Rapha Condor JLT – Learning To Win

Peloton Cafe - Ed Laverack - 2013 Victorian Criterium Championships
Peloton Cafe – Ed Laverack – 2013 Victorian Criterium Championships (image courtesy jxpphotography)
By Rapha Condor JLT ?If you want to get lucky? it pays to be ready.??Michael Beirut Learning is a simple thing to do: you practice, and then you continue to practice, and then you practice some more until you manage to master the task. With the right mix of dedication, concentration and application, human beings can learn how to do pretty much anything in life. There is no doubt that if a person is given the opportunity, enough time and the right advice he or she can learn how to make a bicycle go fast. Put simply, if you ride a bike enough your body will adapt, and you will become strong. But cycling isn?t a sport that judges people on how strong they are on a bicycle; it is a sport that judges people on whether or not they can win on a bicycle. In cycling though the odds are against winning; even the greatest and most consistent sprinter in the world, could only expect to win twenty or so percent of the races they start in a year. There are so many things that have to fall into a place for a rider to win (form, competition, terrain, and a healthy dose of luck on the day), that most riders would walk away from a season with a handful of wins and feel like they have had a very good year. Unlike becoming a strong bike rider ? which you can improve on in every training session and race day ? the chance to win comes so rarely in high level competition that learning to do it in the first place is a lot harder than it seems, and some riders never master it. There is no simple mechanical method to becoming a winner; you cannot fake the pressure at the end of a bike race by drawing a line and having a sprint between yourselves. Winning is like combat, the best way to know how you will behave under that kind of pressure is to go through the real thing. Luke Mellor shows the strain in the Australian heat, but riding alone isn?t always enough This is exactly what John Herety has chosen to focus his young riders attention on during the team?s Australian training camp and throughout the first months of the new season. Herety?s solution to learning how to win is to give his riders as many chances as possible to practice winning, before the real racing gets underway. During the team?s extended training camp in Australia, Rapha Condor?JLT?has been taking part in the Bendigo Summer Series. The series is made up of one-hour criteriums that take place each Sunday through summer, around an 800m circuit on an industrial estate a short ride from the town center. Most weeks the field numbers between thirty to forty riders in ?A? Grade, and is made up of both local riders, with the occasional domestic Australian pro also often dropping in. The competition is enough that the Rapha Condor?JLT?riders have to work, but also at a level that allows them to focus consistently on the win. Herety?s thinking has been influenced both by the ?skills acquisition? camps that he worked on with Rod Ellingworth for the?WCPP?in the early 00?s, as well as, interestingly, his own racing days. In 1981, his final year as an amateur with the famed?ACBB?team, Herety too took part in a series of races in the South of France during their training camp.

?You were expected to win at least one if you were serious. I remember when I got my win in ? it wasn?t a big deal for my palmares, but I was delighted that I could tick it off. I hit the ground running after that. They were a higher level than these races, the riders in that team were already a few steps ahead of the young guys we have here, but the theory was the same. Learn to win and keep practicing it.?

?It takes the same skills and mental ability to beat the pros as it does to beat a local first cat. Of course you are talking about completely different levels of ability but if you strip down the finale of a bike race down to its elements, you have a number of bike racers and a line in the road that you have to get to before the others. We came here with these small races in mind, and it is important that we get the best out of them.?

AT THE RACE

The low key races have a relaxed atmosphere After a busy period of racing at the start of the camp, the Rapha Condor?JLT?riders were scheduled to race three successive rounds of the series in the final three weeks of their camp. In the second of the three races three?RCJ?riders, Handley, English and Buggle, managed to pull themselves clear after fifteen minutes with just one local rider (who was naturally quite happy to sit on the wheels) in tow. Watching from the side of the road as the break established itself, team soigneur, and former rider, Tim Kennaugh pointed out that none of the riders were yet thinking of the win.

?None of the three of them are missing turns yet ? If I was there I?d start missing turns now.?

Tim?s point is a good one. If all three of the riders rode equally as hard there could be a chance that their passenger would be fresher at the finish. It would be unlikely that three riders could lose against one, but not impossible. The best idea at this stage would indeed be, for one of the three to be a bit coy with their team mates and save themselves for the win; as Tim puts it,??they are being too nice.? Tim is of course correct. Winning a bike race requires a rider to be a little bit selfish on occasion and Herety has instructed the team that in these ?training? races, where they are clearly the strongest, they are to race against each other as much as everyone else.

