Brailsford back in charge of British team for Worlds

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David Brailsford will reprise his role as performance director at British Cycling, five months after stepping down from the position, when he takes charge of the team at the UCI Road World Championships in Ponferrada, Spain later this month.

Brailsford had maintained an advisory role at British Cycling, but will now take the reins of the team in order to allow the squad's technical director Shane Sutton to focus on the riders competing at the British track championships, which overlap with the road Worlds.

British Cycling made some waves with the announcement of its long team for Ponderrada. Absent was top sprinter Mark Cavendish, but the Omega Pharma-Quickstep rider was quick to clarify via Twitter that he had made the choice not to go.

"For clarification, I requested NOT to be considered for this years World Champs, With the current GB riders, there's better guys for the job," he wrote.

The country also left its spot for the women's individual time trial unfilled, a move which drew harsh criticism from former world champion Emma Pooley, who retired earlier this year.

According to the BBC, a British Cycling spokesperson explained why no rider was chosen by stating, "we have chosen not to enter anyone into the elite women’s time trial event this year as we don’t believe we have a contender for a medal and we are obliged to use our resources where we have the best chance of success."

Pooley said on Twitter that in her first world championship, "I didn't have a medal chance. ... but experience helped later."

The spokesperson replied, "We would agree that it can be good experience, but our priority is to win medals and so we need to focus our resource on that."