Error insulting to paracyclists

Emma Foy won't be going to the World Paracycling Championships after she and other paracyclists were given seven weeks notice that the event was on.

The scheduling mistake that has seen paracyclists given seven weeks notice of a world championship event suggests there are administrators out there who don't take disabled sport seriously.

The 2017 Paracycling Track World Championships are being held in March, in Los Angeles.

The event was not on a 2017 event calendar released last year, so no Kiwi cyclists have been training for it.

New Zealand paracyclists, including Northland's Emma Foy, were therefore baffled to learn of the 2017 Paracycling Track World Championships just seven weeks before the event commences.

Needless to say, Paralympics New Zealand has decided to not send a team.

Without all the athletes there, the event will not have the same mana as a traditional world championship event.

Foy is unimpressed with the scheduling error, and says, for her personally, Los Angeles would have been an unpalatable venue for a "para" event anyway, given the lack of tolerance US president Donald Trump's demonstrates.

It isn't yet clear how the world champs got left off last year's 2017 event calendar.

Such incompetence at an elite level isn't acceptable.

Such a basic clerical and communication error suggests that the sport's international governing body has some internal and external examining to do.

The mix-up is an insult to paralympic athletes, and it makes the "world championship" event a farce.