?I?ve told them that they aren?t to be stupid and race against each other, but at the same time we need to see who comes out on top. I want them to be a little ruthless.?

The previous week it was English ? three times a winner in 2011 ? who took the win, and it was English who was the first to try something in this race, jumping clear from the leading foursome with ten minutes to go. It is a move that Herety, a former sprinter himself, is decidedly unimpressed with.

?Too keen. Felix is a sprinter- the fastest in the group! All he needs to do is wait??

English had just made the mistake that would cost him the race later on, eventually running out of legs with a few laps to go, and being passed by Richard Handley ? who would take the win. It?s harmless stuff in a club race, but perhaps a valuable lesson all the same. Interestingly, Herety had picked Handley as a winner while the race was still in its initial phases.

?When Rich gets the bit between his teeth he has the edge to win. He knows how to do it when he has to, but he still needs to build confidence in himself to be able to do it every time he gets there.

After the race is done and the riders sit together drenched in sweat and gulping down cold drinks, Herety takes the opportunity to run through the action and debrief the riders. His biggest issue it seems is Felix?s attack. Felix though is willing and able to explain his actions.

?We had a strong sprinter tagging onto the back of our group. It was in our interest to get rid of him sooner rather than later. At that point in the race I think it was only myself and Rich that were strong enough to hold a gap on the group, so I decided to take it up. I still think it was the right thing to do.?

English may well be right in terms of the team win, but from a personal perspective, had he let Handley go first it would have been him who won. Herety?s point is that English could work on being a little more cut-throat. Regardless of the result, English recognizes that the races are a useful part of the camp, and perhaps in his defense also provide an opportunity to try something new.

?For me personally I think it?s very similar to track racing so it?s more to refresh the memory of how to race after a long winter than learning new skills.

?Its always good fun trying different things in races ? especially out here where there?s no real pressure ? but I think we need to make sure we know what we?re doing when it comes to the real deal during the season, so practicing our roles is also important.?

Asked about his team mates English singles out Rich Handley (the race winner) as a man who has the most tactically astute racing mind amongst the new group of riders.

?All the guys are learning but when I think about who seems to be best at tactics and knowing when to make the right move, Handley comes to mind straight away. I think a lot of guys lose sight of tactics whilst they?re immersed in the race but Rich is always calculating. I like this a lot and try to do it myself.?

EXPERIENCE COUNTS

Kristian House, the team?s senior rider and most prolific winner, is also an exponent of using small races to help hone his skills. On the same weekend that Handley was winning in Australia, House was winning himself ?at home? in Austin Texas.

?Knowing how to win isn?t something that you forget, but it is something you have to learn, and something that you have to keep doing to stay good at.?

?The last race I did I had two scenarios that were different that I had to work out how to win. I did a two-day stage race, the Tour of New Braunfels, out here in Texas. On the first day seven of us came into the finish together, and I waited it out and won the sprint. The second day I was in the leaders jersey on a much tougher course, and I ended up in a twelve-man split. I had to deal with there being three guys from the same team there which was hard, but I chose to just mark the strongest one and let the others play off against each other. I knew there were guys there who were more desperate than me, so I forced them to keep it all together. I was confident, and that makes a big difference. It?s what a rider has to have to be good in those real pressure situations.?

House, still working on winning, takes the first stage of the Tour of New Braunfels

CONFIDENCE

It is confidence that is perhaps the vital ingredient for anyone to turn a winning situation into a win, and it is confidence that Herety is hoping to instill into his young riders before the season begins.

?Having four riders here who have just stepped up from the junior ranks, I consider it important that they can start to gain confidence in themselves before the year even begins. A first year senior will always be questioning when he moves up a category: how will I cope with the bigger gears? How much faster will the speeds be? How will I cope with the distance? By doing these races we can get that initial fear, dealt with early. Getting that stuff out of the way allows them to start to think, ?ok so how am I going to win now???

?Other teams tend to put riders in quite high profile events at the start of the year ? thinking that the high speeds experienced will pay off later in the year. That is only the case if the riders are physically mature enough to be competitive in those races.?

?Riders are there own worst enemy in that respect, because they are always keen to ride bigger races as a matter of status; it makes them look better if they can say they rode a pro race. It isn?t worth much if all they get from it is a look at the last twenty guys in the bunch, that won?t teach you anything about winning bike races.?

While the Rapha Condor?JLT?riders are unlikely to have things falling quite so easily into place through the year as they have at these training races, one thing is sure; when they do get the opportunity to win, they will have the knowledge and confidence to seize their chance.

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