Olympic Academy Comes of Age
Story posted July 11, 2008
By Larry Hickmott
GB Olympic Cycling Team for Beijing
British Cycling's Olympic Home Page
With the announcement by the BOA of the cyclists in the Great Britain Olympic Cycling team comes the realisation that the Olympic Academy Programme, first introduced by the GB Cycling Team for Endurance riders after the Athens Olympics, is already producing riders capable of competing at the very highest level.
In the Men’s Endurance events on the track, riders past and present from the Olympic Academy are ready to make a headline or two in the Beijing Olympics. It is a far cry from the last two Olympiads where the team pretty much selected itself for some of the track events.
In Athens 2004, the team for the Endurance events on the track was not a lot different to that from 2000 in Sydney. Old hands like Bryan Steel were facing their curtain call at their last Olympics whilst the experienced riders such as Chris Newton, Paul Manning, Bradley Wiggins and Rob Hayles were once again carrying the hopes of their country guided by national coach Simon Jones who had also been in charge of the medal winning endurance riders in Sydney.
Original member of the Olympic Academy Mark Cavendish (right) has shown what can be achieved and here, is pictured on his way to a Gold medal with Bradley Wiggins at the World Track Championships, his second in four years.
Only Stephen Cummings was the new face at the Olympics in Athens where Wiggins went on to win Gold in the Individual Pursuit whilst the Team Pursuit, with Stephen Cummings, won Silver. There were more medals for the Endurance riders in other events with Hayles and Wiggins winning a Bronze in the Madison.
But, and it’s a big but, although the team was an undoubted success at Athens 2004, that didn’t stop the GB Cycling team pushing the boundaries out to strengthen their team which meant new programmes were going to have to be introduced to find new riders for the Team Pursuit and other track and road endurance events.
So even before those medals were won on the track in 2004, the team were looking to the future and at Manchester in 2003, Rod Ellingworth was mapping out the master plan for an Under 23 Academy. “When I wrote the academy programme in 2003, it was very much designed for bike riders who could perform across the board – both road and track” Rod explained to us when we spoke this week.
Rod pointed out that what the GB team are trying to do is help the riders fulfil their dreams and many of them are doing that now. Take Mark Cavendish who was winning races only a few months after joining the programme thanks to being given some structure to his life and racing and now he has a Tour de France stage in his palmeres, a lifelong ambition, to call his own.
On the track, Rod’s riders are also fulfilling their ambitions and three of them are part of the Team Pursuit squad for the Beijing Olympics. The Olympic Academy is the one programme that has most influenced the team for the 2008 Olympics although it has to be said once the Academy was up and running late in 2004, a development programme was also introduced and a product of that is Manchester’s Steven Burke who went from the Olympic Development Programme to the Olympic Academy and is now in the squad for Beijing!.
In all, a staggering seven riders from the Olympic Academy Programmes are on the plane for Beijing. They are Jonny Bellis, Ben Swift (both on the road), Jason Kenny (Sprint Academy) and on the track for the Team Pursuit and other endurance events, Geraint Thomas, Ed Clancy, Mark Cavendish, and Steven Burke.
Back in 2004 post Olympics, a group of riders were invited to join the first Under 23 Olympic Academy. Here Rod Ellingworth gives them the schedule for the day during a training day in the lanes of Cheshire.
Talking further to Rod Ellingworth he admits that in the original blueprint, the team were looking at getting two riders into the Olympic cycling team for 2008 so it has been a huge success to have six endurance riders on the plane to Beijing.
“There was no doubt the Academy was going to be a success” he explained from an airport somewhere in Europe. “We came up with it at the right time and I knew there was the talent out there for it to be a success.”
Ever since the Academy was formed, it has been drip feeding the team and in 2005, Englishman Ed Clancy was 5th man for the Team Pursuit and rode the first round before his more experienced teammates went on to win the Gold medal. Then, in 2006, while Ed was having a bad year where changes in his training were not going to plan, the team pursuit squad was joined by another Academy rider, Welshman Geraint Thomas. They went on to win Silver at the World Track Championships behind Australia at the Bordeaux track.
