British Cycling talent team identification session

[huw williams]

Today I did my first British Cycling talent team identification session. As well as Go-Ride sessions which are aimed at improving grass-roots cycling skills, us Go Ride coaches are also an early point of contact in a new programme aimed at finding the next generation of gold medallists. We’ve learned from past mistakes that waiting for the next Nicole Cooke or Bradley Wiggins to simply walk through the door of the national cycling centre just isn’t the right way to go about things, we have to actively go out and find them. So the talent team development pathway was set up with lottery money to do just that.

Despite the monumental success of our women riders in Beijing, British Cycling is a little concerned. Behind the already high profile young riders like Jess Varnish and Lizzie Armistead there is a very serious dearth of female talent waiting in the wings in the 14-16 age catgory. The boys? No problem – the BC talent team is rammed with potential medallists at all ages. But as in so many sports, girls are much harder to find and keep in the sport

So it’s our job to go out and find them in time for glory at London 2012 and beyond. We’ve been testing girls around the country on the exact same equipment that our Olympic medallists use in training, specially designed Watt Bikes that measure the peak power in an insane, 6six-second outpouring of maximal effort. But being able to turn on the power isn’t enough – you have to know how to use it. So as well as the Watt Bikes we have a classic Kirin race set up too. Any riders showing high enough power and the ability to use it in the Kirin are recommended to the Talent Team who assess them further for potential.

So far over 3,500 girls in this age category around the country have been tested and a few dozen have met the required standard and been referred to BC, but its not easy. How do you get large numbers of young girls with possibly no interest in cycling to turn up for a test where they have to go absolutely ballistic on a bike and then do a race? Most adults wouldn’t even consider it. The best way we’ve found is through school enrichment days. This is where a school brings a number of demonstration sports into their classrooms and pupils are given the chance to experience them under the watchfull eye of the coaches. British Cycling has recognised an opportunity not to be missed and we’ve got a list of girls-only schools where we’ll be testing in the coming months.

Today I was at Beaverwood Girls school in Chislehurst where we had 10 Watt Bikes and 75 girls to test. We also had the head honcho of BCs regional Olympic Talent Team Development Pathway Programme on hand watching us so we were on best behaviour.

The Watt Bike sessions go like this:

A group of ten girls enters the room and suspiciously eye up the Watt Bikes. This is serious scientific equipment and unfamiliar to them. They nervously wander round the bikes poking bits. There is an air of quiet unease in the room. We show them how to set the correct riding position on the bikes as I explain that for 6 six seconds of their lives they are going to have to let go of everything they ever learned about being a ‘lady.’ They are going to have to get very VERY angry and absolutely murder these bicycles. They are going to go to a place within themselves which they probably didn’t even know existed. This is a particularly hard concept to grasp for 15 year olds in a posh school like Beaverwood.

I get them spinning away and explain all about warm up, peak power delivery and the fact that queen Victoria can knock out a staggering 1400 watts in her six second test from stationary, Shanaze Read even more than that. These of course are terms the girls have never heard, delivered in a language they don’t understand. They’re even more nervous now. But before they start I play the DVD. A collection of montage video clips of all the golden moments from the road and track in Beijing. It’s a very clever bit of editing, designed specifically for a crescendo that is highly motivational. It climaxes with Eminem blasting out the theme from 8-Mile, singing about how you only get one chance and you don’t want to blow it. This is language they fully understand and the mood has changed to one of heightened anticipation. The warm up stops, they find the start position of dominant leg in the 2-o-clock position on the pedal and I count them in from 5 as they push back on the saddle and breath deep.

Then WHAMMO, hell is unleashed as 10 air-resisted flywheels reach maximum velocity in total unison within seconds – the noise is deafening, made worse by the screams of the coach, goading them to the extremes of their ability. Within seconds its over and the girls are already collapsing over the bars of the bikes. This after all is a very unfamiliar sensation for them. I walk from machine to machine encouraging them to keep spinning and noting down the peak power figures. The creatine phosphate in the muscles, which powers this explosion of effort, is completely depleted but will have rebuilt to 100% within three minutes and we’re ready to go again. This time they know what’s coming and I’ve emphasised that the effort is a whole-body, rather than just legs-only affair, and that the power should come from the very core. The entire group scores improved figures in the second interval and we go once more after 3 minutes rest. And that’s it. Off they go to put their new-found aggression into practice in the Kirin while the next group of girls is ushered in.

What are we looking for? Any girls in this age bracket putting out over 800 watts would be immediately invited for further tests at Manchester. Any girls putting out between 700 and 800 watts we’ll take a good long look at in the Kirin later on because potentially they are national standard riders. Any girls putting out between 600-700 watts we encourage to pursue further cycling activities (clubs, track sessions etc) and report back to us should they do so and feel the desire to take things further.

Today I got lucky. In my third group a very, shall we say ‘sturdily built’ girl who was clearly conscious of her weight in such a sporting environment knocked out 3 sprints at 789w, 792w and 790w. Given that most girls tested are in the region of 400-500w this was hugely impressive and, probably for the first time in her life, this girl was being applauded by her peers for her athletic ability. Honestly, I was almost moved to tears by the look on her face. “Yes” she admitted afterwards “I do have a bike. It’s been in the garage for two years untouched.” I suggested she might want to get that out of the garage before the people at Manchester come calling because they soon will.

