Olympic Medallist Chris Newton Returning to Beijing
Story posted January 7, 2009
By Larry Hickmott
It is, in the words of Olympic medallist Rob Hayles, an evil event and there is little doubt that the Points race on the track will test any endurance athlete to the max with all the sprinting and chasing that has to be done to be competitive at the highest level. One rider who has conquered the event is Chris Newton who won a Bronze medal in the event at the Beijing Olympics.
Chris returns to the Velodrome where he won that Bronze medal when Great Britain send a small team of endurance riders to the Beijing World Track Cup next week. It will be Newton’s first major competition of 2009 and the start of a busy year both on the road and track. British Cycling caught up with Chris during training at the Manchester Velodrome where he was part of the endurance squad doing Team Pursuit drills which form part of the riders conditioning work.
Chris with the reward for a lot of hard work and sacrifices -- an Olympic medal in Beijing. Photo: Phil O'Connor
The GB Cycling Team may have done their jobs well at the 2008 Olympics but that is past history and now the focus is on 2012 and one of the first stepping stones for that major objective is the 2009 World Track Championships. In the lead up to that, Chris is currently expecting to ride the Points race (and probably the Scratch as well) at the Beijing World Track Cup and the Team Pursuit at the Copenhagen World Track Cup before looking to be selected for both at the 2009 World Track Championships.
After winning the UCI World Track Cup competition for the Points race during the 2007/08 World Cup season, Chris was looking to win the Points race world championship in Manchester last year but an accident in the weeks before the event ruled him out of selection. Looking ahead to 2009 and both the track and road seasons that lie ahead, Chris says that mentally and physically he has the same drive and ambition as he did in Olympic year to do well.
Talking about whether he’d like to take a break from the track with the next Olympics still four years away, Chris replied “I never thought I could cope racing all year round but the track is a different focus and now I am generally fitter and hold that form for longer, I find it easier to dip in and out and top the form up when I need to.”
“I have never shied away from doing the road as well as the track. For me, as soon as the track season finishes, its road season again and I’ll be competing and trying to win races.”
When I put it to Chris the remarks by his training partner at Manchester, Rob Hayles, on the event being evil and asked what it is about the event that is key, he replied “I think recovery is the biggest one. There are guys on the academy and on the podium programme who are probably faster than me in a sprint but given 16 sprints and chasing breaks and attacking, the race is slightly different. You have to go into the red and I find as soon as I come out of the red, I’m ready to go back in. I have got this feeling that if I am not trying, not pushing myself and not in the red, then I am not racing.”
“That is why the Points race compliments me physically and mentally. Plus I have had years of experience now.”
Chris winning sprints during the Manchester World Track Cup.
... and then celebrating a great victory in front of a standing ovation from the crowd at the Manchester velodrome.
With the retirement of Olympic champion Joan Llaneras, Chris now finds himself one of, if not the most experienced Points race rider in the World. He won the World title in 2002 and since then, has been three times fourth at the World Championships and won countless World Track Cup events. It is all a far cry from 2002 when he stepped back into the Points race arena after a break of six years and his bronze medal in Beijing shows that his ability in the race is as good as it has ever been.
That said, his ride in 2002 was special, very special indeed and Chris will be looking for that type of day again when the Worlds visit Poland this year. “Over the years, especially in 2008, I have learnt so much about the event, more so since I put special emphasis on the event. Winning the bronze in Beijing was more a relief that things had worked well and it’s like, that was that - now I move on with all the knowledge I have picked up.”
Post Olympics, Chris was certainly on fire at the Manchester World Track Cup where he was scoring in the mid race sprints and when he wasn’t doing that, he was at the front, waiting for another move to go or making his own ones and eventually one did get away and he gained a lap on many of his rivals.
It was one of those races where a single rider stands out as they dominate the event putting on a masterful display and Chris says that all the experience and the level of form he has built up over time will go into the World Championship event this year. Next stop in that quest will be Beijing (World Track Cup) where Endurance coach Rod Ellingworth says Chris will go out to race the event full on as he has nothing to lose having already qualified for the World Championships.
Happy Days! 2005 and Chris celebrates a rainbow jersey in the Team Pursuit and has kindly given his medal to new boy Ed Clancy (who rode the first round) for the photo call. L-R: Rob Hayles, Steve Cummings, Ed Clancy, Chris Newton and Paul Manning.
Chris admits that he hasn’t lost interest in the Team Pursuit either. Prior to Beijing, Chris was one of the team that was training for that event as well as his Points race and although he was not selected for the Team Pursuit, he had shown in training he had the ability to ride at the level the Team Pursuit squad was riding at nowadays.
For 2009, with one of the team pursuit squad having retired (Paul Manning), and Geraint Thomas likely to chasing ambitions on the road along with Bradley Wiggins, the team for the 2009 World Track Championships may well have a very different look to it and Newton would love to be part of that after having won World Titles in the team pursuit in previous years.
“Selection for this event is all very close” he says. “When we were in Beijing, and it was a week out and I was still doing drills with them, I wouldn’t say I was comfortable but I did feel I was holding my own in the line up. So I still have ambitions in that event and there are rainbow bands to be won.”
One of the Chris Newton's road victories in 2008 -- the Rochdale GP, almost a home race for him, as he beats, just, Russell Downing to the line.
