Interview with Rob Hayles

Following on from my review of his autobiography Easy Rider, I was granted the chance to interview the man himself about the genesis of the book, his memories of riding professionally and why the British cyclists are experiencing such a purple patch:

- Why write an autobiography?  

To my knowledge, there has not yet been a book about the fantastic story of the rise of British cycling’s success. Plus I felt I had a great story to tell.

- What would be the characteristics/traits that set you apart from your contemporaries?  

I feel I probably had an eye for some of the detail involved that many other riders would not think about. Things like the evolution of technologies and the correct use of them. Plus I had such a long career that compared to many of the younger generation I was more self sufficient as at the start I needed to be. These days it’s not drummed into them so much.

- Reading the book, the period with Cofidis seems quite scary along with the dark times with David Millar.  Was it tough to recall such a dark period?  

Not really no. I just found the whole structure of such a high profile team so amateurish and counterproductive to the whole reason it existed in the first place. With regard to Dave. I don't have a problem looking back on those days either. I guess mainly because I feel it was ultimately to his benefit on a human side, and the benefit of cycling in general. Without admission and subsequent ban< I dread to think where Dave's life away from cycling would have led.

- If you had lottery funding from the start of your career, would you have won more major honours? 

Without doubt. But would possibly have had a shorter career. It would be easy to look back with a hint of bitterness as to what may or may not have been. I just feel proud of what I achieved when I did, plus the fact that due myself and others around me at the time, British cycling is now where it is today.

- How did the funding change your sport? 

It enabled the squad to reach out and bring in the experts in all fields to help the riders attain their goals. Also it means riders can now live year round in a better environment rather than just dip into it during very small parts of the year.

- You are an unsung member of the cycling fraternity. Who in your mind on or off the track does not get the right recognition? 

I think the ones who really deserve the recognition are the hard working staff members. They are the ones who put the hours weeks and months of work in, for us, the riders. Whereas we are the ones living our hobbies basically. We are the ones gaining the medals and the plaudits.

- Do you miss the thrill of competition? 

Without a doubt! the racing is the reason I rode a bike. The training was in the main, a means to that end. 

- What can we look forward to during the Tour de France?  And is it a blessing that Sir Bradley Wiggins is injured and missing Le Tour and so avoiding this leadership clash with Chris Froome? 

You've hit the nail on the head there regarding Brad. A great shame he is not in a position to defend his title, but with him in the team this year I feel it would have taken away important team work required for Froome's result. The Tour I feel is his to lose this year.

My thanks to Kate Green at Transworld Publishers for the opportunity to interview Rob Hayles

Easy Rider is out now on hardback and on kindle from Amazon.co.uk for £9.49

Easy Rider by Rob Hayles

If I was to ask you who was the most important person in the renaissance of Great Britain's track cycling revolution you would probably point out a few people to mention.  Your shortlist would no doubt contain Chris Boardman, Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish and or David Brailsford.

Whilst the first four names are all either Olympic or World champions and the last name is the scientific genius behind them all with the new training regimes and analytic performance.  However, there are always the nearly men, the men who came so close to glory and yet for one reason or another failed to become the household name their endeavours so richly deserved.

Rob Hayles is one of those nearly men. In spite of being the proud recipient of two rainbow World championship jerseys for the Team Pursuit and Madison in 2005 (Los Angeles) and three Olympic medals (two bronze, one silver); Hayles' name is the type you really have to know your cycling to recognise, despite his continued involvement in the sport following his retirement in 2011 - as a training partner of Manxman Cavendish or as a commentator for Eurosport or BBC Radio.

Hayles has written a biography entitled Easy Rider: My Life on a Bike; the title is a pun of course on the seminal counter-culture film directed by Peter Fonda and Denis Hopper in 1969. Whilst Hayles whilst never an anti-hero, the title is misleading as the life and career of any top level elite cyclist is anything but easy.

Hayles started out as an amateur cyclist who quickly became renowned for his speed on the track and yet he was not averse to riding on the road as he did for French team, Cofidis, tackling long stage races on the road when a team-mate of David Millar, allowing us to hear a different interpretation of the mask of Millar who succumb to drug usage in spite of being naturally gifted and heralded as a class apart.

