The British Paralympic Cycling team head coach isn’t a
household name around these shores at the moment. But if Chris Furber’s plan
comes to fruition, that could all change once the Paralympics has finished.
Furber was the mastermind behind Team GB’s success on the
bike in Beijing, as the Paralympic Cycling Team won 20 medals, 17 of them gold,
in the road and track cycling events. The cycling teams’ success accounted for
a fifth of Great Britain’s medal haul of 2008. Had the cycling team stood alone
as a country, they would have finished 9th in the medals table above
the likes of Brazil, Germany and France.
But speaking to us four months prior to the opening of the
Paralympics, Furber is doubtful that his team can repeat the success of four
years ago. “It’s going to be very challenging to do as well as we did in
Beijing, for a number of reasons. The UCI, the world governing body, have
changed the way that the medals look for the games, so there are less track
medals and more road medals. We won the
majority of our medals on the track in Beijing, so there are less medals
available to us. It’s going to be very difficult for us to be of the same level
as we were out in Beijing. It was certainly one of those unique event s where
everything went right on the day, so we’re not anticipating returning the same
level as we did in Beijing.”
After Beijing, the team didn’t rest on their laurels. During
the 2009 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships in Manchester, Britain
topped the medal winners table with 10 gold medals, three silver and one bronze
- and set five new world records to boot. Two years later in the same
competition in Montichiari, Italy, Britain repeated their success. Nine gold
medals, eight silver and a bronze saw them again top the medals table, eight
more medals than their nearest challengers China.
More reassuring for Furber was to see the team do well again
in the World Championships in Los Angeles in February. Team GB won eight gold,
seven silver and two bronze medals to again top the table to register their
dominance ahead of this summer. But why have Britain had a resurgence in both
able-bodied and Paralympic cycling?
“It’s been a combination of factors really” says Furber. “Number
one I would say is the funding that we get from UK sports, which comes from the
National Lottery, which is phenomenal. The able bodied squad get £27 million
and the Para-cycling squad get £3.8 million. Number two is a fantastic group of
athletes, who are all very dedicated and very committed to the cause, and number
three is probably the attention to detail that we have from a coaching point of
view. We try and leave no stone unturned and try and make sure we look for an
extra one percent in everything we do. Whether it’s with the bikes, our
training in the gym, our training on the track, whether it be the clothes that
we wear or the helmets we use, we are always looking for that marginal gain in
order to try and be the best.”
While the likes of Chris Hoy, Mark Cavendish and Victoria
Pendleton will be on the lips of the watching public hoping to bring home gold
for GB’s able bodied cycling team, who should we look out for when Britain’s
Para-cyclists take to the saddle? “All of them!” jokes Furber. But it’s
probably true. In Beijing, Britain collected 12 of the13 gold medals on offer
in the track cycling, while their form in the World Championships in
preparation for London suggests they will again top the medals table.
“Sarah Storey is a phenomenal athlete on our programme. She
is going for five gold medals with the Paralympic squad and I don’t think there
will be an athlete in the Games who can rival that. She won four golds and a
silver in recent World Championships so she is certainly in good form to be
able to do that. Also as a bit of an outsider there is a guy called Mark
Colbourne who is from South Wales. He’s quite new to our squad and he’s one of
our more disabled athletes in the C1 class who has been riding with us for the
last 18 months. He’s going from strength to strength and so he’s probably one
to watch out for, he’s a bit of a revelation and come to the squad late but I
think he will do very well in London.”
Storey and Colbourne are the stars of today, but the long
term goal is to inspire a new generation of cyclists. After every Olympic and
Paralympic Games, thousands if not millions of young children are inspired to
replicate their new heroes success. When London bid for the games in 2005, the
promise of an Olympic legacy was one of the reasons the Games were awarded to
them. But how can someone get spotted if they want to become a star of future
Paralympic Games?
“The easiest way to do it is to go and join your local club.
If you go on the British Cycling website, which is britishcycling.org.uk there
are links to clubs who look after Para-cyclists and have coaches that look
after them. We have a national disability series that’s run all over the
country on closed roads circuits so they’re safe so you don’t have to contend
with cars and buses. They run regularly during the summer. We also have a
National Track Championships, which are linked in with our able bodied National
Track Championships, and also a National Road Championships as well.”
“In terms of what the
National Squad does to try and identify talent, we look at those races as a
breeding ground for talent. The standard that we have at the moment is such
that if you want to be competitive at a Para-cycle level, then you need to be
able to race alongside able-bodies riders. Everybody in our squad races
alongside able-bodied competitors and does well, so if you want to be a
Paralympic cycling champion that’s the level you have to aspire to and be doing
well.”
If Team GB can replicate their form of Beijing,
then Furber and his coaching staff will not just be a household name, but the
toast of the nation.
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