Peter Kennaugh’s New Challenge
Story posted December 3, 2008
By Larry Hickmott
Above: At home on the track or road, Peter Kennaugh hand slings Rob Hayles during a Madison drill at the Great Britain Cycling Team’s training session at the Manchester Velodrome. We talk to Peter about the challenges he has in the next year as well as his partner for the Madison Rob Hayles and their coach Rod Ellingworth.
One of the country’s brightest prospects for the future, and we certainly have a few of them, is Isle of Man rider Peter Kennaugh. In his first year on the road in Italy as a senior, he won two major under 23 races to add to an already impressive palmeres. A former World Junior champion on the track and a multi European Champion in the Junior and Under 23 categories, Kennaugh is also the British Madison champion, a title he won with fellow Isle of Man rider Mark Cavendish.
Of all the rides I have seen him do though, the one in the British Road Race championships at Ryedale where he was second is probably the best this year. The second year senior though has a new challenge and that is to help Great Britain take the Madison event forward.
North Yorkshire and Peter is back in the UK and chasing Rob Hayles in the British Road Race Championships. Peter, a first year senior, was second.
Both Peter, and the rider he was second to in the British Road Race Championships, Rob Hayles, have been training hard at the Manchester Velodrome in preparation for the World Track Cup in Cali (Columbia) which starts on December 11. They will be part of a small team travelling to the World Track Cup, a team that will include some young female riders as well in Lucy Martin and Alex Greenfield.
Peter has just come back from a post road season break, the longest break the Academy riders have been given since it was created four years ago. It was a welcome chance to go home for Peter as he explained. “It’s been quite nice getting the chance to settle down at home on the island where I spent a lot of time round Cav’s (Mark Cavendish).
“Coming back to Manchester (to start training and racing) was a bit of a shock though as I had forgotten how hard it was. In the first few track leagues, I took a bit of a beating but I was soon feeling more at home.”
There have been some changes to the Academy after the Olympics with Darren Tudor, former Olympic Development Programme coach, taking over the running of it whilst its in Britain and Max Sciandri looking after it when its in Italy. Peter though will continue to be coached by Rod Ellingworth who he has been working with all season and is currently working with over the winter on the Madison event.
Long term, at least as far as next season is concerned, Peter will be looking for results on the Track and on the Road which means two sets of World Championships to aim for.
Talking about his immediate goals, he says they lie on the track with three Track World Cups – Columbia, Beijing and then Copenhagen with hopefully the Track World Championships being the icing on the cake. At these events, he’s expecting to help GB get better acquainted with the Madison event. As with most track events, GB has shown how well it is at pulling apart an event and learning about it and improving our results in it. Hence the Gold rush in Beijing this year.
Early this year, pre World Track Championships, and Peter slings in Mark Cavendish on their way to the British title. Cavendish then went on to win the World title with Bradley Wiggins.
Now the next event to get that treatment is the Madison (along with the Points) and the two chosen to start that work on the Madison are Peter and Rob Hayles along with coach Rod Ellingworth. Rob Hayles has already won an Olympic medal in the Madison (Athens) and a World title (2005) with another Isle of Man rider, Mark Cavendish who has won two titles in the event (Hayles and Wiggins being his respective partners).
In an interview before the Manchester World Track Cup, Rob told us he was not at the moment tempted by a career on the road and that success on the track was still something that burned inside him. “Whilst I still believe I can be World Champion -- and I loved being World Champion -- I feel I have a lot more to give even if its not on the front of the team pursuit dragging them round to more victories. Hopefully I can help them do that but I have so much knowledge in an event like the Madison. My dream is to be in London racing the Madison riding with whoever.”
As for Peter, his short term goals are also to move the Madison on and he has to be one of the favourites to be riding that event in four years time in London. “We’re working on getting the technique right and then when the form comes, the results will come” he told us at Revolution 21.
To do this, both Peter and Rob have been working hard on specific drills for the Madison at Manchester. Peter explained on Tuesday this week “we’ve done a lot of analysis work on the Madison, looking back at them over the years and seen some interesting things in that which we can work on.”