Hayles freely admits that he hates training, and that his laid back nature could be infuriating to team-mates who continually work hard and yet do not enjoy his level of success.  In contrast to the metronomic nature of people like Boardman who are knowledgeable and precise; Hayles comes across as a carefree soul who just loves to ride his cycle - for fun, for money, for life.

Reading about Hayles attempts to make Olympic teams, his watching the new blood come through his compelling and makes you wonder what the man would have achieved if he had been able to sustain Lottery funding for himself instead of it being granted halfway through a twenty-year career.

Hayles is at pains to make clear that without the National Lottery funding that came after the complete Great British team debacle of 1996 (when only Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent won a gold medal together in rowing), Britain needed to change before a lost generation of potential was lost.

The funding allowed for more coaches, better training facilities including the construction of the Manchester Velodrome; when Hayles started there was only one in Leicester.  Now there are four nationwide including the aptly named Sir Chris Hoy velodrome in Glasgow for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, the place where Hayles fittingly concludes his book in the epilogue.

As Hayles enjoys his summit at the 2005 World Championships in Los Angeles, he is joined by a star-studded cavalcade of future talent - Bradley Wiggins, Geraint Thomas, Ed Clancy, Jamie Staff, Jason Queally, Cavendish and Victoria Pendleton.

Whilst the 2004 Athens Olympics were fantastic, the 2005 World Championships seems to be the watershed moment for British Cycling - four gold medals including the two for Hayles; one silver and one bronze giving a total of 6 putting them atop the Medal table - this would lead to the domination of the 2008 Olympic cycling programme in Beijing with Hoy's three gold medals amongst the 8 track/road Gold medals amongst 14 total - the great story goes that every member of the British cycling team flew home with an Olympic medal, except one, Mark Cavendish (who still searches for one but that's another story).

The hardest thing about reading a biography of a person whose name you may know, but be unfamiliar with, is that you have to trawl through a lot of material before you get to the good stuff such as the victories.  Hayles is not shy either to mention the drinking enjoyed by the team after the championships and why not, how often can you celebrate being the best in the world.  The book whilst a bit dour through the hard training regimes, it practically soars when the good times arrive.

Hayles writes freely and candidly letting us into his relationship with wife Vicki, a former Olympic swimmer, and how the pressure of training and competing puts on their partnership, but never making you think other than his admiration of her talent.

Whilst all biographies can be deemed as selfish, Hayles never gives the air of arrogance about his achievement - the surprise is how ignorant he is of his place in the vanguard of British cycling, every sport needs trailblazers who capture the imagination of the many and the respect of his peers.  Hayles has many friends that still compete, they should be grateful that he was there 20 years before them to make sure they have the platform and innovation of training to make them fulfil their potential, something but for a bit more luck would have done so himself.

Easy Rider: My Life on a Bike by Rob Hayles is released by Transworld Publishers on Thursday 20th June for £16.99 rrp

Hayles wrote the book in conjunction with Lionel Birnie, who covers the Tour de France for the Sunday Times and writes for Cycle Sport and Cycling Weekly

Lance and Ryan - Two Peas in a Pod

In spite of it being the last day of the Premier League season, with five teams at risk of joining West Ham United in the Championship and all the clamour and passion that familiar last day frenzy throws our way.  In spite of it being the European Rugby Cup final in Cardiff, which served up the equivalent of the Liverpool comeback with Leinster proving triumphant against a shellshocked Northampton.  In spite of the best European golfers dualling in Southern Spain for the World Matchplay title - it was two non-competing sportsman who took centre stage.

Both Lance Armstrong and Ryan Giggs have had their names dragged through the mud in recent days.  Armstrong (the 7 time Tour de France winner and spokesman for anything is possible after his winning battle against testicular cancer), was called out by former teammate Tyler Hamilton on the prestigious US show '60 Minutes' stating that both he and Armstrong injected themselves with EPO.  Hamilton has since returned a medal he won at the 2004 Olympics as a rite of passage and redemption. Whilst Armstrong remains silent on the matter except for a tweet on Thursday night after the broadcast which read, "20+year career. 500 drug controls, in and out of competition, worldwide. Never a failed test, I rest my case."


