving it credit for, with the exclusion of these events.

There are other negative implications to this as well. Nations who are steeped in endurance track cycling history, like Belgium, have just been virtually denied a medal … with the stroke of a pen. It looks now that Belgium might only send one track rider to the 2012 games. While you may look at this and think, sarcastically, “too bad,” there are negative and long-lasting implications because of this. Belgium is not the only country that is suffering – in fact there are several countries that just lost all chance of a cycling medal.

Medal count, and/or potential medal-count, sports fans, is how individual countries and their respective Olympic committees determine how much money to spend on athlete development. It really doesn’t matter that a country “might” be able to develop a sprinter in 12 years, without medal-count right now, entire programs can lose funding. Further, in an attempt to include women, the IOC may actually be excluding them in the future, because of exclusion of these endurance events.

What I find unfortunate about that is the fact that many outstanding professional road cyclists have come from the individual pursuit and the points race – two of the three disciplines that have been scrapped.

While professional track cycling will carry on – principally because of the international 6-days circuit, individual endurance events have just suffered a fairly huge blow.

The IOC claims that more sprint events will attract a larger youth audience. Oh really? Hmm, let me think about that one for a while.

Don’t worry too much though, at least we’ll get to see 400 hours of gymnastics after the men’s and women’s road races are preempted for an up close and personal report about the head coach of the Brikbrakistan weightlifting team. I think I will just stick to watching the X-games instead.