Featured article
Where High-Performance Equipment Budgets Are Lost
Equipment budgets are rarely lost through one obviously poor purchase. More often, they are diluted through duplicated systems, incomplete implementation, repeated work and technical decisions that continue consuming resources after their original purpose has disappeared.
Most equipment waste is difficult to identify on an invoice.
The original purchase may have been reasonable. A product offered a measurable gain, suited a particular rider or answered an immediate need. The loss appeared later, through the stock, preparation, testing and staff time required to support decisions that were never considered as one technical system.
Interest in new equipment can begin with a successful rider using it, a supplier presenting an opportunity or a coach identifying a possible gain. Any of those may reveal a genuine opportunity, but none establishes that the product deserves priority.
The programme first needs to know what limitation it is trying to address and what a successful outcome would look like. Without that, an excellent product can still divert budget and attention from more important work.
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Systems and Politics
Para Track Cycling Is Changing for LA28 — But Is the Sport Ready?
Every C-class individual pursuit has disappeared from the LA28 Paralympic programme. Scratch and elimination racing are coming, tandem sprint replaces the kilometre and the women’s C-class time trials move to one kilometre. Para track cycling is changing quickly. The calendar and qualification system around it have not changed at the same pace.
There will be no C-class individual pursuit at the LA28 Paralympic Games. Not one.
Every C-class pursuit contested at Paris 2024 has disappeared from the programme, while scratch and elimination racing enter the Paralympic schedule. The tandem kilometre has gone too, replaced by the tandem sprint, while the tandem individual pursuit remains. Women’s C-class time trials move from 500 metres to one kilometre.
The overall number of track medal events also rises, from 17 in Paris to 18 in Los Angeles.
Taken together, these are not minor adjustments. LA28 is substantially changing the type of racing that will decide Paralympic track cycling medals and, with it, some of the qualities athletes will need to succeed.
Yet for changes that could influence everything from athlete development to race preparation, they have attracted surprisingly little attention.
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