“Rod has this giant folder full of the analysis and the things he wants us to work on!” says Peter.
One of the key areas in a Madison is the lap take, something which helped Bradley Wiggins and Rob Hayles win a Bronze in the Athens Olympics. It was an awesome moment when they did that as teams held them at 100 metres for a while and then their rivals had to surrender and the British duo went on to get the lap.
It was the drill of lap taking the riders were working on when I visited them on Tuesday. It wasn’t a huge work load -- three drills of going near flat out, changing four or fives time during the 12 or so laps they had to drag themselves around the boards at speed.
All this training on the track is helping Peter get his track legs back as well. The efforts on the boards are very intense just like they are when he is doing similar drills over and over again for the Team Pursuit.
“I have noticed I’ve improved a lot since my holiday and that training is not as hard now as it was three weeks ago. I have done around 25 hours in the last week” he told us as if to emphasis the amount of hard training they were being given and it was lung searing work as well. None of this pootling about in zone two on the road!
Rob Hayles
2005 and the second of two World titles for Rob Hayles.
Next to Peter in the track centre recovering from an effort on the track was the rider Peter last did a World Cup Madison with in Los Angeles last year, Rob Hayles. In that event they were 7th but Pete was just out of the Junior ranks then. What these two are capable of is anybodies guess as both have the ability to win a major championship.
“It’s an event I have been a World Champion in, got a Bronze medal in at the Athens Olympics, went close to medalling in at the Sydney Olympics and ridden quite a few World Cups so I’d like to think I am one of the best Madison riders on my day. So it’s good to be back doing it and the work we’re doing here is very new.”
“The training in the past for this event has been off the back of Team Pursuit work and I wasn’t riding my upright bike from one Madison to the next so this training is a different approach. Since the Manchester World Track Cup, we have done a lot of work with the Team Pursuit but also, a lot of Madison specific work, probably more in the last four weeks than I have done in the last four years.”
Asked if the Madison is a lottery event where coming up with a formula for victory is difficult, Rob agreed that it was more of a lottery than the Team Pursuit but then added, ‘why not ask Joan Llaneras or Juan Curuchet’! A look at the podiums since 1995 when the event was introduced into the World Championship programme, these two riders have succeeded to make the podium many many times. The Spanish rider has won three Golds and a Silver in the event and the Argentine pairing medalled no less than eight times in 14 years or so.
“You just have to get out there and race and yes, there is some luck involved but you also have to have a strategy and go with it”.
When I put it to Rob, the Madison appears to be one of the hardest events in a track schedule, he nodded in agreement. “It is brutal but that suits me better than the Points because of the rest you get and I can go into the red a lot more. The Madison just looks worse than the Points race because it is quicker, there is more going on and you’re using a lot of mental nervous energy as well as physical”.
The hardest event he feels is the Points race, describing it as ‘evil’ and that a champion at it like Chris Newton trains specifically for the demands in it.
Rob Hayles-Pre-Manchester World Track Cup Interview
New challenges for coach Rod Ellingworth
Rod Ellingworth goes through the drill for the day prior to training on Tuesday.
Coaching Peter and Rob in the Madison is former Under 23 Olympic Men’s Endurance Academy coach Rod Ellingworth who is now a Podium Programme endurance men’s coach working specifically on the Madison and Points track events as well as the road race for World Championships and Olympics. Rod made a name for himself by creating the blue print for the Olympic Academy (endurance) and the ‘products’ of that academy are many.
Mark Cavendish is perhaps the most successful depending on which yard stick you want to use to measure success but there are also the Olympic champions Ed Clancy and Geraint Thomas, Olympic bronze medallist Steven Burke and new professionals on the road Jonny Bellis and Ben Swift. Rod is now pursing new challenges on the track and the road and helping him with his new blueprint for success will be Peter Kennaugh and Rob Hayles.
