Cut before qualifying: Inside Cycling Canada’s team pursuit controversy

Cycling Canada, Cor Vos

It's May 2026. Two years out from the Los Angeles Olympics. You have not missed a day of training. You have not skipped a session. And then you are told that the program you have given the last six years to will not be sent to the World Championships, will not be supported through to the Games, and will not be given the chance to qualify. That's it.

This was the news delivered to Skyler Goudswaard, Fiona Majendie, Jenna Nestman, Lily Plante, and Justine Thomas, the five members of the Canadian women's team pursuit squad who had been preparing to qualify for the 2028 Games. In early May 2026, Cycling Canada notified its athletes that it would not field a women's team pursuit squad at the UCI Track World Championships in Shanghai this October (the first qualifying event for LA 2028) nor seek qualification for Los Angeles itself. The men's team pursuit program remains.

The decision, Cycling Canada said in a statement, was "a performance-based decision informed by objective, evidence-based analysis."

"None of this happened because the athletes stopped caring or stopped working hard enough," Lily Plante wrote on Instagram in the days that followed.

What has unfolded since is more than a single selection decision. The five athletes have filed an appeal with the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada, represented by lawyers Amanda Fowler and Emir Crowne. The squad has also addressed an open letter to Cycling Canada, Sport Canada, and Own the Podium, claiming "disparity in access to high-performance opportunities based on gender" and an "unequal pathway to Olympic participation."

Two members of the Cycling Canada board have since resigned. Twelve athletes on the Cycling Canada Athletes' Council have written to the federation calling for reform of its high-performance framework, described in CBC's reporting as "historically and currently ineffective and directionless." And Cycling Canada CEO Mathieu Boucher has offered different accounts of the basis for the decision, at one point asserting that "the money is not in the system," but later stating, "This was not a decision made based on funding."

Intriguing. Isn’t the saying “follow the money if you want to know why a decision was made”? So, what’s going on here?

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