Steve Cummings, winner of four stages in WorldTour races in the last 12 months, has hit out at the Great Britain selectors after being left out of the road race team for the Rio Olympic Games, calling for Rod Ellingworth to resign as coach. The team picked to support Chris Froome consists of Geraint Thomas, Ian Stanndard and Peter Kennaugh, all fellow members of Team Sky, for whom Ellingworth has worked since 2010, with Adam Yates the single non-Sky rider.
“I think we need a new coach because of a conflict of interest,” Cummings told the cyclingnews.com website. “That’s my opinion and maybe I’ll never ride for GB again but if that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is. If you win the races I’ve won this year, in the way I’ve won them, and you don’t get picked then you might as well say what you think.”
Since winning a hilly stage of the Tour de France last year at Mende, Cummings has added stages in Tirreno-Adriatico, the Tour of the Basque country and the Critérium du Dauphiné, as well as finishing in the lead group in a snow-hit Liège-Bastogne-Liège. His record suggests he could have offered tactical nous to the team and provided a valuable foil for Froome and Yates at the sharp end of the race while being an outside chance for a medal on the extremely tough course.
“I had a conversation with Rod, he picks the team, and that’s his team,” explained Cummings, adding: “They marked me down on commitment. I asked why and they said that they needed to think what if it rained. Then I said that it snowed in Liège but that I was still there in the final. Basically it’s an opinion.”
Ellingworth was not available for comment, but Cummings’s non-selection was raised by the Guardian with the Great Britain head coach, Iain Dyer, who was unwilling to discuss individual cases, but said: “Without going too deep into our strategy, if you look at the make-up of the team you can see riders who are capable of winning, riders who are capable of going the distance and supporting in some of the more arduous parts of the race, and some who play the more domestique-style roles.”