2005 and Los Angeles -- A team of five travelled to the World Championships and won the World Championship. In that team was Academy rider Ed Clancy -- third from left -- and here he is joined by his teammates withe their rainbow jerseys. Ed has since won one of his own and a World Record as the icing on the cake.
In 2007 in Majorca, Geraint and Ed combined with old hands Bradley Wiggins and Paul Manning and they took back the World Title in the Team Pursuit that GB had won in 2005. In 2008 at Manchester, another new face – Manchester’s Steven Burke – was at the track training with the team for the Worlds and what do you know, he along with Geraint and Ed are named in the Olympic track team for Beijing.
The strength in-depth that Team GB have right now is a far cry from 2000 and 2004 and there are many more riders looking to break into the team from the current Olympic Academy as well as from other GB programmes like the Olympic Development one.
Recently, Olympic Development rider Luke Rowe finished second in the European RR Championship which shows what a talent he is and current Academy riders Jonny Bellis was third in the Under 23 World Road Race championship in 2007 and Ben Swift was fourth in this years European RR Championship for under 23 riders.
It isn’t just the Pursuit or ‘straight line’ events that the team were looking to develop riders for and with ‘founder’ academy member Mark Cavendish having won two World titles in the Madison since 2005, it shows that the template that Rod has developed has worked remarkably well for a new programme which has needed little tweaking.
Mark Cavendish training for the Team Pursuit prior to the 2005 European Championships.
That template for the original Academy has also had a role to play in the other academies that have since been rolled out for Sprinters and the Women endurance athletes with more academies to come. It is Rod feels, a legacy he will be proud to leave to the team at some point when he decides to move on.
Asked if there is one key element in the Academy that has lead to the success of the programme, Rod replied “not one element, but the combination of all the elements.” He then explained how important it has been to have riders like Mark Cavendish come out of it and achieve the success they have. “Cav’s success has provided a pathway that riders believe in, a process they know they have to go through to be successful. A programme where the riders are dictated to, pointed in the right direction and also one where they will learn by their mistakes.”
Rod expects the basics of the original programme to remain a foundation for all the academies that are based on it and that although his academy, the endurance one for men, may change and be tweaked, the template will remain the same.
2006 and Athens for the Europeans and Steven Burke (second from left) is part of the Junior Championship winning team. On the left is Jonny Bellis who has also been selected for the Beijing Olympics.
Raising the bar for representing Team GB
What these development programmes have done is made getting into the Great Britain Cycling team for the Olympics so much harder and increased the possibility of winning Olympic medals. Take Rob Hayles. Here is a rider who has won medals at the last two Olympics (Team Pursuit and Madison) and this year has been in storming form.
And yet he was unable to get into the track endurance team. Nor was Stephen Cummings who has also been sensational on the road with a victory in Italy this year but Cummings too was unable to break into the track team despite his success in Athens. Stephen however has at least made it into the road team for Beijing on the back of the ability he has shown in being able to climb a bit but missing out on the track team will still have been a big disappointment.
Another reason for the bar having to be raised is that GB has since the last Olympics seen teams like those from Holland and Denmark raise their game as they showed at the Manchester Worlds where they pushed the Brits to a new World record. The team know that they can only do their best but to win medals, that best is going to have to get better. Two things have helped this process. One was the coming together of sports physiologist in Matt Parker and Performance Manager Shane Sutton when Simon Jones left the team a few years ago.
The second was the coming of age of the young academy riders who are not only benefitting from the new training methods where riders no longer get to exist in their comfort zone but instead are constantly taken to the edge and back and are doing this alongside the experienced athletes in the team such as Wiggins and Manning.
The medal prospects for the Men’s Endurance team on the track are as good as any GB athlete travelling to Beijing. Not just in the Team Pursuit where the academy riders are expected to make their mark. The presence of these academy riders has also had the knock on effect of pushing the existing riders to new levels.
