THE Scottish rider John Paul faces an uncertain future after being dropped from the British Cycling Academy Programme ahead of next summer's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
The 2011 junior world sprint and double European junior champion was not among the roster of Olympic and Paralympic cyclists granted funding for the coming year.
British Cycling confirmed the rider had left the programme after failing to meet performance targets.
It is likely the 20-year-old will leave Manchester and return to Scotland to evaluate his options. Scottish Cycling are said to be working closely with the rider to draw up a revised training plan.
Shane Sutton, British Cycling performance manager, said: "John Paul has left the British Cycling Academy Programme as he didn't reach the performance targets set out for him. The door is not closed for John to return to the programme in the future, and we wish him well with his cycling career."
The rider, from Lybster, Caithness, has been widely tipped within cycling circles as one of Scotland's leading hopes for the Commonwealth Games. As recently as October, Sir Chris Hoy, who retired from the sport this month, spoke of the youngster as a future star.
Paul, who rides for City of Edinburgh RC, has built a promising palmares that includes the 2012 Scottish national sprint and keirin titles. He first caught the eye of British Cycling at under-14 level and was accepted on to the Olympic Talent Team in 2007. He then progressed to the Olympic Development Programme for track sprint two years later and joined the Olympic Academy in 2011.
Paul, travelling home from a trip to Trinidad yesterday, was unavailable for comment.
Scottish Cycling's newly appointed head of perfor-mance, Gary Coltman, said: "Currently, our performance coaches are working hard with a pool of talented cyclists with the aim to select the most competitive Scottish team possible. Our coaches will continue to work with these riders throughout the selection period, providing them with the training and support to meet the selection criteria. John Paul is very much a part of that process."
A total of 11 Scottish riders were named among the Olympic and Paralympic roster for 2013. They include 2012 British national sprint champion Callum Skinner, endurance riders Ross Edgar and Andy Fenn, paralympic squad members Aileen McGlynn, Neil Fachie, Karen Darke, Fiona Duncan and tandem pilot Craig MacLean.
Mountain biker Kenta Gallagher has been elevated to the Olympic podium pro-gramme looking ahead to Rio in 2016, with Grant Fer-guson and British and Scottish youth cross-country and mountain bike champion Lucy Grant also named.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article