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A Vancouver-based track cyclist is speaking out after she and her teammates were blindsided by a Cycling Canada announcement that it is not sending a women’s team pursuit squad to this year’s world championships.
Fiona Majendie said the decision means the five women who make up the core of the team now have no chance of qualifying for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
“It was a bit of a shock, to be honest with you,” said Majendie, a member of Canada’s team pursuit that finished eighth at the Paris Olympics two years ago.
“I think as an athlete you’re always searching for selection and bettering of yourself and your team, but you never really think your program’s going to be just cut.”
The announcement came in an email last week from national team coach Phil Abbott who cited “current budgetary constraints” and a determination that it was “unlikely” the women would reach performance objectives at the 2026 world championships in Shanghai this October.
Olympian Fiona Majendie says the Canadian women’s team pursuit squad received no warning it was on the chopping block. Cycling Canada CEO Mathieu Boucher responds.
The Canadian men’s team pursuit is unaffected and will compete in Shanghai.
The decision has sparked backlash on social media, including retired Canadian road cycling and speed skating Olympian Clara Hughes, who called it “a massive bummer.”
“Not necessary and inexcusable. Shame on Cycling Canada for this,” said Hughes, who won Olympic medals in cycling and long track speed skating.
In an interview with CBC News, Cycling Canada CEO Mathieu Boucher said the decision not to compete in women’s team pursuit at the world championships is strategic.
“This was not a decision made based on funding. This was a decision made based on the performance and competitiveness of the team, and the need for us to re-shift our focus where we can really have an impact and rebuild that team,” Boucher said.
Performance gap
According to Boucher, data crunched by Cycling Canada analysts shows that the men’s team pursuit has a better chance of success because the “gap” or improvement in race time needed to achieve a top-four result, is much smaller than the women’s.
“The men’s team is performing better, but also is showing a closer gap to close … and is also improving at a better rate,” he said.
But Majendie argues that any analysis done by Cycling Canada has not been shared with the women being sidelined.
“We’ve never seen this performance analysis and I believe that it is quite a subjective measure to say that the gap is too big,” she said.
“What do you expect when we have no development pathway? And we haven’t been provided with any metrics in terms of achieving goals to get there.”
Boucher said Cycling Canada is looking at how it communicates with athletes.
“If the performance objectives were not clear for the team, it is certainly something that we’re taking home and that we need to address now,” he said.
Majendie and her teammates have discussed self-financing their bid to compete at the world championships and the 2028 Olympics.
“We feel quite strongly that we could get there if we were willing to put in our own money and our own time over the summer to do camps together — apart from Cycling Canada — to kind of create our own development pathway,” she said.
“We all really want to fight this because, to be honest, there’s nothing to lose.”
When asked if self-financing was an option, Boucher responded that the women’s team pursuit “in its current composition has been identified as non-competitive.”
Canada’s women’s team pursuit won bronze medals at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, and finished fourth in 2020.
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