Well it does not really rest there unfortunately for Lance.  Having formally retired now from his illustrious cycling career, the feats remain in doubt in fact they have done since he returned from surgery to win the Tour; you came back from chemotherapy and won, and better than you did when properly healthy.  Now in the development of human beings, even that is miraculous.  Armstrong has these feats at stake, as well as his role as spokesman and ambassador for many charities and organisations, nevermind the endorsements he is still paid for the use of his image.  Now not only is the national exposure of Hamilton's testimony, but also Hincapie and Floyd Landis (another cheat) also state that Armstrong cheated knowingly.

As for another cheat in Europe, for the past few weeks, there has been a big campaign by freedom-of-speech lobbyists stating that the constant use of super-injunctions used by celebrities to sustain their wall of privacy.  The biggest one doing the rounds and offering lots of opinion in papers and call-in shows, is the one concerning a high profile footballer with a clean cut image had an affair with an ex-Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas.  The crux comes because Ms.Thomas has been vilified for wanting to gain income off of her stories, whilst the footballer is allowed anonymity.

Until today, when MP John Hemming used parliamentary privilege to name the footballer as none other than Ryan Giggs of Manchester United.  Giggs the 12 time Premier League winner, one of the most decorated footballers of his generation, and recipient of both the PFA Footballer of the Year and BBC Sports Personality of the Year in the last two years.  Giggs is less than a week away from the Champions League final at Wembley against Barcelona.  The clamour from the press - front and back page- will be immense to get quotes from him, and I am sure his manager Sir Alex Ferguson will not welcome the unwanted distratction to his preparations.

The problem I have with things and the irony of the situation is that you have two esteemed sportsman both nearly the same age who have peaked on the highest stage and have spent the majority of their careers in the limelight of adulation and the fine line between sportsman and celebrity.

Armstrong feels he does not have a case to answer owing to his record in drug tests, and yet he responds to accusations via the slightly anonymous method of his twitter account.  Giggs on the other hand has had his legs swept out from under him, even though the Herald on Sunday in Scotland, did produce a picture of him with his eyes blanked out to keep the guessing game going - the irony being that jokes and rumours have circulated the internet for a number of weeks implementing Giggs as the man who slept with Imogen Thomas (herself a lady of Wales - hence the affinity between the two). 

My problem with both though is that Armstong and Giggs through their established personas as role models and model professionals have let themselves down further, by not coming out to face the music.  America has had this soap opera before in it's national pasttime of baseball during the steroid era as Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa all kept quiet as the whispers grew louder - now players are freely admitting hoping that time heals better than wounds. 

Armstrong is an institution and his record is unbelievable but all the more reason to fit for it surely, by coming out in a press conference and stating categorically that he did not do it.  When the whispers first started, I felt that if it were true and lets face it, it is slowly becoming that way, that it would be the end of cycling - the greatest example of the sport would be a fraud, and leaving proper figures like Mark Cavendish with no reason.  Armstrong may not only ruin his own vaunted reputation, but also that of cycling itself.  People will switch off and turn away from the sport.

As for Giggs, for so long a quiet man is it any wonder he kept quiet for so long or wanted to keep his privacy to himself - but he would not have been the first married footballer with children to play away from home and he certainly will not be the last.

My problem is that with footballers we know what they get paid for approximately three to five hours work a week, and in this business much like heads of large corporations they should act accordingly and appropriately.  Football clubs are multi-million pound businesses and should expect their employees to toe the line in regards to conduct.  The players seek privacy yet if they were grieving over the sudden death of a family member, or had been diagnosed with a serious illness they would announce a press conference and state that they would like their privacy to be respected; so what is the difference here, come out and admit it, ask for privacy then.  We football fans are not stupid yet we do not want to be treated like cretins when it comes to matters of what we should and should not believe, especially when it is the average football fan that pays the wages of said footballers.

The old adage of straight from the horse's mouth has never seemed more appropriate, and yet we seem to have found not one but two mute stallions.