After an arbitration hearing, Erin Huck replaced Chloe Woodruff on the United States Olympic team.
G. Woodruff Olympic Games Tokyo 2020
American citizen Chloe Woodruff has left her post. USA Cycling said today that two members of the Olympic Mountain Bike Team have withdrawn, citing “personal reasons.” The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio were a disappointment for the U.S. National Champion, but she had hoped to join Kate Courtney and Haley Batten in Tokyo for the 2020 Games.
Woodruff was handpicked by a USA Cycling committee to fill the third position, in contrast to Courtney and Batten, who qualified automatically based on their results.
As a result of finishing 15th in Albstadt, 16th in Nove Mesto, and skipping Leogang, Woodruff’s replacement, Erin Huck, is rated 26th in the World Cup rankings.
She was devastated when she was initially left off the Olympic Long Team, as were many of her fellow team members. There appears to have been some sort of arbitration process between Woodruff’s selection and later resignation, and Huck’s eventual replacement. Nobody has clarified whether Woodruff resigned before or after the argument.
A source familiar with the situation told the AP that “Huck requested an arbitration hearing after the eight-member selection committee for USA Cycling ultimately chose Woodruff over Huck.”
The AP quotes this source as saying, “The decision by USA Cycling’s eight-member selection committee to pick Woodruff over Huck was so close that Huck requested an arbitration hearing.”
The original version of this post by filmmaker and photographer Allen Krughoff on Instagram read: “Arbitrator agreed that the selection committee didn’t follow their own protocol, leaving Erin off the team, and sent the decision back to selection committee to re-evaluate. Prop to Erin for sticking up for what she felt was a deserved spot on the team,” but this has since been changed to [redacted].
Huck has performed better this season than Woodruff, who finished 30th in Albstadt and 64th in Nove Mesto and is currently rated 41st in the World Cup overall after missing Leogang. Most people probably would have guessed Huck to be the third player on the team.
But USA Cycling disputes Krughoff’s account. According to Bill Schieken of CXHAIRS, who shared screenshots of Krughoff’s post, USA Cycling responded by saying, “The information Allen posted is not accurate. Yes there was an arbitration underway.
However, this decision was made by Chloe herself and not the result of the arbitration.” USA Cycling is working to correct Krughoff’s post.
Screenshots obtained by Ryan Simonovich, who chronicles the drama on Twitter, show that Huck, too, deleted an Instagram post on the matter before reposting it with any references to arbitration edited out.
Huck, now in her 40s and based in Tuscon, Arizona, began racing mountain bikes in her late 20s. While working as an engineering programme manager, she trained as a recreational racer and eventually earned a seat on the U.S. Team wins world championship after dominating in America.
Competition at the national level. From then, her career skyrocketed, and she has spent the better part of the last decade as one of the best professional racers in the United States and a perennial top-twenty rider internationally.
She and the other members of the Olympic Long Team have spent the last few years pooling their resources to accumulate as many UCI points as possible in the hopes of earning the United States a third women’s berth at the Olympics.
A training camp was arranged by the so-called “US-Slay” squad after the 2020 Games were postponed so that they could help each other improve and compete at their highest level. Although fierce rivals, they worked together to form an exceptionally powerful unit.
Conclusion
There are only a few weeks left until the start of the Olympics, which means that everything is about to be put into motion.
The two women, Chloe Woodruff and Erin Huck, have been contacted for comment. When further details emerge, we will add them here. Thanks for read our Article G. Woodruff Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.
