Jonathon Bellis

15th of March, 2006; by Larry Hickmott

Home Nations for Commonwealth Games

What an experience it must be for a 17 year old to travel to Australia on the other side of the World for the first time and be a competitor in the Commonwealth Games, and with such a strong team as the Isle of Man has. He arrived not long ago, last Sunday, and asked if he was over the jet lag, he replied "just. The first couple of days I was struggling to stay awake through the day but once we got into a routine, it was fine."

As we (everyone in the British teams) could see in training, Jonny is a real fighter, and that could be seen when Mark Cavendish who was last seen winning a sprint in Sydney by several lengths, put the hammer down during a two up effort and Jonny fought ever so hard to stay in touch with the Madison World Champion.

"This is a dead good experience as its quality over here" he told me. "I'm enjoying it already and can't wait to get racing". Jonny will be riding in the Scratch and Points races and with the latter on the Friday, he says its not long to wait now.

With most of his preparation having been done before he got to Australia, the training in Melbourne has been to get used to the track and do the odd effort to sharpen up the form. Like Mark Kelly before him who did his first Games at 17, Jonny is one of the youngest ever cyclists at the Games but he says he doesn't ever think about his age.

"I'm not that nervous to be honest but when we have the meetings all together, and we're talking about the race and what's going to happen, then the nerves kick in but I'm trying to stay as relaxed as possible."

Part of the irony of him being in Melbourne was that last year he was too young to represent the Isle of Man at the Island Games but six months or so on from that, he's at the second biggest Games competition there is.

Jonny admits too that being part of the Olympic Development Programme has helped him a lot. "Its been great working with Darren (Tudor) leading up to it and I feel I have come on a lot on the track. When I did the likes of the Rotterdam race (junior madison), it was my first international track meeting and I went out and won it so things are looking good and hopefully I can carry it on through the season. The team here has high hopes and hopefully we can deliver on the day."

My thanks to Jonathon for talking to us and we wish him lots of luck during the Games.