Kevin Tabotta stands down as Cycling Australia performance boss

CYCLING Australia’s (CA) high performance boss Kevin Tabotta has resigned in the wake of the sport’s underwhelming Rio Olympic results.

Anna Meares breaks down after being beaten in the women's sprint. Kevin Tabotta consoles her. Picture: Adam Head.

CYCLING Australia’s (CA) high performance boss Kevin Tabotta has resigned in the wake of the sport’s underwhelming Rio Olympic results.

CA conducted an internal review of its Rio campaign last week and Tabotta offered his resignation and was not asked to stand down.

Tabotta will take up a new role in elite sport and CA chief executive Nick Green said he was disappointed to lose him and he left with high praise after an enormous contribution.

It is not known whether he will continue in another role or step away from the organisation completely but an announcement is expected as early as Monday.

If he does step away, it would end a 21-year association with the sport’s national governing body which began in 1995 when he was appointed coaching co-ordinator.

Tabotta replaced Shayne Bannan in the role at the end of 2010 when Bannan resigned to begin working with the Orica-BikeExchange team of which he is now general manager.

CA had a target of winning 5-7 medals including 2-3 gold across the four disciplines of road, track, mountain bike and BMX in Rio last month and returned with two medals and no gold.

In the immediate aftermath of the track campaign which yielded the only two medals — a silver and a bronze — Tabotta acknowledged there would be a widespread review of preparations for and performances in Rio.

But he staunchly defended the athletes who he said were 100 per cent committed and gave their absolute all, only to be shown up by Great Britain which clearly moved ahead of the world yet again on the velodrome.

“It’s not through lack of effort, we had some great camps, some great commitment from our athletes ... but what didn’t happen was a conversion here so it’s going to take a little time to go back and absorb what’s happened and review the information we’ve got,” Tabotta said in Rio.

Tabotta headed up the cycling program at the Tasmanian Institute of Sport from 1997 to 2004 before joining CA’s high performance unit in Adelaide where he took charge for the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Olympics.

Track, road BMX and mountain bike coaches were asked to present a report as part of the Rio review in Adelaide last week.

The findings will be presented to the Australian Sports Commission and Australian Institute of Sport as cycling plots a new path towards Tokyo 2020.

CA chief executive Nick Green has defended cycling’s performance at international level, saying it had won 44 medals across all disciplines at world championships since 2013.

But he acknowledged it had been unable to turn those world championship medals into Olympic ones.

“The sport has delivered some exceptional results in the past four years but but at the Olympic Games we didn’t. Two medals is not what we expected,” Green said before the review.

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Originally published as Kevin Tabotta stands down as Cycling Australia performance boss