In my very next session I got the captain of the school’s soccer team. She was lean as a Cheetah, came in with a load of “what the f**k is this all about” attitude and a football under her arm. She then knocked out three peak power sprints between 700 and 730watts which given her size, suggested a staggering power to weight ratio. I took her outside where after showing incredible nouse in moving up through the group behind the pace bike and looking over her shoulder the whole time to see what was going on behind, she won the 3 lap Kirin race by almost half a lap with a sprint whose utter ferocity would certainly have worried her parents. I’m happy to report that she is VERY interested in taking things further as, in her words “I just like beating people at sport.”

So that was two potential future gold medallists in one school. The regional manager confirmed how lucky we were to have such a good day. Normally they get an average of around one referral for every three schools tested so clearly Chislehurst is an undiscovered cycling hotbed.

All in all a hugely enriching experience for me seeing the thrill the girls were getting out of a totally new experience for them. The Kirin racing was raging - girls in full make-up and designer track suits turning into win-at-all-costs racers. Amazing what putting someone in an unfamiliar competitive environment can do as long as its fun. Strangely, although almost none of the girls admitted to being a regular cyclist, 85% of them own a bike. Where and when does it all go wrong eh?

[Sylv]

Brilliant post Huw

Funny that - I was just thinking that the other day looking at my powertap - if there was a way to test not just cyclist hopefuls but just anyone, and recognize potential talent, there would be such a greater chance to find future stars. The power meter is such a great way to help in this.

There's a black guy I sometimes see in my commute on a short stretch of road going up to Clapham North, who is almost comical in the way he rides his old bike - moving about like on a bronco billy, no SPDs but big boots, always wearing what looks like oven gloves even in mild temperatures - but he accelerates like a dragster from the red lights (I've honestly rarely seen anything like that) and keeps up an insane speed all the way to where I take a left turn.

[huw williams]

Long ago the East Germans realised that the chances that the athletes with the highest levels of capability would actually find their way into the sport most suited to them was a gamble they just couldn't take. So they started testing literally every child in their school system and began fitting the athlete to the sport rather than allowing them to do what they preferred. This had a profound impact on their medal counts at world championship and olympic level. But then other countries started to adopt the same principle, mainly china and the USSR, and with much bigger populations to test from the law of averages meant they developed even greater numbers of world class athletes. So those naughty East Germans developed a systematic doping programme which made up for the fact that they couldn't compete any longer with these other countries. But it's largely accepted that East germany's original model for talent identification was excellent - what they did with those athletes afterwards was where the problems began

[Sylv]

I read somewhere that there was about 1 million chinese who met the required standards to have participated in the Beijing games.

Can't work out how the Kirin worked - are they on the watt bikes still, riding against each other?

[huw williams]

No - it's a proper Kirin format (but on mountain bikes on a 1000m flat grass oval track, with a pace bike, the whole bit

[mrP(Boonen)VT]

That's brilliant Huw - is it you riding the pace bike???

Guru P

[huw williams]

No - though I did offer to bring a BMW K1200 which wouldn't have left much of their school playing field in place

[Jon H]

Surely encouraging teenage girls to take up Kirin isn't a good idea.
[img]http://www.asianbeerguide.com/images/kirin_beer.jpg[/img]

Kierin would be much better.
[img]http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/gallery/d/5046-1/Kierin+action+2.jpg[/img]

[huw williams]

thought spelling it Kirin would likely attract more teenagers to give it a try

[Michelle]

That's just amazing. I really enjoyed reading this post.

I'm so pleased you found a couple of girls who could be really good.

And less of the taking the mic out of the sturdily built, I was just like this at school, and absolutely hated my 'farmers thighs'. I really loathed my parentage for years and years, blaming my grandmother for the legs I had inherited from her. Until I found certain sports that really needed you to have powerful leg muscles. This made me feel like my body was actually useful for something and it meant I wasn't yearning for stick thin thighs and sticking out hip bones. For the first time it made me feel like the way I was built was meaningful and had a purpose.

Lets hope that the power this girl put out, and the way you made her feel Huw, will keep resonating with her, and she really does do something with this. I wish that I had had that chance when I was younger, because I would have loved to have had this sort of opportunity.

Brilliant

[Sylv]

I think you've told us that story before Michelle

Was re-looking at the FaCT results now that I'm a little more familiar with wattage figures and well impressed with yours - have you measured your 6-secs output? Bet it's not that far from the magical 800

Please to read that Pendleton would beat Adam in a sprint too

[Sylv]

Now that is
[img]http://tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:bYMTjhhJeOUfoM:http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nW_3VIsF51s/SKZuGnrUpKI/AAAAAAAAAGE/O_KpteeQhH4/s320/GirlPower2.jpg[/img]

[Tamar]

Inspirational stuff Huw.

[huw williams]

This is a slightly different test that you couldn't replicate on a standard powertap rigged bike on a turbo

The Watt Bikes are specially designed to weigh a ton when assembled so you cannot move them from side to side with your body weight.

Its a standing start - and if you look at the power delivery downloads of Chris Hoy and Queen Vic, the peak power is always attained in the first half of the sprint (within 2-3 seconds) so you don't 'build' into it - it's a measurement of your explosive force and quite different to measuring your sprint power. If you tried this on a normal bike/turbo rig you'd be lying on your side on the garage floor in seconds or you'd be left with two halves of a bike

[Sylv]

I sure didn't mean on the turbo (yep, I'm sure the back half of my carbon bike would break in two) or even less on the rollers!

So, let's rectify - Pendleton would beat Adam - in a 3sec sprint