"You can't make any plans because you don’t know where you’re going to be in two weeks’ time" - British rider highlights "lack of mental stimulation" as one of the reasons for U23 riders retiring
Cycling
Cycling stars no longer grow steadily in the professional ranks. They are launched from the junior ranks to compete against the best from the get-go... and in the survival of the fittest, the best often turn into leaders by the age of 20. And if you don't secure a coveted spot in one of the top development programmes, the dream of turning pro might as well remain just a dream.
"It’s a simple life: you ride your bike, travel to a race, race your bike, eat chicken, pasta or rice in average hotels around Europe, and it’s quite robotic," Cormac Nisbet goes on and on at Cycling Weekly. "And because of the inflexibility of it all – you can get called up to a race 10 days before – you can’t get a part-time job or study for a degree on the side, as you don’t know where you’re going to be in two weeks’ time."
Nisbet's case made waves in the peloton last year when the young Brit, along with another teammate, suddenly decided to hang up their bikes and pursue careers outside cycling. Then 19-year-old Nisbet quoted two main reasons for his decision; "the danger of the sport increased and lack of mental stimulation".
When Nisbet reflects on his history in the sport, he’s not bitter or regretful. "Without cycling, I’d be a different and weaker person than I am today," he tells Cycling Weekly. "I could sit here and say it’s a hard struggle with no social interaction whatsoever but that wouldn’t be true; cycling as a whole has given me a lot."
"My dream was to be a successful WorldTour rider," he says, "but I came to the conclusion it wasn’t for me once I reached the level I did. It was a tough decision to make, but one door closes and five more open. I have no regrets and am more excited about my future than I was about my cycling career."
There is nothing worse than getting buried in your own dream. To prevent that, he recommends to take things easy from time to time. "My advice is, don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself if the lifestyle isn’t something that you enjoy. Relax, enjoy it, and you’ll naturally discover the career path you want to go down."
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- I wouldn't be so sure of that.....our latest model runs have light patchy rain across du Nord into the early evening. Rain isn't overly heavy overnight but enough to possibly cause utter chaosslappers6612-04-2025
- Apart from a few outliers, in athletics, premature developers who held age group records didn’t get very far later and most athletes who became world stars never had early age records, I’d be surprised if in cycling it was any different.Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- You can enjoy it by all means but will you also take responsibility for the consequences of encouraging it through that? Because we all pay the price of the way it affects people, moods, behaviour, illness, violence, crime, social degeneration, etc, no real good comes of it or what do you feel there is to gain from it other than experiencing a momentary emotional high some might not be able to achieve any other way?Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- There's no reason we can't live in the real world while enjoying the doped up sport.Veganpotter12-04-2025
- Tadej definitely wasn't terribly out of the ordinary as a junior. Just goes to show what great coaching and a proper "supplement" regiment can turn someone into.Veganpotter12-04-2025
- Nice one. Not 100% officially a placebo but in my early days of group training in Mallorca I and another guy were reputed to ride without food (and once I paid the price for it having to be pushed back to base). On one particularly long outing things started getting difficult and the other guy mentioned he could really do with something to eat, one of the jokers offered him a home-wrapped snack, the latest nutritional supplement on the market and he started flying, showing and boasting all the way home how good he was feeling. At dinner, in front of 40 or so of his mates it was then revealed it had simply been a premeditated prank with a cheap doggy biscuit. Don’t know if anyone later ever considered experimenting with dogfood doping, was just happy not to have been selected as the victim.Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Veganpotter, I’d take that as a compliment, like not knowing how to manufacture a bomb :-)Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Most of us really overlook the reality of what happens physically when a bike tire goes over cobbles, we are too focused on experience, feeling and intuition to actually look at what should be a microscopic slow-motion analysis. I think it would help many to better imagine what is happening by comparing the situation to differing boat types advancing on wavy waters. You start with typical boats and play around with wave height and amplitude and then you progress onto more advanced designs, motorboats, catamarans, hovercraft, jetskis, gliders on different types of waves. Nce you can eliminate most of the wave and just skim the tops, the wave topography reduces to something minimal, this is the grail of bike design for cobbles, tough because no cobbled sector has exactly the same pattern. Does anyone know if wheel size is UCI regulated or is there a margin?Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Alsene, I tend to agree but it’s incredibly complicated to calculate who has what advantage in which particular situation as the variables are largely interrelated. As you note, the rolling resistance alone is affected by numerous criteria, all things equal it is easy to change one variable to determine whether the heavier or lighter rider has an advantage, however, when EVERY rider is free to play with ALL variables (tire pressure, bike stiffness, wheel seperation and dozens more), many of the advantages/disadvantages melt into a smaller overall a/d much harder to determine when there is not an enormous weight difference (we have riders from mid 50 - mid 90kg but most are much closer together). In the meantime each team has optimised the set-up for each rider so differences are nowhere near what they used to be 30-40 years ago but obviously there is and always will be some but without highly advanced scientific research (which no-one is likely to provide for free and investing teams will keep for themselves) I feel there is now little point in people like us trying to make any factor or point the determining one, none will ever outweigh the gains from drafting and strategy :-)Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Firstly, it’s not them, it’s their doctors and consultants and people contacting them trying to sell their wares. Secondly, now that there’s money in the sport, they can afford it, and peddlers see lucrative opportunities to separate them from their earnings, not very complicated to follow, in fact, wasn’t the whole modern thing started by someone having access to an oversized sponsor budget as there was a good marketing alignment of nationalistic and feelgood stories?Mistermaumau12-04-2025