When Debbie Wharton was Director of Operations at Welsh Cycling she took some time out on maternity leave. Turns out that was the wrong thing to do given what happened after. But whilst she was away from work she still worked. I know, cos I looked after our baby instead. A good example of this was during the 2008 Olympics when Geraint Thomas was odds on to win a gold in the team pursuit. Instead of watching it with me, BBC Wales phoned her up the day before and asked if she would come in and watch it live on the radio (on Jamie Owen's radio show) and then they interviewed her after: you can see it here.
I have the audio file too, somewhere, but Debbie may have come over a bit Sean Kelly during the interview. As she said afterwards: "I wanted to watch the race, but they kept asking me questions!". If I find it, Ill post it too.
Its interesting: this week another Maindy Flyer - Luke Rowe - has signed a contract to ride for Sky Procycling team. Unlike Geraint, Luke has a family steeped in cycling. But there's one thing they do have in common: in the 1990s and early 2000s, they, just like all the other UK professional cyclists - Mark Cavendish, Matt Brammeier, Ben Swift, Adam Blythe, and now Andrew Fenn who has also signed a contract with a pro team - were all riding the youth events on the track and road. Events like the Brite track series, the Manchester Youth Tour and the National Track Champs. It seems crazy to think that until Tom Smith - one of Geraint's contemporaries at Cardiff - wrote to Willi Tarran suggesting that they have more events for youth riders at the Nationals, that there were only a couple of events for them.
As an academic, I know that it is always difficult to disentangle the effects of different and sequential programmes. Its very easy to pin the current success of UK cycling on British Cycling's U23 academy. I have no doubt it played a role. But what has an equally, if not greater role, was a bunch of hard working volunteers who created the opportunities for youth cyclists to learn how to race and learn from each other from a young age. But for them and UK cycling would look very different now. Its a shame that doesnt get recognised more often - it'd be a great article in Cycling Weekly. But its more of a shame that at least one of those people was not afforded the respect they deserve for the hard work they did by people that knew better but lacked the guts to do anything about it.
Willi Tarran here (sorry I am anonymous) A minor correction. Tom Smith spoke to me at the National Track CHampionships as we agreed a process for getting the Under 12 and Under 14 Omnium Championships on the books. Tom was about 10 if I recall but was clear in the ideas he wanted as well as the rest of the Maindy Flyers. His Dad was at the meeting in the Grandstand but the idea was Tom's all I did was make it work
ReplyDeleteHi Willi. Thats true, although it is more complicated than that. Those ideas had already been put forward by various other people - adults - but no-one appeared to be listening. We thought that perhaps if the message came from children themselves, then the powers that be might take more notice. Im not saying that Tom didnt have his own ideas, but they werent formed in isolation from the other discussions that preceded your conversation. In fact they were very much influenced by them. Gareth.
ReplyDeleteHi Gareth
ReplyDeleteThe only time anyone ever spoke to me was as described previously. Having had an abiding interest in National Championships especially track racing for longer than I can remember, I do recall a few conversations about what could be done BUT it was more on what I should do rather than what was either required or would be supported. I know there were lots of ideas, most frankly were to aid one particular rider or other. The benefit of what Tom (and Ian) proposed was that it was not geared to a single "type" of rider. It stayed the same until the Track COmmission added a Scratch Race to the Under 14. Yes we had grown the championships so they were Boys and Girls at both U14 and U12 and now they have been included into the National FInals so we now have turned full circle.