The Madison is one of the first of those challenges and listening to the riders, he has already gone out and done extensive homework and is making headway into getting under the skin of the event and pulling it apart. Watching him work with Mark Cavendish pre-Olympics shows the detail he will go into in order to help his riders fulfil their potential. Sadly, it didn’t happen for Mark in Beijing for various unforeseen reasons but that was a learning experience for everyone involved.
Rod, as he did with the Academy, puts everything into a challenge like this and explained the Great Britain Cycling team have got five or six Madison riders who could medal at the Olympic Games given the right preparation.
“It is about creating those opportunities. Rob (Hayles) is the elder statesman in the team and has more to offer the team in terms of his physical performances. He has had a good year on the road this season and that has helped him create a great base to work from. He wants to keep fighting for the Worlds and that is great.”
“We also have young bike riders but some of them, Ben Swift and Jonny Bellis for example, are having to find their way into their pro teams and we’re letting them do that. These two guys, Pete and Rob, are bike racers the same as Swifty, Bellis and Cavendish”
“Pete Kennaugh definitely wants to ride the Track Worlds in the Madison so at the minute, we’re using Pete and Rob as the partnership. What I want to do is learn about this event and if you keep changing partnerships, you don’t learn. So I what I want to do over the coming months is keep that partnership the same and learn as a unit.”
“We’re doing more different training drills than we have ever done before and filming them in a different way too and trying to get as much information on the event as we possibly can and over time we’ll have more information to learn from”.
“The results at the 2009 Track Worlds won’t be the be all and end all. Sure, we’ll go there in the best shape we can but as the coach, I’ll be happy if we come out of it having gathered a lot of information because that is how we’ll get better.”
Rod’s future in coaching is about helping his athletes on the Podium programme get the best from the events they are given to race at major championships whether that be on the road or track. Which means his role in Peter’s coaching won’t end with the Madison.
Italy beckons in 2009
Peter (right) was part of the GB Under 23 team in Varese for his first World Road Championships as a senior
For Peter Kennaugh, the current winter track season, and the road season that follows, will provide many challenges. I remember at the Europeans in 2007, he was asked at the last minute to step up from Junior to Under 23 at the European Championships for the Team Pursuit. He took that challenge in his stride and I fully expect him to meet the challenges on track and road in the next 12 months with the same dedication and passion.
Chatting about the forthcoming road season, he says he’s looking forward to the racing in Italy again and being the leader of the team there. “I can’t wait to get to Italy and take on that role. I got some good results last year on the road but there were also some races where I was still there at the end despite being on ‘early doors’ or I was working for Swifty in the sprint, so I think I could have had a few more results like some tops 10s on top of the wins which would have made the CV look even better."
His season in Italy went better than even he expected. “I was listening to some of the second year riders when I was a first year and they were saying how hard Italy was and yes, it is hard, but I wouldn’t over exaggerate how hard it is. Once you get to that level of racing, you sort of understand how it works and can reach that level. I never expected to win a race – perhaps a one off result like a top 10 but to win two with one of them being the biggest under 23 classic was unbelievable. I’ll do well to repeat that next year!”
His big goal next year on the road is the Road Worlds which will not be far from where they were this year, being across the border in Switzerland. He rode the championships this year and said they were very much a learning experience (read more).
Another goal is to be involved in the British Pro team in 2010.
Asked about that, he explained “I’d love to be involved and if Rod was also involved with it, that would be perfect. We get on really well and work well together.” Asked what sort of rider does he see himself being on the road compared to say his friend Mark Cavendish who is an out and out sprinter, Peter replied “it’s hard to say at the moment but I’d guess a one day rider.
“I can climb short steep climbs, 3k max, really quick but the longer ones over 6k when you’re at threshold for over half an hour or more, I really find those harder than the shorter climbs.”
Peter is also very quick at the finish of a race as he has shown on the track and can also ride to a result alone as he has also shown in races here and in Italy. For now though, the road season is just another entry in his training diary and at the moment, it’s time to concentrate on the track and the Madison.
We wish him and Rob good luck in Columbia.