Take Chris Newton who in the recent track camp at Manchester was flying around the track in the Team Pursuit at speeds greater than before the Sydney or Athens Olympics. Here is a rider who has already been to two Olympiads before Beijing and won medals at both. Chris showed great consistency in the UCI World Track Cups where he won the Points title before a crash prevented him from competing at the Manchester Track Worlds. There is no doubt, the younger riders have helped push him and the others, to new highs.
A key to the success of the new programmes introduced by the Great Britain team is the pathway from youth riding (Talent Team) to Junior to Under 23 and finally the Podium Programme. Here Olympic Development coach Darren Tudor and Academy coach Rod Ellingworth work together at a coach led racing weekend.
The Triple Crown
Beijing will also see an extraordinary athlete attempt to win three Gold medals who is also full of praise for the young riders. Not for nothing has he described Ed Clancy as the best man 1 for the team pursuit in the World! Triple World Champion Bradley Wiggins goes for Gold in the Pursuit, Team Pursuit and Madison with former Olympic Academy rider, Mark Cavendish.
Last time out at the Olympics, Wiggins was the first athlete in decades to win three medals when he won a medal of every colour. Not that you would know that with the lack of media attention for the best British track rider Britain has produced – probably ever!
At Manchester in the Track Worlds, he did win three Gold but Beijing will be a different ball game – a bit like comparing the Tour of Italy to the Tour de France where both are great races but the Tour de France is up a level from the Giro. From what we have seen in training, Wiggins has risen to that challenge and is on a different level from what he was at the Manchester Worlds. In training, he and the rest have been on fire with times so hot, no-one will even tell us what they are!
So for the riders in Team GB (Cycling), just getting into the team for Beijing has been a victory. It is hard on the riders who know that should they have been born in another country like Belgium, Italy, USA, etc, etc they would probably be on the plane to Beijing. Few can imagine what the disappointment must be like for them – to have trained for four years and then to be only a few tenths of second from being selected.
As one of the coaches said while I was watching the riders train, there are coaches and managers having sleepless nights over those selections.
In 2006, Geraint Thomas -- left -- joined the GB team on the podium to wina Silver medal at the World Track Championships.
The Scientific Approach
Selecting riders though has had a very scientific approach to it. To ensure the right selections are made, based on solid data, everything the riders do on the track is recorded whether it be on timing equipment or on video.
In the Team Pursuit, each split for the riders lap by lap, as many as four splits per lap, is analysed and as Endurance coach Matt Parker explained, the EIS data analysts had a mountain of data from the two weeks of all the efforts on the track. Also remember the bikes have SRM cranks measuring power and as one analyst told me before the World Track Championships, if it can be measured, the team are measuring it.
There was quite simply no hiding place for any one. And just to make sure, when the ‘efforts’ were made on the track, they were done so at race pace or quicker to find out where the breaking points were and it was difficult to watch at times as riders who have achieved so much in the sport were driven to breaking point on the boards.
To select the riders for the endurance events in Beijing on the Track, the team have been collecting data and information on the riders for a long time now and the final phase in that process was a two week training camp at Manchester on the track after a road camp in Italy.
Even before these get togethers, data gathering was going on and by way of example, during the Tour of Italy, Matt Parker and GB Performance Manager Shane Sutton would be talking and getting data from their riders every few days.
During the two weeks at Manchester recently, the track endurance riders had what appeared to be a punishing schedule so it was surprising that those I spoke to viewed the camp as more of a break. They were on the track twice day with the early session starting at 8am and the next one at 2pm which is designed to help them acclimatise to the daily structure for track competition.
Their coach though explained that even though the efforts were hard, they were actually enjoying the efforts. “They love going fast and have fun doing so” Matt told us. “It also helps them get used to going fast on the track again after a long break.”
Asked if it has been a problem getting them to go fast after hard racing on the road like the Tour of Italy and other British events for the local riders, Matt replied “I thought it would be more difficult than it has been. Chris (Newton) did a crit last night for example but they are all in such good condition, they are bouncing from one thing to the next at the moment. They are enjoying it which makes a big difference.”
