Interview Ed Clancy

England's Ed Clancy Interview:

Over the last few years, the Great Britain Cycling team has had various programmes in place to help strengthen its squad and a product of them is Ed Clancy. Ed was one of two riders to make it through the Under 23 Academy (now called the Olympic Academy) and last year in Los Angeles he rode the first of two rounds for the Team Pursuit, helping the GB team progress to the final where they won a Gold medal.

Asked what events he expects to ride at the Commonwealth Games, Ed replied, "Hopefully I'll get a ride in the Team Pursuit although I am not sure if it will happen at the moment. All the other English riders are going strong and have more experience than me so maybe they will use me for a qualifying round again."

Despite having ridden a few World Track Cups and a World Championship in his short career, Ed still admits to being a little nervous about riding in the Commonwealth Games. "I'm like that for every big event I do" he says. "But now I've done a few World Cups and the World Champs, I think I can deal with the nerves better".

Like many but not all the cyclists from the home nation teams, Ed has been based in Australia for a short while now where he admits the better weather does help in his training. "It's good to be able to acclimatise and get in the right time zone well before the Games. The track at Bankstown is pretty good for us and we've been able to use it to prepare for the Sydney World Cup as well. The roads around here though aren't so great but there are a couple of decent roads around the national park - they just get a bit repetitive after a while!"

What about racing I asked? "We have been doing a few of the local club level crits out here some evenings. We use them purely for training really, but they are good fun. Since Christmas I've had two good camps in Majorca with the GB team and my form was looking pretty good on the road."

"Cav (Mark Cavendish) and myself also had our team launch (Team Sparkasse) in Germany between the training camps and then before we got out here to Australia, Cav, Gez (Geraint Thomas), Russ (Russell Downing), Julian (Winn), Matt (Brammeier) and myself did the Tour of Langkawi. The race went quite well and I was pretty pleased with my own form and how as a team we were mixing it with the big teams out there."

Finally, what are the good and bad things about being in Australia I asked Ed? "The worst thing is that I miss the independence that I have at home. Over here we can't just jump in our car and go out somewhere if we feel like it. There are though plenty more good things like the best thing about being away from home is that I only have to ride my bike and can concentrate on just that. Out here we don't have to worry about daily chores either as all that is taken care of for us by the GB support staff. Plus there's the great weather!"

Thanks to Ed for taking the time to talk us and best of luck to him at the Commonwealth Games and the Sydney World this coming weekend.