Why do we devalue our own events?

The Importance of Nationals                       

So this blog idea has been ruminating in my mind for a few years now, but at its crux it’s about the intersection of development, opportunities and our own domestic evens- specifically Nationals.

A few years ago when there was the potential for a Men’s National Pursuit program the powers that be began entering composite national teams in the team pursuit at nationals.  Now the event was never super deep to begin with in Canada, often struggling to put together 4-5 teams, but this move effectively killed the event.  This is too bad because for a lot of racers it was pretty much their only chance to be exposed to team pursuit, and it is doubly true for juniors.  I thought it was an odd choice at the time, and it didn’t exactly sit easy with me, but I also figured at the time I was too close to the subject matter to be effective as I was still quasi-racing.

Flash forwards a year or so and I am reading in a number of mainstream news articles about how Heather Moyse, a very successful Canadian rugby player is going to try and make her third national team.  This was quickly followed by Moyse complaining bitterly to the media about how she wasn’t given a chance to race World Cups.  She did eventually get to go to Pan-Ams where in all fairness to Moyse she rode commendably well given her lack of experience.  She commented; “I had never raced head-to-head with someone else on a track before, something that requires handling skills and strategy.”

More time was spend on photo ops than racing.

Her entitlement grated me, as did the fact Moyse instantly was given opportunities other cyclists (actual cyclists not sliders looking for a novelty to add to their resume) would never be given.  For example Moyse appeared to do all of her track racing on a CCA* Look.  Not a bad starter machine.  Especially given that at the same time Moyse was gripping about not getting to ride World Cups for Canada she was proudly posting video blogs of how she was grappling the challenge of riding rollers.  Logic might dictate that if you don’t have the skill to warm up for the event you maybe shouldn’t do the event…

 But to Moyse it was a tragedy that she wasn’t allowed to represent her country at track cycling’s highest stage, especially after she conquered those whirling steel drums of death. 

Not a bad starter bike. In all fairness I'm sure IO's are tough on the rollers.

It was safe to say that at this point I was not a Moyse fan.  She came across as entitled, self-important and she was speaking ill of a federation that had done her nothing but favours.  Flash forwards to the fall.  Moyse has ridden in the Pan American Championships and Canadian Nationals are in Dieppe.  Moyse is MIA.  I am sure she was focusing on bobsleigh- which is fine, except for the point where she had now wasted CCA resources for nothing.

And this is where we get to the core of my argument.  If you want to do national team projects- ESPECIALLY development projects participation at Nationals should be an absolute given.  Non-negotiable.  Proven World Cup performers are a slightly different ball of yarn but even then their participation (and I am not saying they have to be on peak form) should be heavily encouraged unless there are extenuating circumstances.

In not showing up Moyse not only underlined her lack of commitment to pursuing cycling as anything other than an ego boost.  It meant that the time and probably money that went into her training at LA and competing at Pan-Ams had ZERO multiplier effect.  Had she gone to nationals she would have helped increase the depth of the sprint tournament and keirin – helping to create a deeper event that every other female racer riding sprint events in Canada would have benefited from.  Instead she dinned on international competition and left the CCA to pick up the cheque.

Part of why these young women rip is becasue their skills were honed at the state level

 long before they went to an international competition.

  That and they are super colour coordinated.

And while I have used Moyse as an example I will point out that she is not the only offender in this category- several juniors who competed in the Junior Pan-American Championships failed to attend nationals last year – for no valid reason to the best of my knowledge.  In my mind participation at nationals should be the bare minimum commitment level for juniors that then want to represent their country in international competition.  If a kid goes to Pan-Ams and Worlds and then skips Nationals there is no way they should be considered for the pool the next year. Bottom line, bike racing is a sport that demands commitment and these kids need to show it.

Nationals are one of the few chances that coaches get to see developing athletes in direct competition, and one of very few domestic racing opportunities for development.  As I’ve said before if the miss-and-out is our Country’s collective Achilles heel then we can’t put enough emphasis on the quality racing opportunities these kids get.  We don’t need the Carletons or the Pelletier-Roys to be on top form at nationals, but having them there adds a value to every developing racer at the event.

Collectively as a cycling country we need to be working to ensure that nationals are as deep an event as possible since we have so few opportunities for our track racers to compete in deep and quality events.

British kids fighting for a shot.

In the next week a team will race the women’s Team Pursuit at Pan-Ams.  Of these one is a speedskater who has never competed in a track race let alone at nationals.  It is impossible to say if she is actually quicker than the tier of women who went to nationals last year.  What is clear is that she is being afforded opportunities that are not available to most Canadian track racers.  And in giving her the opportunity the CCA risks eroding what transparency they have build up in the track program over the last few years (though why they continue to refuse to publish trials times in what should be an imperial selection is a mystery to me).

I know nothing about this rider/skater, I’m just hoping that for track in Canada’s sake, she’s not another Heather Moyse.

