USA Cycling replaces Armstrong with Wiles for 2015 Pan Am Championships

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USA Cycling has announced the revised selection for the 2015 Pan Am Championships to include Tayler Wiles, who will take the place of double Olympic gold medallist Kristin Armstrong in the individual time trial.

USA Cycling announced on Tuesday that Armstrong was nominated to the four-woman roster, however, the Selection Committee reconvened two days later to discuss the selection process and determined that recent modifications to the Principles of Athlete Selection (last published in 2008) were not published in a timely manner.

On Friday, USA Cycling confirmed that the Selection Committee would consider the previously established criteria in making its discretionary selections and not use an updated version of the Principles of Athlete Selection that was published earlier this year.

The statement read that “The Principles of Athlete Selection identify three broad categories for consideration in the discretionary nomination process: 1) Medal Capability; 2) Ability to Enhance Team Performance; and 3) Future Medal Capability. In order to remain current with new technology, i.e., power meters and new quantitative performance metrics, the principles were updated last year in conjunction with the preparation of the recently-published Olympic Selection Criteria and were submitted to the USOC for approval along with the 2016 Olympic Selection Criteria. Upon USOC approval, the documents were published on the USA Cycling website. While the updated Principles of Athlete Selection will serve well for selection to Olympic and other events, they were published too late to be appropriately used in the selection process to the 2015 Pan Am Championships."

Steve Johnson, USA Cycling President and CEO added, “We always try to ensure than any changes to athlete selection criteria are published well before athletes are impacted by them. Unfortunately that did not happen in this case, so we have asked the Selection Committee to review their nominations based on the proven, well known and long-standing criteria.”

Armstrong, who retired from professional racing three years ago but was set to make a return for the time trial event next month, released a public statement that said,

"Like a lot of you, I just learned that this criteria for selection had changed recently, and now USA Cycling has decided to revert to their older criteria," Armstrong said in a public statement. "If under this "new" criteria I am not selected I will not only fully support USA Cycling's decision but more importantly the athletes that will be representing the USA in Mexico." 

Wiles will now compete in the time trial along with Carmen Small. Small will also compete in the road race with Coryn Rivera and Lauren Hall.

The 2015 Pan Am Continental Championships will be held from May 5-10 in Leon, Mexico.

US National Team for 2015 Pan American Continental Championships:

Women’s Individual Time Trial:
Carmen Small (Durango, Colo./TWENTY16 p/b Sho-Air)
Tayler Wiles (Fairfax, Calif./Velocio-SRAM)

Women’s Road Race:
Lauren Hall (Dolores, Colo./ TWENTY16 p/b Sho-Air)
Coryn Rivera (Tustin, Calif./UnitedHealthcare)
Carmen Small (Durango, Colo./TWENTY16 p/b Sho-Air)