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Interview: Chris Newton
Friday, 24th of February, 2006; by Larry Hickmott
Commonwealth Games Features Home Page
Note: Links to other Commonwealth Games Interviews follow this story.
Above: Chris (2nd from the right) will go into the Commonwealth Games as part of the reigning World Champion Team Pursuit team riding for England. L-R: Rob Hayles, Steve Cummings, Chris Newton and Paul Manning.
At the last Commonwealth Games, Chris Newton came away with two medals (Silver & Bronze) and since then has gone on to win a World title in the Points race (2002) and another set of stripes in the Team Pursuit (2005). He also has an another Olympic medal (Silver) to go with the Bronze from Sydney 2000. Like many others in the Great Britain cycling team, Chris now has his eyes on more medals, preferably Gold ones, at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
His preparation though received in a stick in the spokes when he fell during a bunch sprint in the Tour of Langkawi and he injured his wrist. At Revolution 12 last weekend, the wrist was still clearly strapped but that didn't stop Chris from winning the final Madison as well as the Kilometre Time Trial with Swiss rider Franco Marvulli. From that display, his form is obviously coming on nicely!
Talking to Chris prior to the start of Revolution 12, he explained that his wrist had been pretty bad but looked worse than it actually was. "The only way it affected me was I couldn't put any weight on it so since I came back, I have been doing treadmill and track work. So it's fine really and tonight's strapping is more for protection because there are still some stitches in there and I don't want them to get pulled out in the Madison."
Talking about the events he expects to be doing at the Commonwealth Games, Chris says "the Team Pursuit is the main one on the Track followed by the Scratch race and then the Road Race to have numbers on the road and with a view as preparation for the Track Worlds in France."
He would like to have ridden the Points where he won a Bronze medal last time in Manchester but due to the scheduling, he had to choose an event and it was unsurprisingly the Team Pursuit for which he is the current World Champion with Great Britain.
Prior to the Commonwealth Games, Chris will though be riding the Sydney World Cup but expects to be still acclimatising to the different time zone and weather during the event as he only arrives a few days before. "It will give me a good run out and its all just training although I do need to get some Points in the bag for the Worlds Points race as I still haven't qualified yet. So we'll see how it goes."
Asked how the accident affected his program of training, Chris replied "I was always going to come back to England after the Tour. The only change is that instead of having had a rest after the Tour of Langkawi I had some time off to recover from the crash and have then trained hard for the last five days. I am still a little sore but it will settle down".
For the Team Pursuit, Chris told us that everything was going well and that everyone in the squad was doing their own thing as they always do. Many of them were together in Majorca recently where he says they were able to train hard with the full back up of Team GB support staff. Talking about the training camp in Majorca, he said "we weren't doing the standard six hour rides every day and the longest we did was probably five hours. We were doing more team trial sessions, more individual efforts and specific hill climb exercises, top end stuff."
We wish Chris and the team all the best in Sydney and Melbourne and look forward to seeing him on the podium during March.
Above: Chris with Franco Marvulli (left) getting the winners bouquets after the Revolution 12 Madison event, one of the toughest events there is and Chris showed great form with a month to go before the Games start.
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