Cycling news - Cycling Australia performance director Simon Jones criticised for angry tweet

Updated 10/03/2020 at 12:40 GMT

Cycling Australia performance director Simon Jones has been criticised for an expletive tweet directed at critics of Australia’s performance at the recent UCI Track Cycling World Championships.

Simon Jones and Australian cyclists in 2017

Image credit: Getty Images

Having come away without any gold medals and only three in total, Australia didn’t even crack the top 10 of the medals table.

In a since-deleted tweet, Jones wrote: “To all those key board experts out there - F*** you”.

“We got a great team of riders coaches, support and sponsors. Bring on Tokyo Team”, Jones added, along with a clenched fist emoji.

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Other Twitter users were quick to hit out at Jones, while Australian cycling great Robbie McEwen has been quoted as calling Jones’ behaviour “unprofessional”.

Australia’s performance in Berlin was certainly underwhelming. By contrast, Australia won six gold medals in 2019 and they last won no golds in 2008.

Speaking to ABC in Australia, CA managing director Steven Drake confirmed the organisation asked Jones to delete the tweet, but said no further disciplinary action would be taken, labelling it a “momentary aberration”.

On Twitter, the criticism of Jones ranged fro him being a "bad example” to needing to “grow up”, but McEwan did defend his results, citing that the event in Germany was not the priority for Australian cyclists and therefore results must not be judged to harshly.

"Since he's started, there's been calls for him to be booted straight away,” said McEwen, a three-time Olympian and three-time winner of the Tour de France points classification.

"He was brought in for a reason and he was brought in with the powers that be knowing what he was aiming to do and how he was going to do it.

"They weren't peaking for the worlds, they weren't going to win world championships in Berlin, because only a matter of months later we're on to the Tokyo Olympics.”

Previous British Cycling’s head coach, Jones had been working at Team Sky when CA appointed him to his current role in 2017.

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