Peter Williams: Shanks and Roulston still have Olympic hopes

Irony is just plain cruel sometimes. Here's the International Olympic Committee, the International Cycling Union and the London 2012 organisers trying to make the track cycling programme as gender-equal as possible, and one of New Zealand's best gold medal chances loses her event.

Alison Shanks, fourth in the women's individual pursuit in Beijing last year and world champion this year, is understandably gutted her race is almost certain to disappear from the London schedule in the interests of giving women track cyclists as many opportunities as men.

But despite her plea that the individual pursuit is a pure Olympic event, it is, not to put it too delicately, a bit boring. However, New Zealand has a fantastic record in it. Gary Anderson won this country's first ever Olympic cycling medal, a bronze, in it at Barcelona in 1992. Sarah Ulmer, after winning junior world championships and Commonwealth Games gold medals, was a star over 3000m at Athens in 2004. Hayden Roulston produced New Zealand's best ever men's Olympic cycling result with silver at Beijing.

It's an event requiring immense strength and stamina, reaching an optimum speed as quickly as possible and holding it for about three-and-a-half minutes in the women's race and around 4 minutes 20 seconds over 4000m for men. But the riders are on opposite sides of the track and, at the highest level, you can tell who's leading only every half lap, when they cross their respective start-finish lines.

Compared to sprints and the teams pursuit, the individual pursuit is visually challenged. The track time trials, including the men's kilo, disappeared from the Olympic programme after Athens for pretty much the same reason. The points races and madison have also been canned - not because they're unattractive to watch, but I imagine because they're just too damn complicated.

Say what you like about a whole lot of old men running the IOC, they're determined to have their games offer as many opportunities to females as males. So what you'd consider rather 'unladylike' activities such as boxing, wrestling and weightlifting are now in the Olympics for women.

In Beijing last year there were seven men's track cycling events and only three for women. In London there'll be five for each. The points race, madison and individual pursuit have gone from the men's schedule, and the five-discipline omnium added. The women lose the individual pursuit and points race but get a teams pursuit, a team sprint, a motorcycle-paced keirin and an omnium. In other words, the programme is the same for men and women.

It's tough on Alison Shanks and Hayden Roulston but at least they've been given plenty of notice. What it means is that they can become the anchor riders in the respective teams pursuits.

The New Zealand men, where Roulston combined with youngsters Jesse Sergent, Sam Bewley and Marc Ryan to win bronze last year, could potentially be a gold-medal combination in London, although beating Great Britain at home will be a massive task. The women's team of Lauren Ellis, Jaime Nielson and Shanks were second at this year's world championships, again behind Britain, and BikeNZ will be keen to see that combo kept together for the next three years.

The most intriguing addition to track cycling is the omnium, in which Christchurch's Hayden Godfrey was world champion in Manchester last year. The omnium picks up some of the slack from the discontinued events because it has a time trial, a scratch race, an individual pursuit, a points race and a flying 200m sprint.

Godfrey will be 33 by the time the London Games come around and might be past his peak as a track cyclist, but I imagine he'll be far more content with the 2012 schedule than Shanks.