Slight P/L as someone in a niche athletic community, you won't even make friends let alone achieve a leadership position if all you do is show up and compete. You need to volunteer and support others. Rhys is too much of a narc to do this. He thinks that anything other than competing is beneath him. He probably shows up does his thing and leaves He never sticks around for beers after. Instead, He heads over to Tim Hortons by himself and straps on a feedbag of Tim Bits. Just think about when he was in Manchester and all he cared about was getting over to the podium completely ignoring the troon that was there to hang out with him.
You're not wrong. I did want to add, however, that it doesn't take much corruption in a sporting organization to make everything you said void. No idea on the state of cycling BC, but in my sport, most athletes rely on patrons or sponsors. Even at the amateur level. Why yes, that does get pretty sticky.
The sponsors and patrons often push the bounds, and as they are not involved in the training personally, they have plenty of time to throw their money and weight around in the sanctioning organizations. Bribing judges, demanding rule changes, one world competition ended up setting up a PRIVATE START TIME for a major donors athlete. And just didn't tell the other competitors.
That was at a world championship.
These sport organizations can always find bodies to fill seats. But honest people who care about the sport won't even try when it gets to that level of dishonesty.
We know that there's often ridiculous money behind "trans in sport"...that's how we got to men on the front row of women's Rugby Union teams (my other sport). One of the positions where you can end up dead or paralyzed by an incompetent, overpowered opponent. And officials are being told they can't use their Trump card, they can't red card a player for being unsafe if the concern boils down to "they wildly overpower their opponent because they are male and are making no effort to control themselves." Refs in the UK QUIT over those orders. And let me tell you. It wasn't easy to find officials for women's Rugby games at the grassroots level when I played. This sport was built recently and with a huge fight.
I get REAL. sick of hearing arguments about inclusion from people like that 800m track runner. Or any other individual, non contact sport, for that matter.
You can get killed in a scrum against a male opponent. It's why we don't usually train the packs together, and when a womens' side does train with a mens', it's the div 1 veterans. Who can fucking control themselves.
