Sky’s the Limit: Wiggins and Cavendish: The Quest to Conquer the Tour de France. Richard Moore
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break escaped within three miles of the race starting. The six Academy riders all missed it. What’s more, one member of that early break, the Scottish rider Evan Oliphant, held on to win. ‘We were chasing all day, because they thought they were too big, too good,’ says Ellingworth. ‘I was watching them off the line, and there they were: the Persil guys, the Academy boys, laughing and joking. And then they miss the break because they’re not paying attention. So at the finish, in full view of all the other riders who were packing up, I lined them up. And I asked each of them: “Did you see the break go?”
‘“Yes,” said the first one. I went along the whole line: “Did you see the break go?” “Yes.”
‘“Right,” I said, “why did you miss it?” They were quiet; said nothing.’
‘I said, “Get in the car; don’t say a fucking word to me all the way home.” And they didn’t.
‘We drove from Cornwall to Manchester, got back at 11.30 at night. They were unloading their bikes and I said, “Right all of you, 8.30 tomorrow morning be here and ready for a long bike ride.” They turned up and I made them do five hours of “through and off”’ – a style of riding that simulates a break in a road race, team time trial or team pursuit, where riders form an ever-rotating chain, taking turns at the front, keeping the speed high. ‘I said: “Come on guys, if you were in a pro team you’d lose your job for what happened yesterday. If your job is to get in the break and win the race and you don’t do it, you’ll lose your contract.”
‘I was just,’ adds Ellingworth almost forlornly, ‘trying to prepare ’em.’
Ellingworth has a bank of such stories, which paint him, inevitably, as a hard taskmaster and disciplinarian. With his red hair, you might imagine that he possesses a fiery temper, too. But that assumption would be incorrect. Mild mannered would be a more accurate description. Ellingworth’s approach, and his method, saw him deploy far more subtle – and far more effective – tactics than wielding a big stick. ‘I never got mad at ’em,’ he claims. ‘Never raised my voice.’
John Herety backs this up: ‘He didn’t shout and scream. He kept everything in-house. Rod had a bit of Alex Ferguson about him in that respect. You look at Ferguson – he’s supposedly a legendary disciplinarian, really tough. People talk about it; he has that reputation; but you don’t see it. From what I saw of Rod, he told them: “You will be there at this time.” I know he issued punishments – he’d have them cleaning the staff cars, or working with the mechanics for a day, or he’d make them do laps of a circuit near where I lived – but it was all done quietly and kept in-house; he didn’t get angry. He didn’t use a big stick. The way he instilled discipline was very clever.’
It was also consistent with the culture at British Cycling, particularly the culture that developed under Dave Brailsford when he took over from Peter Keen as performance director. Brailsford, who worked in the cycling industry, had answered a plea from Keen in the winter of 1997 for bikes and clothing, and then become involved in the business side of running Keen’s lottery-funded programme. ‘What Peter saw in Dave was someone very good with budgets, spreadsheets and all that kind of thing,’ says Herety. ‘Peter was bright – he could do spreadsheets – but he didn’t like them. Peter was also fantastic as a visionary, but he wasn’t brilliant in his relationships with people. Dave started working at the Manchester Velodrome [becoming operations director, effectively Keen’s number two], and he and Pete got closer. As time went on their desks got closer and closer.’
When Keen eventually decided to move on, in 2004, Brailsford stepped into his shoes. ‘It brought about a sea change,’ says Herety. ‘What changed completely was the way the staff interacted with the senior management team. Dave was a lot easier to talk to. Peter was quite distant and aloof. He hadn’t worked in business or with other people; he had been a scientist and a lecturer in a university, where he hadn’t had to listen to what other people said. But that’s what Dave was good at. And he’s good at empowering people.’
Brailsford’s journey to the top of British cycling had been circuitous: he went to race in France as a teenager, staying for four years in the St Etienne area, but achieving only modest results, failing in his dream of turning professional and one day riding the Tour de France, and returned to study for an MBA at Sheffield Business School. But he was keen to remain involved with cycling, and his path crossed Herety’s in 1993, when he answered another plea: to act as soigneur to a small professional team managed by Herety (and sponsored by a Rotherham nightclub).
Brailsford’s qualifications as a soigneur – the main responsibility being to massage the riders’ legs – were unclear, though Herety admits he adopted, by necessity, a beggars-can’t-be-choosers approach to staff recruitment. ‘If you had a massage table and a tub of baby oil, you were in,’ he jokes. But he must have made a good impression. Later that season, Brailsford was invited to act as soigneur to the British team at the World Championships in Norway.
Herety also recommended Brailsford for a job with an Essex-based bike manufacturer, Muddy Fox. ‘He went for an interview for the job of UK sales manager,’ says Herety. ‘And he walked out of that interview as European sales manager. I’m not sure they were even interviewing for that position. But Dave talked himself into it. And he went from there …’
As performance director at British Cycling, Brailsford strived to create a supportive environment, in which people – coaches, athletes – felt they could have a say, and influence decisions. That didn’t mean there were no rules or discipline; but his approach, he explained, was ‘more carrot than stick’. As he said in 2007: ‘I don’t believe in stick, but that doesn’t mean to say we’re soft. If our lads walk into training five minutes late, we say, “Sorry, thanks for coming but off you go, home.” But bawling at people creates a sense of fear and I don’t believe that brings the best out of people.’
The Academy, under Ellingworth’s stewardship, but with Brailsford taking a very close interest, was run along similar lines, though perhaps, as Ellingworth acknowledges, with a greater emphasis on ‘strong leadership’. He says that most of the riders thrived in an environment in which rules were rigidly applied. ‘Cav kind of liked it, I think,’ says Ellingworth. ‘Some are like that. It was a dictatorship style, that first year or two, I suppose. But I like that too. Look at my boss, Dave Brailsford. He can be a hard bastard; he can be real ruthless. But I like that sort of leadership, as long as you’re fair. As Brailsford said to me: our job as coaches is to make these guys better, not to eliminate them. But it had to be tough. It’s like being in the army; okay, they’re not going to war, but they’re out there racing flat out against every nation in the world, pushing and shoving and competing. You don’t want guys wimping out.
‘I was strict with some of the rules’, Ellingworth continues. ‘Punctuality was a big one. “The wheels are turning at 9am” is what I’d always say. If they were late, I said, “Right, you’re cleaning all the bikes after.” So after 160, 170km, they had to clean the bikes. The mechanics [whose normal job it was] loved it.’
In the early years of the Academy – before the setting up of the base in Quarrata – the riders were based in two houses in Manchester, one near the city’s university, the other in the grittier area of Fallowfield. As members of the Academy they had an allowance of £6,000, the money coming from lottery funding, but half went straight back to the governing body, to cover the rent on the houses. Managing their money – they lived on £58 a week – was part of the education, says Ellingworth.
As Cavendish wrote in his 2009 book, Boy Racer, the Academy provided a University of Life type experience: ‘In that first year we learned a hell of a lot about bike racing, but more about ourselves and, I suppose, even more about life in general.’ When asked if he feels he ‘missed out’ by not attending a proper university, Cavendish responds: ‘If university life was about booze and drugs and skipping lectures, then, yeah, I missed out. If it was about having a laugh and living with two mates who cooked bad food and turned the place into a shit-hole on a daily basis, then, no, I think life with Bruce and Ed [in the Fallowfield house] was a fairly decent substitute.’ (It’s unlikely that the