Road Season
Asked about the road season this year, Chris explains “the team is certainly strong this year but has also been trimmed down a bit and what we do this year in the UK will depend on where Rapha-Condor, the company, want the brand to go. They have strong connections around the world and we are quite happy to go there if they have the connections to get us in those races. We might miss some of the UK races but I’ll be taking the season on a race-by-race basis and see where that gets us”.
“I will be quite happy to nip in and out and do different events. As John (Herety, manager) says, this year will be quite different in rather than doing the same European races early season, it might be nice to do races like a Tour of Japan and things like that.”
The Rapha team under John Herety has certainly changed over the years since it evolved from the Recycling.co.uk one where developing youth was the priority. First, the Rapha and Recycling teams merged and now the team is packed with seasoned experienced professionals with a few young riders like Rhys Lloyd and Matt Cronshaw.
Having such a strong team where most of the riders are capable of being team leader on any given day, it will enable riders to miss events whether it be through illness, tiredness or in the case of Chris Newton, making the change from a track season to a road season.
“That is what I like about working with John because he knows once April comes about and I am trying to get back onto the road, that I need a bit of leeway to take a weekend out of racing so I have maybe a ten day block of just doing my own thing and getting back my endurance by doing simple miles.”
Chris Newton on the attack during the Rochdale GP.
Asked about goals for the 2009 Road Season and whether there are events that he’d like to target, he replies, “a few of the Premier Calendars. It is always good to keep yourself up there in these races but we’ll see what sort of stage races we get as well. We did one in Canada last year and that was brilliant. That is a race I’d like to have a go at winning overall. I’d love to win the RAS again too but it seems to be getting more and more difficult” adding that having been a former winner, he would go into the race heavily marked.
Like others in the sport, Chris too has noticed a change in the way road events are raced in the UK now. “In the old days, the start would be more steady and the strong guys would race at the end” Chris explained. Nowadays though, there are a lot of young riders coming into the sport from programmes like the Olympic Development and Olympic Academy and these riders Chris says go out there to race from kilometre zero and are not intimidated by the reputations of the experienced pros around them.
The words he used were ‘no respect’and the young riders are certainly not afraid to get stuck in and take the race to the senior pros. A lot of that is down to the coaching they have these days or team managers wanting their riders to show their faces early in events. The effect is the shape of races has certainly changed.
“They’ll go and smash it from the start and in a 100 mile race, they’ll smash it for 25 miles in a break which you can’t let go and then they’ll sit up because they’re knackered and you’re left there. Races are certainly different now. When you get a strong youth element coming through, everyone is fast (sprints) and you have to cope with that. Fortunately for me, I ride the track and despite getting older, I’m still pretty fast.”
Chris Newton attacking in the Welsh GP before popping and going in search of a can of coke...
Looking ahead
Sitting in the track centre during a GB training session and there is a mixture of youth and experience in the endurance camp. Chris is part of the old school in the GB team and one of the riders who have been representing Great Britain for well over a decade now .
A sign of how senior Chris is in the team nowadays along with Rob Hayles is that a rider lapping the track with them in training, Peter Kennaugh, was just two years of age in 1991 when Chris represented GB as a junior, and its riders like Peter who will be keeping the likes of Chris and Rob on their toes and pushing them on all the time for selection in the coming years.
Judging by his performance in Beijing and the Manchester World Track Cup, Chris though is not slowing down but getting faster with age. The inevitable question then is does the three time-Olympic medal winner (2000, 2004 and 2008) have ambitions to continue chasing Olympic medals right the way through to London 2012? After all, a certain Joan Llaneras is four years older than Chris and won the Olympic Gold in Beijing. A 2012 omen perhaps for one of the worlds premier Points race riders?
Two of the masters of the Points race, Chris Newton and eventual winner Joan Llaneras in action during the Beijing Olympics. Photo: Phil O'Connor
“Before Beijing, I thought, I won’t get to London but I came out of Beijing feeling good and the Manchester Track World Cup went well so I have changed that attitude and think I’ll just keep carrying on.”
“I’m not saying I’ll go all the way to London, but that I’ll just carry on as long as I can continuing to push myself in the right direction. I’ll certainly strive to do all I can and see where that takes me.”
“The hardest thing to deal with racing at this level is family life. There are more demands on my time and rightly so. If as I get older, I have to train harder and take longer to recover, then where do you get those extra hours from? It will either be your family life or something else will have to give and I think that will be the hard part but I haven’t experienced that as yet so I think I’ll find that out in the future perhaps.”
Part of that future is the World Track Championships in 2009. The work load for the riders is certainly full on right now judging by the amount of work they are doing on the track and the road despite the freezing conditions. This week for example, they had a double session on Tuesday along with other afternoon track sessions and as an example of how hard these guys train, one conversation I had with a coach revealed that on a road ride recently over three hours, the riders averaged over 40k an hour in the middle of an English winter in the rain.
And as the World Championships approach, its going to get even harder and one rider in the centre of all that will be Chris Newton, gunning for rainbow stripes in 2009 because there are few riders prouder to wear those bands than him. Chris is a winner though and through, a rider who has the right mix of determination along with a physical talent for pedalling fast. His record both here in the UK and internationally is proof of that and we wish him lots of luck and the team in Beijing next week.
Chris forces the pace up the cobbled climb of Michaelgate in this years Lincoln GP where he was fourth.