Racing Hard

by William Fotheringham

  That seems astonishingly ambitious given the history: before Bradley Wiggins’s fourth place this year, only two Britons, Robert Millar and Tom Simpson, had finished in the top six overall, and only four years ago not even one Briton started the event. But if there is a British contender out there, the chances are he will have been through the Quarrata house, or will pass through in the next couple of years. As well as current pros such as Wiggins and David Millar, former academy riders Jonny Bellis, Ed Clancy and Ben Swift may also be on Brailsford’s target list for Sky, while Cavendish will remain the team’s big target, although he is not keen to leave his current squad, Team Columbia-HTC.

  It’s a measure of the way the alumni see the academy that Thomas, Stannard and Swift all live nearby, and Cavendish has just bought a house there. They can train with their old mates and support such as a mechanic or massage is still available. Cavendish devotes a large section of his recent book, Boy Racer, to his time with the academy, which he says played a key part in his rise, and he is echoed by last year’s graduate, Swift, a soft-voiced, diminutive Yorkshire lad who is in his first pro year with the Russian team Katusha. “I wouldn’t be what I am today without it. I definitely wouldn’t have gone pro as early, or have been as well prepared.” This year, Swift won his spurs rapidly by taking the points jersey in the Tour of the Basque Country, one of the toughest races on the ProTour circuit, and came close to a stage win in the Giro d’Italia.

  Although the academy is not formally a feeder team for Sky, it is a natural next step for Kennaugh and the others, even though Brailsford is adamant that places must be earned on merit. “They made it clear we won’t get on just because we are British, but you hear little things about what’s going on and it’s all quite exciting, what names they are signing, all the speculation,” says Kennaugh. “A lot of people are going to want to be part of it because it’s going to be one of the best teams on the block; everything will be done in super-detail. For years GB has just been a track team, so it’s a massive step to do it on the road. It’s never been done before so they have to go and prove their critics wrong. It will be awesome.”

  From the outside, life in Tuscany seems to meet the aspirations of most racing cyclists. On the day I visit, Kennaugh, Rowe and the little group, including Olympic bronze medallist Steven Burke, ride through the cypress trees and olive groves of Chiantishire for 90 miles, race up the scenic Monte Serra, carry out sprint training on a marshland road with not a Fiat or Vespa in sight, and simulate riding in a race group, reaching 35mph in the slipstream of the car driven by their trainer, former professional Max Sciandri. Later they have a massage, then rest, then dinner.

  The two-storey house in a quiet backstreet looks anonymous apart from a flagstaff in the front garden, where a union flag is flown after a GB win. A full-sized workshop for the 30 bikes and a massage room take up most of the basement, along with the line of specially fitted showers which ensures no one has to wait after training. The eight riders live here from March to September, with only a couple of short breaks, and are expected to be largely self-sufficient: the masseur and mechanic live elsewhere in the town, as does Sciandri. There is a rota for cooking and cleaning, and on occasion – after hard training days, before big race days – they can call in a local woman to cook, for a few euros apiece. Every need has been catered for, as might be expected of the GB cycling programme.

  But it’s “not just coming to Italy to ride bikes”, as Swift asserts. In a way this is British Cycling’s equivalent of the Big Brother house: all the inmates want the same thing, and they won’t all get it. Some drop out along the way, because it does not work for them. There is pressure to be selected for races, where a six-rider team is the norm; eight into six doesn’t quite go. And there are the inevitable personality clashes – “little things that build up, which might not be big in the outside world but which grate on you”, as Kennaugh puts it. “It’s hard living with the same people for seven months. A lot of guys would crack in the first week.”

  That’s intentional. The first phase in the road academy is now notorious for the six-week “Manchester boot camp”, which opens the winter for the academy’s new intake. This is the brainchild of the set-up’s founder, former pro Ellingworth, plain-speaking, ginger-haired and with a firm belief in tough love, who dreamed up an army-style induction to weed out any dead wood and bond his proteges into a close-knit unit. The drop-out rate is relatively low: of the 11 who joined in 2004–5, only six are now outside the GB system.

