Craig MacLean: On the Comeback Trail

 

Interview by British Cycling's Larry Hickmott

 

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Above: Manchester World Cup and Craig produces two rides well under 18 seconds for the opening lap to show the form is returning and Craig's crossing his fingers for the Worlds in two weeks.

One of the sprinters not taking to the boards whilst I was there was Craig Maclean who was still trying to shake off a cold and you could sense the frustration this great rider was feeling at not being able to train as hard as his team mates who he has been with through thick and thin for almost 10 years. They say that you need some luck in sport and Craig has certainly had his fare share of bad luck and a sprinkling of good as well. After a time of riding man two in the Team Sprint, Craig made the man one spot his own with some scintillating rides and none were finer than his 17.604 standing start lap in a Yasumitsu-Schlapp meeting at Manchester which shaved a few hundreds off his next best of 17.606 at the World Championships in Copenhagen where he won the rainbow stripes after himself, Jamie Staff and Chris Hoy finally went from the bridesmades to the brides with Gold in the Team Sprint.

Things continued to get better and I remember him having to back off in the 2003 World Sprint Championship to save himself for an event that followed but in qualifying, Craig had been sensational with a 10.097 to place him second fastest just behind Laurent Gane and ahead of the legend that is Jens Fiedler. Craig came back to the UK after that and stunned everyone with a '1.01.5' in the Kilometre in the Olympic trials to beat both the 2002 World Champion (Chris Hoy) and the Sydney Olympic Champion (Jason Queally). He was quite simply, stunning on the bike but that was as good as it really got.

He was then struck down with a virus but still managed to come back and do a 1.01.6 in the Manchester World Track Cup in April of 2004 to win Gold in that World Cup. He wasn't however recovering and although he did some good rides in the months that followed, the form from the latter half of 2003 had deserted him and you couldn't help but feel sorry for him. At the Olympics, he again gave it his all but after a disrupted build up, he wasn't quite as sharp as he had been and even now, he is still struggling to get back that form he had not so long ago.

The form seemed to be coming on when in January he knocked out two quickish opening laps as Great Britain ran away with the Team Sprint title at the Manchester. World Cup. A look at the audit trails from the Team Sprint show his opening laps to be a few tenths behind his ultimate best. Being January, and doing 17.852 (44.493) and 17.883 (44.479) isn't bad at all (dam good actually) and Craig is hoping that he can shake the cold off and get a ride in LA.

He's certainly come a long way since he started with GB in 1996. Asked if the Worlds after almost 10 years of representing his country, get easier or harder to get motivated for? Craig replied "I don't think motivation is ever a problem certainly when it comes to high level competition. The hard part is the day in day out staff. The Worlds certainly don't get any easier even though you do get more comfortable with it. There is always the thought that there is going to be a surprise competitor like this year it will probably be the Dutch who are the ones to beat and we don't know where the Germans are going to be for instance."

Asked if he felt nervous at his first Worlds way back in 1996, he says "not really because we didn't have anything to lose at that point. There wasn't a lot of pressure other than the fact that we were riding on our home track. It was fantastic to ride in front of a capacity crowd that early in my career".

Over the years, just as Chris Hoy has developed into a Kilo rider, Craig has also made his spot a speciality and one of the things you can't help but notice when you look at the pictures is his bright red face! Do you breathe during that first lap I asked?

"I have had to work on my breathing and I tend to take three breathes but its not like your exhaling smoothly. You're inhaling really sharply and then holding your breathe mainly to maintain the stability of your core, the spine, bracing yourself out of the saddle. So you can probably break it down to three sharp breathes but in reality you are holding your breathe for most of that lap!"

Perhaps one of the reasons Craig and those around him are so successful is that they never measured success by how well they competed against riders in the UK. "When I started my career, I never measured myself against anyone here because it wasn't an accurate measure of where you are in World terms and that's still the case. Unless you're a Kilo rider in this country in which case I think its fare to measure yourself against the likes of our Olympic champions!"

Asked where he thinks the improvement has come since those early days, Craig says "I think we have all got a bit smarter with out training and its been a natural progression where we have all got a bit stronger. There's no substitute for hard training at the end of the day. I don't think there is any one thing really. Having the track has helped us of course. Back then, we were in Edinburgh travelling up and down a couple of times a month and the funding we now have has enabled us to train full time."

But training is one thing Craig wants to back away from once the Worlds is out of the way to try and give his body a rest after a non stop roller coaster of racing since the Worlds in 2003. Asked how he intends to spend his summer, there was a sense of nervousness that he may lose his place on the team due to his problems recovering since the winter of 2004. "I want to get the Worlds out of the way, secure my funding, and with the support of World Class, know that I can take the time off properly and recover because I feel I have been chasing my tail the whole time. It will be nice to get a break after coming out of the Olympics and then going straight into a winter series. Last year wasn't such a good year by a long way and I could have done with a winter off".

To escape his frustration of not being able to train when not well, Craig takes it out on his drum kit, a musical interest that is quite new after playing the guitar since he was 16. Asked if he plays in a band away from cycling, he admits that the last time he did was last November and then it was just for a bit of fun. More than anything he says, the drums are very 'therapeutic' which means his neighbours have probably heard quite a bit of hard drumming from the muscle bound sprinter. With a little luck, which he richly deserves, lets hope the likeable 'man one' specialist can return to his best soon because on his day, no-one is as fast around that track than our Craig.

My thanks to him for the chat and we cross our fingers he can shake the cold he has in time for the Worlds in two weeks.

Next year, this trio will have been together for 10 years having started out at Manchester in 1996. Here they are on the podium 9 years later with gold medals around their neck after winning the Team Sprint in the Manchester World Track Cup.

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