Jody Cundy criticises UCI over failure to live stream Para-cycling Track Worlds

Cundy won individual and team gold at the Rio Paralympics

Paralympic champion Jody Cundy has criticised the failure of the UCI to live stream the Para-cycling Track World Championships.

The event, which starts on Thursday, is being held in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn, which hosted last year's Track World Championships.

The 2015 Para-cycling Worlds, which were streamed, were also held there.

"I still can't understand how this keeps happening," said the four-time Paralympic cycling champion on Twitter.

"It's like we'll tell you what you want to hear, and then their actions show you nothing has changed.

"It needs to be added in to the rules that if a nation hosts a worlds it needs to be at a minimum filmed and streamed online.

"It makes it worse when you have no stream and there is also no live timing like at UCI Track events."

A spokesperson for cycling's governing body told BBC Sport that the call for Para-cycling to receive greater exposure was "legitimate". It added the UCI "strongly encourage organisers to ensure there is such exposure at their competitions" and that events received live tweet coverage.

It also pointed out Para-cycling events were being held in conjunction with Track Cycling World Cup rounds, the Road World Championships and, from 2023, the Cycling World Championships, which meant Para-cycling was "undergoing significant progression when it comes to visibility and audience".

The recent Track Cycling World Championships in Poland were streamed live on the UCI website and also had full live timings and results services provided.

Briton Cundy, 40, has been critical of the UCI for many years, including in 2014 when paperwork errors resulted in the sport initially not being included in the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics after the governing body missed a key International Paralympic Committee (IPC) deadline.

Irish rider Colin Lynch, who will also be competing in Apeldoorn, described the decision as "truly unacceptable".

"The UCI just made a big show about how Para-cycling is no longer a separate discipline and is now fully integrated into the full 'Track' discipline. And we're still being treated like an afterthought," he said.

While the IPC runs many Paralympic sports including athletics and swimming, and has streamed World and European Championships in the sports which they control, they say it is up to each international federation to decide if they want to livestream an event or not.

Cundy was unhappy with the UCI's response