03 Oct Is Europe Where It Is At?

The question posed by Road Cycling recently was “Should Europe be the goal for developing our Kiwi riders? What part do places like the States, Australia, the UCI Asia Tour play?”

Although a simple question I think for kiwi’s the answer is different for every rider and requires careful planning and gradual progression into the European scene. The fact is we don’t have enough riders in NZ to take the all in approach and risk burnout of our young riders.

Without question the end goal is to be racing in Europe to finish the development of our riders. Most importantly though how do we get our riders to a level where they can cope with the rigours of the European racing scene and the realities of living and racing in Europe for a full season?

Interestingly enough recently our Team Illuminate riders Mikayla and Grace jumped into European racing at some of the hardest and biggest womens races on the European calendar including finishing off at Worlds in Austria. How did they find it and how hard was it – bloody hard but they both loved it and performed incredibly well.

So if you look at their progression over the past few seasons since leaving the junior ranks it shows that jumping straight into the European scene is not the only way to go, in fact small stepping stones are what help make this jump less risky and achievable.

It Is All About Continuously Raising the Challenges And Levels Of Racing

Looking at the program Mikayla and Grace have been through you have to look at what they have done in the years leading up to racing overseas as I believe that is a bigger part of the picture. As juniors there was fantastic racing in junior tours such as Rotorua, TA, Timaru, North Harbour as well as schools racing. Over the last few years the number of races at this level has been significantly reduced and races have been watered down to less distance, easier courses and less days for the tours. So within NZ we need to look at revitalising the racing and challenging our riders more.

Also as an U19 we identified the girls needed to start thinking of themselves as senior riders so we exposed them to overseas racing in the NRS and Bay Crits – where they got to race against and along side international riders and also used great local racing at the open level such as Tour de Vineyards an Tour De Lakes – once again a lot of these races now no longer exit. It is clear to see that international riders and especially Europeans are racing at this higher level from a much earlier age that our riders – so we are playing catchup.

We have always targeted Oceania’s and Worlds and NRS events for our riders so once again they got exposed to top riders and at Worlds a view to what the very best were doing. This is why we are such big proponents of Oceania’s and Worlds as these events give the girls the experience and exposure they need to learn and get noticed.

With the dilution of the NRS series lately this avenue for rider development is not what it used to be for this reason we targeted the US Crit scene for our riders to get more exposure to high level racing with more bang for your buck.

We believe the pathway Mikayla and Grace took with Team Illuminate was near perfect as it allowed them to progress their riding gradually without over racing and moved into higher level events over the last two years. Right from he beginning they got exposure to the worlds best at California and other top level racing in the US during their first year. In their second year it was a step up again with the team hitting the international scene with the races in Asia first (which were super competitive and aggressive), then California and then on to the European campaign. It was clear to see by watching these races the improvement in positioning and riding in the big competitive bunches that had happened during this progression from TDU at the beginning of the year through to Worlds at the end. All of this was due to the awesome racing program and progression put in place by Team Illuminate over these two years alongside the National Team race block at the beginning of the season. This is also why establishing relationships and connections with teams overseas is critical for domestic teams and Cycling New Zealand to help foster the development of our riders.

Similarly the short block of racing that Niamh did in preparation for Worlds prepared her quickly for what she was in for at Worlds and shows that kiwi riders can adapt to that style of riding quickly and once again connections and relationships where established with overseas teams who were impressed by how a young kiwi so quickly adapted to the style of racing.

What Is MGHWCT Doing To Progress Riders

At MGHWCT we believe a planned progression that exposes riders to the level of racing required by their current level of development with races that push them out of their comfort level to develop more skills, tactics and fitness. The important thing is to allow time in their race schedule to develop between these racing blocks to step up to the next level especially during the first couple of years as an U23. If you look at Grace and Mikayla that is what has happened this year with racing blocks in Jan, late March – May and finally in September. This approach allows for progression and development whereas the total immersion in racing some athletes try in European result in under performance and burnout. By creating oppurtunities for racing blocks followed by training and development and then racing again is what our young athletes need and we agree that CNZ role should be to help riders / teams take up oppurtunities to provide this – exactly like what CNZ has done with TDU / Cadel.

So we agree Euro racing is where it is at but our recommended approach is not to dive head first into it but instead aim for a progression into this style of racing by utilising racing elsewhere as well to build the skill and fitness to compete at that level.

With MGHWCT this year we are building from our experience in US to do a campaign in Europe that does exactly that. We aim to race a UCI race in Switzerland in May in combination with another UCI level race followed by 3-4 weeks of kermesses / crits based out of the Netherlands with a short training block before finishing off with a challenging UCI tour for the girls such as the Czech tour. This racing block will be off the back of some high level racing in January including Nationals, Gravel & Tar UCI and Suntour UCI races followed by the start of our Calder Stewart acing program. Our challenge is getting starts for the team in races and this is where we hope to work alongside Cycling New Zealand to get the contacts and / or National team starts in the UCI races we have targeted.