bicycle.net -- World Road Championships 2009 :: cycling news, product reviews, original essays, podcasts & video

Parents, who’d have them?

Sometimes I get asked by a parent if I can make their ‘little treasure’ a champion, I never know if this is a serious question. But in case you’re thinking of asking, the answer is simple, it’s a no. The only people who can make you a champion are you parents, I can make you a better cyclist, but a champion? No you need a time machine for that and sadly time travel is not taught on coaching courses.

Genetics sort of help, if you didn’t arrive kicking and screaming with the right combination of muscle fibers, lung capacity, lactic tolerance, mental toughness and skills with the podium girls (or boys) you’re pretty much never gonna make it. Oh sure you can get close, very close on a diet of insane hard work and willingness to suffer, but champions are born not made.

Well I say not made, there is one exception to this rule and that was the Iron Curtain in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

Behind the curtain all sorts of practices flourished, oh sure you had to have some basic gift, but it didn’t need to be exactly the right one for your chosen sport, sorry that should read ‘the sport chosen for you! ‘

Ever wondered why medical breakthroughs in the fight against disease didn’t occur in Russia or East Germany? I’ll tell you, it was simply that all their doctors, and research scientists were looking at ways of making their cyclists ride faster than anybody else.

It was well known for East German Doctors to watch kids in the play ground and any kid that seemed to be slightly quicker on their feet, or faster thinking, or slightly stronger was whisked off to a sports academy for ‘Testing’. What this testing did is confirm that with a little help the kid could become a world beater is the selected sport. The sport in question was I believe selected at random from a hat, so if you liked cycling there was no guarantee that you’d finish up on a bike. Even if you were male there was no guarantee that you finish up in a male sport. So imagine you’re a boy that’s pretty good at sprinting, but sadly for you the womens track squad are a little light on numbers, not a problem. All that’s needed is an extra visit to the doctors. Monday morning get you injection to make you ride faster, Wednesday get the injection that’ll make you’re voice a little higher, all sorted inside a couple of months.

It was a well known phenomenon that East German and Russian juniors would regularly take a pounding on the track and the road, then they’d vanish from the international arena for a couple of years and come back twice the size, twice as fast and promptly slaughter anyone they rode against.

Nowadays of course such practices are strictly off limits (yeah right), but maybe the UCI should look at the old East German methods and adapt them in their fight against doping. Maybe instead of banning riders they should simply say, ‘OK, you like using the needle, we’re just gonna give you a little extra injection, please be at the doctors on Wednesday morning, oh, and by the way, here’s some pink bar tape’.

So parents then. One of the down sides of coaching in a successful environment is that some parents develop unrealistic expectations (and from discussions I’ve had is true on both sides of the Atlantic). It’s not uncommon for a parent to drop their ‘little treasure’ off and expect a world beater within a couple of months. There then comes a point where they ask why the ‘little treasure’ isn’t winning the Tour de France at 12 year old, after all ‘it’s just a bike race and cycling is easy’. So you think about saying ‘They have no talent, no natural ability, they don’t like cycling, they don’t actually want to race a bicycle and are only doing this to please you, you over weight oaf, who having failed so abjectly at you’re own cycling career is trying to relive never achieved glory through you child, this is a form of abuse and I will now report you to the police’. But what you actually say is ‘Has ‘little treasure’ ever tried hang gliding?.