On the road work they did in Italy, Matt explained that it’s always hard efforts in training on the road to help the riders get familiar with the effort they need to do on the track and the camp in Italy saw them touch on the type of efforts they are making right now in Majorca.
Majorca 2007 and the World Championships are Great Britain and two of the four are former Academy riders, Geraint Thomas and Ed Clancy who combined well with Bradley Wiggins and Paul Manning.
The other interesting thing about the team is the amount of work they put into every aspect of an event whether it be equipment or the rider. Attention to detail is crucial and an example of that was when Mark Cavendish came in to test some new equipment. On the track, he joined in on some Team Pursuit efforts.
“It is good for us that everyone can Team Pursuit especially when you only have a squad of seven.” Matt Parker told British Cycling “We have to plan for every contingency and if everyone in the squad (endurance track) understands the team pursuit and how we go about it, then that has to be a good thing for us.”
“With four guys having to get up and do a very controlled event like the Team Pursuit, it takes a lot of preparation and it benefits everyone to do some Team Pursuit drills. They enjoy it though as it is good fun. We had Cav in at the end of a session and he was going very quickly and rattling round this place at 64 k an hour which he enjoyed”.
Right up until the end of the Track camp, the Team Pursuiters were being put through the mill and then once that was done, the selection panel sat down to put names on paper that would then be put forward to the BOA to approve. Those endurance riders for Beijing were then sent to Majorca for more training.
Once the training is done there, the riders will then head for Newport (Wales) for the final tweaking before getting on the plane for Beijing. Talking about this, the national endurance coach Matt Parker explained “after so much road work post Track Worlds, we didn’t want the first track effort to be in Newport. So we got the whole squad here for the first track session and although we knew not everyone was going to go to the Olympics, this camp in Manchester saw us remind ourselves it has been a squad effort this year”.
So what can we all expect to see on our TV screens when the Olympics are on and the Track Endurance riders are in action. For the men, Wiggins and Cavendish, World Champions don’t forget, are expected to be in the Madison where as Chris Newton (World Cup Points Champion) is nominated for the Points race and having spent many hours doing Team Pursuiting in the run up to Beijing, will no doubt be a reserve for that event as well. Battling to be part of the Team Pursuit foursome on the track are five riders, Brad Wiggins, Paul Manning plus three academy riders past and present -- Geraint Thomas, Ed Clancy and Steven Burke.
Where having five riders is important is because the Olympic Team Pursuit is over three rounds, Qualifying, Round 1 and Finals. For this reason, the team have gone for seven endurance riders in the Track Team with four to be chosen from five available for the Team Pursuit for one round or another. The team may for example, as they and others do quite often, use one line up the first round and then another for the later rounds especially as Bradley Wiggins may well have two rounds of the Individual Pursuit the day before the Team Pursuit qualifying.
Which is why having the Olympic Academy riders to back up the experienced Track Endurance riders has proven to be so important for the team. A stroke of genius even and not only do we congratulate the Team and their coaches on having introduced the programmes in the first place, but also the riders who have knuckled down and achieved a lot just to make the team. Our best wishes go to them as they enter the final period before the biggest competition of their lives.
2007 and the European Championships -- Gold for the Under 23 Team Pursuit. Three of these four are going to Beijing and the other one, Peter Kennaugh is sure to follow in their footsteps ...
RELATED LINKS
Programme Features
Olympic Academy a Legitimate Route to Road Success
Olympic Development Programme 2007/08
2008 GB Coach Lead Racing Helping Develop Champions
2006 Olympic Development Programme (Track) Induction
2006 GB Olympic Academy Set to Work in Italy
GB Olympic Academy Ready to Go for 2007
2007 Academy Takes to the Open Roads of Italy
2006 New Riders Settle Into Olympic Academy
2008 GB Academy Riders Triumphant in Europe
2007 Pre-European Championships Training Camp
2008 Academy's Steven Burke Steps up a Level
2006 Great Britain Cycling Team Olympic Sprint Academy
2008 GB Academy Mountain Bikers