*CC – how terribly this rebrand has been handled is a topic for a whole other blog post

Reasons for a Grass Track #1

 Or Why Laura Trott is a Great Big Bully

In my last blog entry I promised to talk a bit about an initiative to bring grass track racing to Ottawa.  I’m pretty fired up about it- in part because I had an absolute blast the only time I raced grass track at the Southern Games in Trinidad in 2006, but more importantly for another reason.  I think it can be a valuable tool to help develop international riders with robust skill sets- skills that as a nation we currently lack at the international level.

The Canadian track team has collectively taken huge strides in the last 4 years.  More riders are getting exposure to international track events than at any point since I’ve started racing (Note: You will never find me gripping that a rider was taken to an event that was over their head, because I pulled my hair out for ten years as Canadian talent had to stay home because our federation wouldn’t commit to supporting a program). 

The entire track program has shifted its orientation to LA to be near the only international standard 250m in North America.  Because clearly our riders can’t be competitive unless they are riding on pristine Siberian pine.  Yet for our top Olympic track contenders this past year their limiting factors had nothing to do with speed, or training facilities or exposure to top notch international racing.  Rather what they lacked was the sort of fundamentals that many of their competition were exposed to from a young age.

Olympic Lesson: Our top riders lack the soft-skills of their competition

 I’m going to pick on Zack Bell and Tara Whitten in this blog.  For a couple of reasons, the first is that they are both exceptionally nice, role model athletes.  So the chances of them taking it personally against me and executing revenge filled counter-strikes are pretty slim. I hope.

More importantly to my argument, they are both World-Class, fruit of the genetic-freak-tree physical talents.  Both riders went from novice racers to either Olympians or World Championships medalists WITHIN an Olympic cycle.  Give that a second to sink in.

And while both riders are utter mutants when it comes to the physical metrics of track riding (speed, power endurance ect) the chink in both their armour internationally has been their bike handling.

By bike handling I mean, not just their abilities to manoeuvre their machines but also the larger process in which they read (and more importantly anticipate) the race and make split second tactical decisions.

I’m not suggesting that either Zach or Tara are BAD bike handlers.  Bad bike handlers don’t win World Cups.  They more than hold their own at the top of the result sheet against the best track riders on the planet.  However, having both come into the sport in their twenties, they concede an advantage to their rivals in this area.  At the risk of sounding Brailsfordian you simply cannot afford to concede that sort of marginal difference at the top flight of elite sport.  Both these riders are well aware of this fact, and both have worked exceptionally hard to improve this element of their riding.

Nowhere is this gap so flagrantly highlighted than in the Miss-in-Out, a cycling event that combines all of the worst elements of a bar room brawl and tax evasion.  And it is here that I would introduce two riders with physical talent similar (though perhaps not as exceptional) to Zack and Tara- Laura Trott and Bryan Coquard.

These pint sized racer are arguable the two best miss-and-out riders on the planet at the moment.  Seriously – they are nasty.  Youtube any-miss-and-out that they’ve won over the last two years and argue otherwise.  Heck let me do it for you:

According to a friend of mine, a few years ago at Junior Worlds Coquard was riding the wall at the guardrail on route to winning the points race. 

Trott absolutely muscled her way around in the bunch this summer in London.  She shot gaps that may not have been there and she shoved Kristin Wild around like a playground bully.  Wild is a top flight rider, roughly twice the size of the diminutive Trott.  And Trott owned her like a sub-prime mortgage.

Both Coquard and Trott are fast, quality bike racers that make instinctive decisions and commit to them.

Where the Grass Track Fits In

My hope is that by running fun low key grass track races for Ottawa’s cycling youth is that we can develop the next generation to have these innate skills. Because skills, like most things (excluding organic chem and cleanliness) come easy when learned early.  Skills are much harder to come by as the athletes get older.  If we have a bunch of 13-17 year old kids riding chariots and miss-and-out then hopefully they will develop the soft skills that will help them out years down the road should they both chose to pursue elite cycling and happen to have the physiology to do so (and even if they don’t it should be a whole lot of fun along the way).

We can build fast tracks. We can train with power. We can do all kinds of fancy wind-tunnel testing. 

But in the end it is still bike racing, and we need to make sure we are giving kids coming up through the system to tools to race their bikes, not just be fast on them.

Disclaimer 1: I have no idea if Trott or Coquard raced grass track.  I know Trott started track cycling at a young age as an alternative to swimming.  Two top British riders who did get their start grass track racing are Victoria Pendleton and Craig McLean.

Disclaimer 2: Despite having raced from a young age, and having done a fair bit of track league as a junior some of you are likely aware that I am a fairly shoddy bike handler. I like to think it’s more because I am a Safety Bear than actually a bad bike handler, but that might just be denial.  Meh, we’re not all diamonds in the rough.