{"id":42473,"date":"2026-05-12T20:37:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/42473\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T20:37:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:37:34","slug":"cycling-canada-pauses-womens-track-cycling-pursuit-team-2028-olympics-unclear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/42473\/","title":{"rendered":"Cycling Canada pauses women\u2019s track cycling pursuit team, 2028 Olympics unclear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Canada’s Ariane Bonhomme, Erin Attwell, Maggie Coles-Lyster and Sarah van Dam compete in the women’s team pursuit at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France.Christinne Muschi\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Cycling Canada applying the brakes to its women\u2019s track pursuit team has drawn criticism from a rider and a former rider.<\/p>\n

Cycling Canada will not enter a women\u2019s pursuit team in track cycling\u2019s world championship in October, even though Canada has qualified to race in it.<\/p>\n

That puts the team\u2019s status for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles in doubt. The world championship in Shanghai is the first Olympic qualifier for 2028.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started track in 2022, so I was very aware of constantly fighting for your spot on a team,\u201d said team member Fiona Majendie.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was happy to do that and prove myself, but I never thought that the team would just be cut and that you don\u2019t have that opportunity to even fight for yourself anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

In team pursuit, two teams of four riders start on opposite sides of the velodrome, aiming for the fastest time or to beat the other team.<\/p>\n

Cycling Canada will enter a men\u2019s pursuit team in the world championship, said chief executive officer Mathieu Boucher.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s team pursuit has been a strong event for Canada historically, with an Olympic bronze medal in 2012, another bronze four years later in 2016 and fourth in 2021.<\/p>\n

Canada ranks 12th in the world in women\u2019s team pursuit and the men 13th.<\/p>\n

The men are trending, through their power testing and competition times, to be more competitive than the women, said Boucher.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s men placed eighth and the women 10th in April at a World Cup in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s time was just over a second outside the top six and a second and a half outside the top four, Boucher said, while the women were nine seconds outside the top six and 12 seconds outside the top four.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on what we\u2019ve seen in competition over the last 18 months, certainly the men are showing that the gap is smaller to reach that top four, top six,\u201d Boucher said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, the hard reality is that with the current composition of the team, we don\u2019t foresee that the women\u2019s team pursuit can be competitive as we need to be to continue to receive funding for the program, to continue to get sponsorship and to justify the investment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boucher insists Cycling Canada isn\u2019t abandoning the women\u2019s team pursuit program. He left the door open for the women\u2019s pursuit team to compete in 2028.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we see amazing talent and we can demonstrate that with proper training, we can be competitive, we\u2019re going to find the money to qualify the team for L.A. and to be competitive,\u201d Boucher said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

But Boucher wrote earlier this month in a response to athletes\u2019 concerns, \u201cwhile considering that some improvement was possible, it is unlikely that the team\u2019s improvement will be sufficient to qualify for and be competitive at the 2028 Olympic Games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s endurance coach Phil Abbott told athletes in a May 5 email that the plan was \u201ca return to international team pursuit competition in 2027 focused on the objective of Brisbane 2032.\u201d<\/p>\n

Majendie says she was never informed of performance standards that determined whether a program continued or not.<\/p>\n

She believes rapid improvement is possible.<\/p>\n

Majendie made Canada\u2019s 2024 Olympic team as an alternate two years after starting track cycling. She raced for the Canadian team that placed fourth at the world championship that same year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve literally closed the gap in two years myself, so it is possible,\u201d said the 28-year-old from Vancouver. \u201cIt\u2019s not right to be able to take away athletes\u2019 opportunities to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two-time Olympian Ariane Bonhomme of Gatineau, Que., retired in January after she was told she would no longer be a \u201ccarded\u201d athlete eligible for monthly Athletes Assistance Program cheques.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they told me that they weren\u2019t renewing my carding, I asked them, \u2019So you\u2019re getting rid of the team pursuit? Why are you getting rid of your best, most experienced rider if your plan is to go to the Olympics in the team pursuit?\u2019\u201d Bonhomme recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was easier for them to first blame it on us, and secondly, just thin out the team enough that they could justify getting rid of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bonhomme raced for teams that finished fourth in Tokyo\u2019s Olympic Games and eighth in 2024 in Paris.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe girls from Rio and the girls from Tokyo and the girls from London, they were special, but they weren\u2019t like physical, absolute talent beasts,\u201d Bonhomme said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re the same people as we have now. The only difference is that they had direction, they knew where they were going, and they had coaches that cared. The girls we have right now are so talented.\u201d<\/p>\n

A week after the federal government announced an additional $660 million in funding for national sports organizations, Abbott\u2019s email to athletes cited \u201cbudgetary constraints\u201d among the reasons for pausing the women\u2019s pursuit team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe money is not in the system as of now, and when that\u2019s going to come our way, we don\u2019t know,\u201d Boucher said. \u201cWe have to respect that there\u2019s a process that needs to be in place to be able to distribute that money.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we have more money, absolutely, we need to invest more in the women\u2019s team pursuit program.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Canada’s Ariane Bonhomme, Erin Attwell, Maggie Coles-Lyster and Sarah van Dam compete in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[164,224,238,214,212,239,17,211,230,231,227,213,210,235,171,234,143,222,249,215,216,229,225,226,219,240,220,244,245,247,242,246,94,243,217,142,233,113,232,241,223,236,237,228,221,218,248],"class_list":{"0":"post-42473","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-northwest-territories","38":"tag-nova-scotia","39":"tag-nunavut","40":"tag-ontario","41":"tag-pei","42":"tag-photos","43":"tag-political-news","44":"tag-political-opinion","45":"tag-politics","46":"tag-politics-news","47":"tag-quebec","48":"tag-sports-news","49":"tag-technology","50":"tag-travel","51":"tag-trudeau","52":"tag-us-news","53":"tag-world-news","54":"tag-yukon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}