Sky’s the Limit: Wiggins and Cavendish: The Quest to Conquer the Tour de France. Richard Moore
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Though the first six Academy riders had been offered a two-year berth, not all survived. ‘One rider left because he wouldn’t listen to instructions,’ says Ellingworth. ‘It could be the smallest thing: handlebar tape dragging off his bars. I kept telling him: “Sort your bar tape out – you’re representing Britain, look neat and tidy.” He also punctured three or four times in a few days and never went to the velodrome to get new inner tubes. He’d get up in the morning, the ride would be going at 9am, and he’d be sorting it then.
‘Some didn’t make it, but that’s normal,’ continues Ellingworth breezily. ‘You’d expect that with a group of 19- or 20-year-olds. But I think that if someone stops at that age it proves they don’t want to be cyclists. If you really want to be a cyclist, if you really believe you can do it, you’ll keep at it. It’s not about money; it’s about whether they want to do it. And the guys who really want to make it can recognise a good opportunity when it comes along. Cav recognised it was a dream situation for him to be in, so he and I hit it off pretty soon. But I take my hat off to someone like Matt Brammeier, who has stuck at it.’ (Brammeier moved on from the Academy but continued racing until he suffered a horrific crash in 2007, when he was struck by a cement lorry and broke both legs. He returned to join a Belgian team, switched his allegiance to Ireland and completed a remarkable comeback by signing with Cavendish’s HTC team for the 2011 season.)
The Academy didn’t work for some, but, as Ellingworth notes, it worked spectacularly for Cavendish. Had it not existed then he would have taken the only possible road to a career as a professional road cyclist; the old road to Europe, as followed by such British luminaries as Brian Robinson, Tom Simpson, Barry Hoban, Graham Jones, Robert Millar and Sean Yates (a road that Ellingworth and Brailsford, when they were cyclists, also followed, with less spectacular results). Fully intending to take that road, Cavendish was working in Barclays Bank on the Isle of Man to save enough money to live abroad and pursue his dream of turning professional. ‘I’d always intended to leave Barclays at the end of 2003 to dedicate myself full-time to cycling, hoping that a pro contract would be waiting for me at the end of two or three seasons in the under-23 or amateur category,’ he writes in his book. ‘Belgium, Holland, Italy, France: they all had a sprawling network of amateur clubs, many with six-figure budgets, top-notch bikes and back-up, international race programmes and often feeder agreements with the best pro teams in the world.’
Cavendish knew how tough that would be: ‘In the past, any British youngster who aspired to turn pro had relied on contacts and their own initiative; they’d had to overcome homesickness, loneliness and a language barrier, not to mention the bias foreign teams usually show towards their own riders. A few, really resilient souls had even made it, but they’d done so in spite of, rather than because of, the system.’
With the inevitable turnover of riders there was a new Academy intake at the end of the first year, including a young Welshman, Geraint Thomas. And in year two, says Ellingworth, it became blindingly obvious to him which riders had the attributes to make it as professionals. ‘Cav, Gee [Thomas] and Ed [Clancy] were just different,’ he says. ‘They stood out.’
‘It was something I definitely could only do at that age,’ admits Geraint Thomas of life in the Academy. ‘I couldn’t do it now. But it gave me so much. It taught me about living away from home and looking after myself. It was as much about lifestyle, really. It wasn’t about results, it was about learning. Even the guys who didn’t make it – I still speak to some of them, and they say that it gave them so much, whatever they ended up doing. One rider, Ross Sander, packed in cycling and moved to America to be with his dad. But I still speak to him once in a while; he’ll say the same. We owe a lot to Rod and the Academy.’ (It’s interesting to note that Sander, like Brammeier, changed nationality, in his case taking out American citizenship. Another talented young rider who didn’t appear to fit in to the British system, Dan Martin, did the same, and now represents Ireland. It means that several talented young British riders have not flourished in the British system, rejected it, and are now lost to future British squads.)
‘For me personally,’ continues Thomas, ‘the Academy only reinforced the idea that this was what I wanted – to be a pro cyclist. If you do survive it, and come out of it well, it definitely sets you up nicely for pro bike riding. But there were others, who were forced to realise that it wasn’t for them.’
With his trademark wry smile and tendency towards understatement, Thomas adds: ‘’Cos it’s not an easy sport, is it?’
Like Cavendish, Thomas remains close to Ellingworth. Indeed – and without wishing to provoke gender confusion – there is something of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark’s creation, a charismatic teacher at a girls’ school in Edinburgh in the post-war years, and the star of her novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) about Ellingworth. ‘Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life,’ was Brodie’s mantra. To those riders whom Ellingworth guided through their early years, he seems to have had a similarly major influence; like the most memorable teachers, he was far more than mere teacher. ‘I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders’ was another Brodie-ism. (But just to be clear: Brodie’s fascist undertones are not evident in Ellingworth’s approach.)
Ellingworth’s greatest strength, says Thomas, is that ‘he took no shit really. He’d say, “Get out there and earn your pennies” – that was one of his favourite lines. To me he was like the boss. To Ed he was more of a father figure. To Cav I suppose he was kind of like an older brother. He’d adapt how he was, depending on the rider. He was hard. Sometimes he just kept pushing people and they did crack, but he was good at teaching you how to look after yourself. He was a teacher, really.’
Thomas joined the Academy in time for an extended training camp in Australia. It was the winter of 2004, leading up to the World Track Cycling Championships in Los Angeles in March 2005. The trip to Australia followed the European Under-23 Track Championships in Valencia in August 2004, which represented a low point for Ellingworth. ‘I was struggling with the group, they were getting a bit wild – which can happen if you don’t control them,’ says Ellingworth. It didn’t help, perhaps, that the Academy riders were joined by others, including the female squads. Parties, or ‘gatherings’, were as inevitable as the fact that Ellingworth would catch them. Cavendish’s recollection, in Boy Racer, of becoming aware of Ellingworth, sitting on the curb of the pavement below and watching them as they threw a party in one of the apartments, is almost enough to send a shiver down the spine. Ellingworth also recalls breaking up a night-time race – not a bike race, but a running race up the fire escape steps – arriving just in time to find Cavendish wheezing and panting up the last flight, while Matt Brammeier waited at the top with a stopwatch. ‘They weren’t giving me 100%,’ says Ellingworth. ‘And if they don’t give me 100% I get a bit pissed off.’
Australia represented an opportunity to re-introduce the boot camp elements to life in the Academy, particularly since they’d be there for two-and-a-half months. Shane Sutton, now working with the track sprinters, was also there, adding some authority, and helping to oversee the work of an initiative still, of course, in its infancy, and still to produce tangible results.
After being initially based in Sydney they travelled to Bendigo, the town close to Melbourne. ‘They flew,’ says Ellingworth. ‘I drove. It was a 14-hour drive. But when I arrived, not one of ’em asked me how I was doing, or how the trip was. They were so caught up in their own little world. I didn’t want them to know anything about me; I just wanted them to show respect. I almost ripped them to pieces for that.’
Things improved. They raced in the well-established Bendigo criteriums – Cavendish winning one – and trained as they’d never trained before. ‘They were doing 250, 260km a day on the bike,’ says Ellingworth, ‘a massive workload. They enjoyed it. And they never stepped out of line. Well, there were a couple of little issues, but nothing serious. They’d be out for three, four hours in the morning, going at 5.30, 6am, to miss the heat. Then they’d do three hours on the track in the afternoon. And then a crit’ in the evening! But they were in great form. Absolutely flying.’
But in February, just a month before the World Championships, there was an