I was concerned, as long as they wrote it a thousand times. Routine, discipline, and organising your time: that’s what I was looking for. It’s like a bike race. You don’t come and say: “I’m going to start riding now.” It’s when I say; not when you feel like it.
‘So I counted how many words Cav had written: 853. Did I let him have it. I made him do it again. To be fair, he laughed. He said he knew it wasn’t a thousand.’
In the first year of the Academy, 2005, the racing programme was primarily in the UK, with the Academy riders – who raced under the Persil banner, the washing powder company being a British Cycling sponsor – fed a diet of Premier Calendar road races. The elite Premier Calendar series included a long-established event, the Girvan Three-Day over the Easter weekend, and Ellingworth’s team made a strong early impression by winning stage one, courtesy of Cavendish.
For Ellingworth, though, the education extended beyond racing; it covered attitude, too, and conduct. Cycling – road racing especially – is riddled with little acts that are officially outlawed, but often subject to officials and other teams turning a blind eye. If, for example, a rider is off the back of the peloton – after a puncture or crash – then he will often regain contact by tucking in and sheltering behind the cars that form the convoy behind. That was okay in Ellingworth’s book, as long as it was for a legitimate reason, such as a puncture or crash. ‘There was to be no cheating,’ says Ellingworth. ‘No getting in the cars if you’d been dropped; and definitely no holding on to the car. If you got dropped, you got dropped.’
The weekend of the Girvan Three-Day also underlined, for Ellingworth’s squad, their mentor’s work ethic. ‘The Girvan finished on the Monday, and on the Tuesday I had them back on the track,’ he says. ‘I took them to Belgium soon after that. We did 10 days of ‘kermesses’ [kermesses being road races on circuits typically 5–15km in length, covered numerous times, of which there can be several a day in Belgium at the peak of the season] and I got them doing a kermesse one day, a rest day the next, then another kermesse, another rest day, and so on. But the rest days would be three to four hours on the bike – nice and easy, with a café stop at the end, but that time on the bike was important.
‘There was one day in Belgium when I told them: “I want you to do three hours non-stop, then have a café stop at the end of your three hours and tootle back.” I usually followed them in the car but on that day I stayed back to do a bit of work.
‘About four-and-a-half hours later they appeared back. That seemed fine: they’d done their three hours, they told me, then stopped at a café. But later, as we were all having dinner, Cav had a camera, and he was showing all these pictures. And I happened to catch sight of one of the pictures. It showed them sitting in a café in a town centre. Well, I recognised the town and it wasn’t anywhere near where we were staying.
‘I was furious. I told them, “Don’t bullshit me.” And I made them get changed and go out and do another four hours hard. At night, with me following in the car.’
The next month, when they went to ride in a round of the British Under-23 series in Cornwall, Ellingworth issued his riders with their instructions at the start. As the riders representing the Academy – supposedly the cream of the Under-23s – they were expected to dictate the race. And Ellingworth wanted them to do exactly that; or at least try to.
‘I do not want a break to go clear in the first part of this race without one of us in it,’ Ellingworth told them. ‘If a break goes in a tough section, and we’re not good enough to go with it, that’s okay. But if it goes and we miss it because we’re not concentrating – that’s different.’
A 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:
