Iain Dyer: The Man Behind the Medals Behind every great team, there is always a great coach,
spearheading the campaign for success and laying the path for future
generations to achieve greatness. For British Cycling’s Sprinters, this man is
Iain Dyer. As National Sprint
Coach, Iain was instrumental in the re-structuring of the World Class
Performance Plan (WCPP) when the Olympic Podium Programme was created after the
Athens Olympics in 2004. In addition to the
Podium Programme, two new programmes were also created, the Olympic Academy and
the Olympic Development Programme (ODP). Riders are filtered into the elite
ranks of the system from the regionally based Talent Team, with the ODP the
first step on the long ride to success. The aim of the new system
was to ensure that the team's strength in-depth in sprinting was retained
in the coming years. 
>Iain with the ODP's first star - Jason Kenny “The most important
element for the ODP is helping young riders build a foundation for a future
career. It could be skill related, or professionalism, or something physical,
and often a combination of all of them.” “All of the riders that
start on ODP have ‘something’. It might be speed, or strength or acceleration,
and as a programme we look to see how we can help them build the basics.” “It will often be
aspects that may not necessary net short term success or affect how fast they
go that year or so on, but if they’re not dealt with at a young age may come
back to haunt them later.” Even though the ODP is
aiming at long term success for riders, the medals have already started to
mount up at National, European and World level with riders such as Jason Kenny,
Anna Blyth, Chris Lyte, David Daniell and Pete Mitchell picking up Junior World
titles. “It most definitely
isn’t about generating young champions – at National, European or World level.
Becoming champions at that age group is a happy marriage of training history,
experience and physical maturity and has nothing to do with the aims of the
ODP.” 
>Dyer offering some words of advice to Chris Lyte “Competition standards
at the junior age group also ebbs and flows a fair amount, unfortunately not every
16yr old will respond to what we do and be able to develop the necessary
attributes to further a career on the bike, and that’s always difficult and
hard to accept. If it was straightforward every 18yr old would be doing 10.4
for a 200m TT; those athletes are rare!” So when scouting for
talent among the hundreds of aspiring Sprinters out there, what characteristics
does Dyer look for? “I’m a bit of a stickler
for old fashioned values like commitment, desire and work ethic – I think these
values go a long way. At the end of the day you do need to possess certain
physical qualities as well as emotional ones, and it’s hard to get away from
the traditional belief that sprinters are born not made.” “Physically there’s room
for some variance with regard to power outputs and endurance etc as riders can
choose certain gears and race strategies that suit them. However, at a young
age I would expect to see reasonable peak power outputs and good pedal speed
(for example 250rpm unloaded rev out for males 230rpm for females). Also
something simple like a vertical jump can be a good indicator of a natural
explosive ability. If you can add value to a naturally explosive rider then
you’re on the right track.” 
>Anna Blyth with Iain at the Cardiff GP “Some of the young male
riders on the programme can look back over a 2yr period and see that they’ve
added in region of 7-800w to their peak power in that time, but even initial
tests when they were younger showed the potential for explosive ability. Others
have barely shifted despite their best efforts, and there’s nothing you can do
to change that.” Being National Sprint
Coach, Dyer is in charge of riders such as the multiple World Champions Chris
Hoy and Victoria Pendleton, arguably two of the greatest sprinters to have ever
graced the track. However if he could build a sprinter out of all the world
class sprinters past and present who would form the Dyer superhuman? “I think my ultimate
sprinter would have the power output of Gregory Bauge, the commitment and
aerobic capacity of Chris Hoy, the race focus and seated acceleration of
Rousseau, the pedal speed of Laurent Gane or Ryan Bayley, the racing instinct
of my colleague Jan Van Eijden, and the showmanship of Michael Hubner” “Whereas for the
ultimate woman sprinter I think I’d choose the power output of Willy Kanis or
Shanaze Reade, the commitment, pedal speed and endurance of Vicki Pendleton,
and the racing instinct of Natallia Tsylinskaya” Building up to the
Olympics in August, life around Manchester Velodrome shall become more and more
hectic for Iain and his coaching staff as they endeavour to realise their medal
potential in 
"I am most proud of is my role helping to generate an ODP and Academy sprint programme" “To begin with I get
woken up at 6am and get the hell kicked out of me in bed by my 9month old baby!
After that there’s no chance of sleep so day starts soon after. I’ll catch up
with e-mails over breakfast, then head on in to Manchester and run the gauntlet
on the M56.” “I’d then be in the gym
overseeing the rider’s weights session. With everyone on slightly different
programmes and training cycles there’s at least a few in every day, and
sometimes as many as six or seven at the same time. Once or twice a month I’ll
even do a bit myself!” “I’ll try and grab some
lunch somewhere in the middle of the day then get down to the track ready for a
2pm session. Most sessions are 2-5pm. With the emerging Academy sprinters as
well as the senior riders some track sessions can have up to 13 sprinters on,
so it’s a fair mission to help everyone get through their session.” “At the moment we have
just returned from the Copenhagen World Cup, so a lot of the riders are
reviewing their performances with myself, Jan and Scotty to finalise their
programmes to the worlds, so there’s plenty of meetings squeezed in during the
day as well.” “I get home around
6.30-7.00pm, after another run on the M56, which is sometimes just in time to
help get the little one to bed. After a late tea I’ll have a look back at the
day’s SRM files and do a bit more e-mails & turn in about 10pm.” Such a schedule is
extremely stressful and we are all well aware of the pressure put upon riders
and the BC coaching staff to achieve their goals, but what previous experiences
does Iain draw upon in order to help mastermind the medal hauls? “To be fair we’re all
still learning, and that process never stops, so everything I have done or
experienced to date – good or bad – has gone into the melting pot to get me to
this point, and hopefully I’ll be able to move forward in the future as well.” 
Iain divides his day between all the British Sprinters Like many of the current
sprint team, Iain got into cycling through BMX in the early eighties, before
competing in a few Crits and Road races. However at an early age he realised
that the way forward was to study and research what he did in training with the
aim of improving his results. This lead him to enrol
at University and study Sports Science and due to the workload involved he
ironically could not sustain enough training to Road Race, despite still being
a 2nd Cat, consequently he turned his attention to the newly built Manchester
Velodrome. “My degree led me to
begin a career in strength and conditioning during which time I worked with many
and varied sports and teams. I also did a bit of lecturing, which led me to
begin work with British Cycling in Coach Education just as the new Level 2
award was being rolled out in 2000.” “My interest in
sprinting and strength and conditioning also continued to develop. A year later
I started as one of the first Regional Talent Coaches, and within months I
became National Sprint Coach.” Since then many riders
have gone on to achieve great things under Iain’s tutorage, but which of these
achievements are you most proud of? “The whole sprint staff
team has a role to play, but none of us pedal the bike at the end of the day.
As National Coach, the achievement I am most proud of is my role helping to
generate an ODP and Academy sprint programme over the last four years, where
previously there was no pathway in place for young sprinters.” “I’m only a coach, and I
don’t pedal the bike. I draw an equal amount of pride from delivering a really
good ODP training camp, as I do seeing a rider race well in the World
Championships or the Olympics.” With Dyer at the helm,
British Cycling’s Sprinters have grown stronger and stronger since Athens, both
in the senior and junior ranks, collecting a dozen World Titles and countless
other accolades in just four years, think what they can achieve in the future…. 
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