  Swift enthuses: “The boot camp was like a military initiation, to see who really wanted it. You’d be up at 6am, ride to the track in Manchester for an 8am session, then learn Italian, then back on the track; sometimes road riding, Italian, road, then racing in the track league. It was dead good for team building, because everyone got tired at the same time, the second-year guys who’d been through it would help the new lads get through.”

  As well as 8am sessions on the track in Manchester, the teenagers have up to eight hours education a day – French lessons, physiotherapy, diet, bike maintenance. “I had them working from 7am to 7pm, because what makes them special is that they don’t have to go to a normal job,” says Ellingworth. “I was ruthless, because I knew that the best teachers were super hard at first, then backed off.” Through the year, any lack of discipline – lateness, poor behaviour – was countered by a penalty: washing cars and bikes, hard training in the rain, on one occasion three hours riding non-stop around the velodrome.

  After the Olympic cycling programme made its breakthrough in Sydney in 2000, there were concerns about where the next generation of track cyclists would come from. Looking after young cyclists in the run-up to Athens, Ellingworth had felt his charges were not being pushed hard enough, and that the grant system – a flat allocation of £10,000, tax free – did not give them sufficient incentive to work hard, given that most were still living at home. So he went back to square one and spent a winter devising the academy concept. “What I wanted was driven riders, a crack squad like in the army, well drilled and willing to give everything for their country.”

  Ellingworth wanted to bring the youngsters to a point where they could move into either a professional team or the Olympic squad – or both – having had the basics of how to train and race instilled in them. His list included basic knowledge of mechanics such as stripping a bike, race skills such as using the convoy of team cars to catch the bunch after a puncture and leading out a team sprinter, and an understanding of the full range of track endurance events such as the pursuits, Madison, points race and scratch.

  “The idea was to have more than just a mini professional team. The goal was to get them away from their families and create a halfway house before they moved on: teach them how to look after themselves, cook, clean, speak a foreign language, everything you need if you race abroad on your own. I wanted to put them in lots of races and make them learn. And I didn’t want them sitting on their fat backsides with a PlayStation or drinking coffee, because this is a job.”

  To make the riders “hungrier” for success, the grant was cut to £6,000 per annum, and half was retained to pay for accommodation. “They would have to live on £58 per week, so they had to learn to budget, and it would mean if they won a lap prize in a race or sprinted for 20th place, it might be only a fiver or a tenner, but they could buy a CD or treat the lads to a coffee.” To keep them aware of their status, they were given a less prestigious racing category – first, one below the top, Elite – and bikes with a spec one down from the very best: Shimano’s second-line Ultegra rather than the top-range Dura-Ace.

  In 2004, when the academy was founded, all this was a complete contrast to the sports science which dominated the track team’s approach and which remains integral in preparing for Olympic events. Sports science judges cyclists primarily on their physical potential through lab tests; the academy opened up the Olympic system to supreme competitors who might not show their ability sitting on a simulator. Cavendish is the be
st example; Swift another.

  Ellingworth is now in charge of training up those British professional cyclists for the world road championship team; he also still looks after four academy graduates in Cavendish, Swift, Stannard and Thomas. When Brailsford’s Team Sky squad officially gets rolling in 2010 he is likely to be a team manager and trainer. His successor in charge of the under-23s is Max Sciandri, who has been involved since the academy moved from Manchester to Tuscany in 2006.

  Sciandri has a less direct approach, seen in a little moment at the top of Monte Serra when the Manxman Mark Christian, who set a searing pace up the climb, says three words to him: “72.5 kilos this morning.” “We talked about losing weight and I picked up two bottles of washing liquid weighing 1.5 kilos each, and said to him ‘you imagine riding with those in your pocket,’” says Sciandri later. “He’s watched his diet, lost the weight, and he’s just experienced what it feels like to ride without that 3kg on his body, and that’s important. This whole experience is about learning simple things.”

