Iain Dyer: GB Cycling Team National Sprint Coach

 

Interview Date: 21st of November, 2006

Sprint Academy Feature: >>>>>

 

The person responsible for the creation of the Sprint Academy programme is Iain Dyer, National Sprint coach for the Great Britain Cycling team. Talking to him after a gym training session for his riders, he explained that the aim for the Under 23 Academy is to nurture up and coming riders so they can exist as full time athletes and help them move into a regime of being full-time athletes by providing them with housing as well as looking after their education needs.

 

Right: Iain Dyer working with Jason Kenny this week at Manchester.

Iain currently coaches riders on three GB Olympic programmes, Podium, Development and Academy. since the Athens Olympics, the GB team has sytematically tackled the problem of finding up and coming riders to replace their successful senior riders, many of whom who are now in the latter stages of their careers.

Iain's task was to start working with junior riders to ensure that the team's strength in-depth in sprinting is retained in the coming years. Success for the GB Junior Sprint team at World and European championship level has come quickly with a number of World Champions in the squad.

Iain is not surprised: "The talent has always been there. It's just we haven't been able to look after it and this is able to happen now. The ODP programme, so far, has been such a success that we now also have a youth programme run by Geoff (Cooke) which is looking to feed the ODP with more riders, which is a great situation."

"All I am doing now is moving up through the programmes with the riders I have been working with on the ODP and will hopefully continue to do so all the way up to and into the Podium programme. With any luck, I'll still be working with these same riders in six year's time (2012 Olympics)."

 

Proud coach! Iain with Anna Blyth after a medal winning performance from the Leeds youngster.

Asked how the Sprint Academy programme differs to the Endurance one, Iain explained "where this programme differs is that the training modes for the Academy sprinters are the same as those adopted by the Podium programme sprinters; ie, road, track and gym work."

"As a result of that, we are able to merge a lot of the training sessions together so that it makes no difference to me as a coach if we have both Academy and Podium programme athletes on the track at once, because the track time is the same and we make use of it as we need to. We're not spread too thinly in coaching terms as a result."

Like riders in the other Academies, the riders in the Sprint Academy are full time and share a house together in Manchester. This has been done for a number of reasons, the main one being to bring them all close enough to the Velodrome so they can pursue a full time professional life style close to where they train.

Performance Goals
All the riders in the Sprint Academy have performance goals, which include getting selected for World Track Cups, the World Track Championships and the European Track Championships.

Asked if there is any barrier to a sprinter making the World Track Championship team at such a young age, Iain says "I don't think there is anything standing in their way. If they are good enough, they are old enough".

An example to them is German rider Maximilian Levy who qualified 4th fastest in the Senior Worlds this year fresh out of the junior ranks and went on to finish 6th in the Sprint Competition in his first year as a senior.

Asked if the number of talented riders coming through will help the GB team to maintain its current strength in-depth, the National Coach is positive about the future of sprinting in this country whilst also being cautious: "Sprinting in Britain is definitely getting stronger however junior results at international level will always ebb and flow a little bit. How someone comes together as a 17 or 18 year old is very unpredictable because you have to respect that with younger athletes, some will develop faster than others."

"It's not until they get towards their twenties that things start to settle down and you start to see true patterns emerging for which nations have that strength in-depth. I think looking at the ODP and the Youth programme below that, I am very encouraged by what I see and we have to hope that everyone continues to develop and that strength comes through."

Asked if there is a maximum number of riders the Sprint Academy programme can support, Iain explains that "I think we need to be mindful that as we approach 2008 (Olympics) that we don't spread ourselves too thin. In Beijing, we will be looking to succeed with our Podium Programme riders and if any of these youngsters are able to step up to that mark and perform at that level then we'll do everything we can to nurture them to make that happen. But we do need to be careful when we get to the point where squad numbers are getting well into double figures. There is a danger then that in trying to help everybody, that those most likely to perform in Beijing get a thinner slice of the pie than they should do."

"I don't think maximum numbers will be a problem for the Sprint Academy, looking at the next few years. For example, the educational year that those juniors are in will have an impact. It is possible that, although they are approaching their first senior year, they may not be able to join the Sprint Academy on a full time basis straight away. It was a fluke this time round that the current Sprint Academy riders were all born in the first half of the year and therefore able to leave school and move straight into the Sprint Academy".

Racing Experience

 

Sooo close! Jason Kenny just fails to get to Nichols Bourin in the Keirin.

One of the problems sprinters have, compared to endurance riders, is getting enough racing opportunities to learn the tactics needed to make the most of their physical abilities. Their coach says he is looking at this and has organised, for example, racing for Jason Kenny in an international meeting at Alkmaar (Holland) the day before the Revolution meeting in December.

All this falls a week before the Moscow World Cup but he goes on to say "we can't ignore racing opportunities like this even though they are near interim goal events like Moscow."

The Sprint Academy riders also get other racing opportunities, like they did when they were with the ODP, thanks to 'coach led' racing weekends. These again will be with ODP riders and it will give, for example, Anna Blyth the opportunity to get in some racing where the coaches can get her into sprint race mode as Moscow looms. Coach led racing weekends will also have an experienced guest sprinter on the track with the riders to provide them with race experience in a coaching environment.

"There is a careful balance we need to get between improving their physiology such as speed and power so they qualify well in events which ensures they get the racing in the first place, with actual racing to help them learn their track craft" Iain told us. "I don't think getting the opportunities is difficult. It is just making sure we get the balance right that is the tricky part."

 

One of the riders' recent racing opportunities was Revolution 14, in front of a capacity crowd at the Manchester Velodrome. Asked how this went for his riders, Iain says "more than anything else, what we are looking to do from these experiences is create learning opportunities and to then take on board as much as we can so that when the riders go into their next race, they are stronger for it. The most important thing for them is ensuring they take away something, irrespective of the result."

Which is why the GB team had a performance analyst from the EIS videoing the sprint racing so they can analyse the performances later in training.

Year Round Racing
One difference between the Under 23 Academy Sprint riders and the Podium Program Sprint riders is the way they approach their racing over the course of a year as Iain explained to us.

"Riders that are over 23 have a very focused winter with the World Track Cups and World Track Championships and any event they take on during the summer can be ridden in training mode, where they have to accept they are not going great and take the results on the chin."

"With the Sprint Academy riders, though, for them to also go into the Europeans with lofty goals probably stretches them a little too far, especially after they have already tried really hard to get selected for World Track Cup events and then the World Track Championships."

"For them to break through when we already have such a strong Sprint team, they have to give it their all and then to ask for that again at the Europeans, starts to spread them a little thin. So once we have this part of the winter campaign out of the way, we can judge where everyone is likely to go with their 2007 targets."

Finally, Iain explained that results will always be up or down depending on where riders are in their training phases. This is something that the Podium Programme riders are used to, but will be new to the Juniors who are young and enthusiastic to get results all year round to prove themselves.

"For juniors to come into a full time programme and train six days a week, or more in some cases, inevitably means there will be times when they are investing heavily in hard work loads and they can't be in their best shape all the time. That hard work though pays dividends when they get closer to their target event and that will be one of the hardest things for the riders to deal with."

We wish Iain and all his riders lots of luck for the Winter Track season and look forward to seeing them perform here and abroad over the coming months.