Pre-World Championship Interview: Matthew Crampton

 

March 22, 2007

by Larry Hickmott (larryhickmott@britishcycling.org.uk)

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One of the youngest members of the team, 20 year old Matthew Crampton, had to fight hard for selection with triple Junior World Champion Jason Kenny and the other sprinters and said of his selection “It is good to get selected with there being such strong competition for places now. Especially after Manchester  World Track Cup where I didn’t get a hit out except in the Sprint. I think I under performed a little bit at the trial too but it was enough to help me keep my spot in the team”.

 

Matthew is down to ride the Men’s Sprint event and is a reserve for Man 3 in the Team Sprint. One event where he showed he is certainly on the road to being a key rider in the Team Sprint in the coming years was the 2006 Commonwealth Games. There, he was actually quicker than Chris Hoy no less on the final lap which is a huge result for such a young rider. For now though, the Olympic champion Hoy is on fire yet again and keeps Matt out of the Team Sprint.

 

Looking back at his winter in the World Track Cup Competition, Matthew says of his rides in the Sprint competition  “Moscow went pretty well in qualifying in a tough field and then I was ill in LA and so I was pretty poor there. Manchester went okay. I pretty much trained right up to Manchester and was doing a lot of work for the team sprint (man 3) and so did not have a taper for that World Cup so I was pleased to come out of that with a 10.3.”

 

 

Above: Jan van Eijden and Matthew Crampton battle it out in full race distance efforts where tactics are played out to help Britain's young hope build up his expereince for the event with help from one of the masters, a former World Champion in the event.

 

“Since Manchester, I tapered a bit more for the trial and am now doing more speed work. I’m not doing any starts now for example so there’s the motor chases and flying stuff. I may do some more interval work because I’m the only other man 3 and if something was to happen to Chris, I need to be ready for it.”

 

To help Matt prepare for Majorca, he is now coached by consultant coach, Jan van Eijden as well as getting feedback from EIS sports analyst Scott Gardner, National sprint coach Iain Dyer and in the gym Mark Simpson from the EIS.

 

“I feed ideas to Jan and the events coming up and he’ll tell me what I should be aiming for and Scott now has the data from the power cranks and can help me with my strengths and weaknesses.”

 

Even with all this back up, at 20 years of age, Matthew knows though the Sprint event is going to be a very competitive event. “The worlds are going to be tough in the sprint. I’d like to qualify top 10, top 8 and then go through a few rounds and see where it takes me.” Good luck to Matt in Palma.

 

 

Off the track, Jan van Eijden is also Matt's coach and during this week spent a lot of time helping Matt with his training efforts.