  Kennaugh agrees that the academy is about more than just bike racing. “It’s matured me a lot. Before I was less sensible, but it’s taught me life skills, how to look after myself, deal with other people. I was argumentative, mood swings left, right and centre, but you’re going to be no one’s friend if you are in a mood, so I keep my problems to myself now or talk to Max or Rod. Before I relied on people, wanted everything done for me, expected my parents to do it all. I was disorganised, messy, clothes everywhere in total disarray. But if you look in my room now, everything’s organised, because it saves energy for racing.”

  It’s not just about tidy bedrooms. The academy has produced the goods: the proof is there in the sight of Swift coming close behind Cavendish in Giro stage finishes, Jonny Bellis sprinting to Britain’s first medal in the under-23 world championship in 2007, and Thomas, Clancy and Burke brandishing their medals in Beijing. There are now similar set-ups across the Olympic cycling disciplines: sprint, women’s endurance, mountain bike – and the effect has been inspirational. Across the country, talented teenagers are competing to get into the academy’s feeder system, the Olympic Development Programme. The competition is intense, but they can see a clear progression from pre-teen competition to Olympic golds or the Tour de France’s yellow jersey.

  It would be unreasonable to expect Britons to dominate road racing as they did track cycling in Beijing but worldwide only Australia has a structure that nurtures young talent in a similar way. The example is telling: from almost nothing, Australians are now everywhere in the Tour, outnumbering traditional nations such as Belgium and Holland, winning stages and jerseys and going for the overall win. If the conveyor belt runs smoothly, Britain might just be next.

  This article appeared in Observer Sport Monthly in September 2009. Much has changed since then. Cavendish went to Sky for 2012 and left after a single season. Thomas and Kennaugh remained at Sky and went on to take gold medals in the team pursuit at London 2012, as did non-Sky member Burke, one of those riders I met at the academy that spring. Rowe signed for Sky at the end of 2010. Stannard remains at Sky and became British national champion in 2012. Mark Christian went on to ride for the An Post-Sean Kelly team, one run below the highest level, and has yet to make the breakthrough to World Tour. Sciandri ceased to head up the academy at the end of 2010 and has been replaced by Beijing medallist Chris Newton, who moved the set-up back to Manchester.

  11. BEIJING TO LONDON

  Charting the progress of the Great Britain Olympic squad over the few years before the London Games was a radically changed affair. The high profile of the sport and the transformation of the key riders into national stars meant access was harder as they were now protected by agents. On the other hand, the writer no longer had to explain what a keirin or team pursuit was because this was now a sport which reached every household. And there were stories aplenty: the rise of the women’s team pursuit squad, Hoy and Pendleton’s battle with anno domini, and the emergence of Team Sky. This old warrior’s resurgence gave me particular pleasure.

  Queally still roaring at 40 but British sprint trio go cold in chilly Poland

  6 November 2010

  While Great Britain were guaranteed at least three medals in last night’s finals at the European championships after qualifying fastest in the men’s and women’s team pursuit and the women’s team sprint, in the morning there was a triumphant return to international competition for Jason Queally, an Olympic gold medallist in 2000 in the kilometre time-trial.

  The Lancastrian has managed the seemingly impossible in the past 18 months to transform himself from a sprinter to an endurance athlete to race the 4,000 metres team pursuit, and to do it at the age of 40 is still more remarkable. He lined up yesterday with the 2008 Olympic gold medallist Ed Clancy, Steven Burke and Andy Tennant – all his juniors by between 14 and 17 years – and in the evening’s gold–silver ride-off the quartet was set to face Russia, who were almost two seconds slower than Great Britain’s 4min 01.935sec in qualifying.

  Queally was a bundle of nerves before the qualifying round and swung off the pace with three of the four kilometres covered, but was set for what should be his first international medal since he took silver in the kilometre and in the team sprint in the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Great Britain’s time was not particularly fast – the standard these days is sub-four minutes – but conditions in the BGZ Arena were surprisingly chilly, slowing everyone down.

  “I found it tough, but I’m delighted,” Queally said. “You always pray it’s going to be easy. I ended up doing three kilometres, I was hoping to do another turn at the end but if I had gone back into the line I would have slowed the guys up. It was my first team pursuit in competition and it doesn’t feel any easier. I’m just pleased to be 40 years old and still riding my bike. It keeps me away from the real world. I want to stay and play for as long as possible.”

  The two disciplines, sprint and team pursuit make radically different demands, as Queally explained. “Today I gave it all in 12 laps, but there’s more management in a team pursuit. A team sprint is full on, like a kilometre, but in a team pursuit you are managing your effort, because if you go too hard it impacts on the other guys.”

  Queally insists that he is only in the team “because other guys aren’t here,” but Clancy for one would like to see him switch to a starting role, using his sprint talent to get the team up to speed faster. “If that means he only lasts eight or nine laps that’s still better for us, because we have plenty of guys who can ride third or fourth in the line. He’s still learning, but it’s impressive what he’s done in such a short space of time.”

  This was one of the most heart-warming performances I can remember in recent years, partly because of the sheer romance in the notion of Queally reinventing himself as a team pursuiter at the age of 40, partly because as I have said earlier he never received the acclaim he deserved for his breakthrough gold in 2000, and he was unlucky to fall foul of the selectors in 2004. He switched again the following winter, back to the team sprint, but failed to make the cut. Ironically, Clancy told me in October 2012 that had Queally stuck to it, he might have made London as a team pursuiter due to his sheer speed.

  Pendleton’s legacy blooms

  20 Feb 2011

  Victoria Pendleton is set to end her racing career after the London Olympics, but on the evidence of the past two days her succession is assured. The young pretenders Jessica Varnish and Becky James, 20 and 19 years old respectively, finished sixth and eighth in the sprint, having teamed up to finish fourth in Friday evening’s team sprint, making it clear they will push Pendleton all the way to August 2012.

  Neither joined Pendleton in the last four but that was no disgrace in a field that was not far off world championship level. They qualified comfortably in the top 16, looked equally assured in the opening rounds before the reality check in round two where Varnish was outclassed by the fastest qualifier, Anna Meares of Australia, while James had the equall
y daunting task of taking on Pendleton.

  They are talented, confident young women but that is not enough against the top two in the world, even though Pendleton is not firing on all cylinders this weekend. But their time is bound to come, and the Great Britain coaches are quietly excited at the prospect.

  “Jess is more explosive and has outstanding ability for the standing start lap, while Becky has a longer turn of speed, for either the team sprint or the match sprint,” explained the Great Britain coach, Jan van Eijden. “Jess put in a personal best for the standing-start lap on Friday, it was her first time below 19 seconds, which is a really big step physically and mentally, like for the boys going below 10 seconds for the flying 200.”

  “Becky has a bit more of a sprint head on her, she is able to make the best of what she has physically, although Jess is currently ahead on speed. Both have progressed incredibly fast in the last six to 12 months since they became full-time cyclists. I will never say never but it will be incredibly hard for them to overtake Vicky before London, because to do that they would have to be the best in the world. That’s a massive task.”

  Varnish, who began her racing career at the Halesowen Cycling Club in the West Midlands, is currently the favourite to put in the opening lap for Pendleton in the team sprint in the London Games, depending on how Shanaze Reade’s return to the track progresses. James, a product of the Abergavenny Cycling Club, is a year behind, but has already raced to bronze in last year’s Commonwealth Games. Both are from cycling families: Varnish’s father, Jim, is a master’s sprint champion while James’s sisters, Ffion and Megan, compete at under-14 level.