Derby recently joined the ranks of Britain’s indoor velodromes. To celebrate its opening we ride from the track that started the British cycling renaissance – the National Cycling Centre, Manchester – to the state-of-the-art Derby Arena, in the company of
Double track world champion Rob Hayles has numerous happy memories of riding the Manchester velodrome. “I once did a naked flying lap at the end of a training session here,” he tells me. “I whipped off my skinsuit, got up to the barrier and launched myself. The joke is that it was captured on CCTV, and Diane the receptionist took the tape home with her. It’s never been seen since.”
We’ve met at the National Cycling Centre for the start of today’s ride. As we discuss the route, a succession of lean, young riders wearing Team GB tracksuits and backpacks arrives for a day’s training at ‘The Medal Factory’.
“I don’t think it’s like it was in my day,” says Rob, who joined Great Britain’s juniors back in 1989 when the national federation employed only one full-time coach and still used Leicester’s outdoor Saffron Lane track. “Today’s squad has become successful at a cost. I’m not sure they can get away with having a laugh as much as we did.”
We are here in time for the early morning ‘taster’ session. These public sessions are relatively rare because of the sheer number of Olympians and world champions queuing to train on the track at other times. Manchester is officially the busiest velodrome in the world.
“It literally is a place of work,” says Rob. “All the bits the public never see, all the work that goes into producing those world titles and gold medals happens here. If it weren’t for this track, there’d be no Team Sky, no British Tour de France winners. All the best British road riders have come through the track system.”
Derbyday
Today’s plan is to celebrate this rich track heritage, ahead of the imminent Hong Kong World Championship, by riding from Britain’s most famous indoor velodrome to its newest – Derby – with a few laps of the boards thrown in for good measure. The only thing that might scupper it is an imminent December weather front and my corider’s predilection for coffee.
While I will regularly snap away at the glorious Peak District scenery we will pass through – at least until it is smothered in mist and drizzle – the only thing Rob will take a photograph of all day is the coffee machine at one of our cafe stops.
As we set off beneath a darkening sky, Rob reminds me his time with Team GB was about more than just getting his kit off – though he also went naked in a wind tunnel to provide a baseline measurement for skinsuit testing.
In between the training that would see him win silver medals in the team pursuit at the 2000 and 2004
A Peak District winter deluge seems entirely appropriate as we celebrate British track cycling with a ride between Manchester and Derby velodromes
Olympics, plus a bronze in the madison with a young Bradley Wiggins in 2004, he was also gaining a reputation as “a bit of a fettler”.
“I’m quite good with my hands and I used to make bits and bobs for Dimitris [Katsanis, who was British Cycling’s bike designer and ‘secret squirrel’],” says Rob. “I made a carbon phone cover that he liked. After that, if any riders needed anything done with their frames or wheels, he’d say, ‘Give it to Rob’.”
As we negotiate the outskirts of east Manchester towards the rolling hills of the Peak District, I learn that Rob now has his own carbon repair business and has just finished ‘winterising’ Ian Stannard’s bike.
“It’s just through word of mouth. I get sent stuff from all over and repair it at home,” he says. “I got one package recently that had arrows with ‘This Way Up!’ printed all over it. I thought, ‘Blimey, what’s this?’ Turned out it was a wheel.”
Our first challenge of the day is the climb out of Charlesworth up Monks Road, where the gradient rarely dips under 10 per cent for over a kilometre. The first drops of rain signal the arrival of the threatened weather front as we crest the summit. There’s just time for a quick look back at the panorama of Greater Manchester before it is smudged out completely by drizzle.
Coffee and cake
Rob has insisted on a coffee stop at his house in the Peak District village of Hayfield that, conveniently, is on our route. He treated himself to a Rocket espresso machine for his 40th birthday in 2013 and enjoys playing barista behind it in a purpose-built alcove in his kitchen.
His macchiato, I can report, is first class, especially when accompanied by a home-made flapjack freshly baked by Mrs Hayles, former Olympic swimmer Victoria. While Rob goes hunting for his favourite bidon – “Vicki, have you seen my Rock bottle?” he shouts, referring to his souvenir from Rock Racing, the former US team of “reprobates and
ex-dopers who turned up for races in Hummers” – his wife lets me in on a juicy bit of gossip.
Rob’s great friend Mark Cavendish – with whom he won the world madison title in 2005 – had recently been on the phone.
“He was being typical Cav, winding me up about swimming, saying that it wasn’t fair that swimmers like Michael Phelps had so many more opportunities to win Olympic medals than cyclists did,” says Vicki. “I just said to him, ‘Yeah, but Cav, anyone can ride a bike.’ That shut him up.”
Before we leave, Rob wants to show me something in the room next door. Instead of leading me to the cabinet on the wall containing his and Vicki’s medals – “I found the cabinet in a skip and restored it” – he points to a framed nautical map of the English Channel that features a jagged line plotting the GPS coordinates of his wife’s 11-hour cross-channel swim in 2011. Rob was in Denmark commentating on Cavendish’s world road race victory at the time and this was his way of paying tribute to her achievement.
I’m feeling distinctly inferior in this household of Olympians, so tell Rob we need to get going, even if he hasn’t found his Rock bottle. Drizzle is drumming against the windows, the weather is definitely closing in.
Photographer Henry is concerned the splendour of the Peak District is going to be obliterated by the mist and cloud, so we agree on a detour – which will actually add more miles to our route – but it will take us to the nearby beauty spot of Winnats Pass while we still have sufficient visibility to actually see it.
On the way out of Hayfield – all uphill, of course – Rob tells me David
Rob has insisted on a coffee stop at his house in Hayfield that, conveniently, is on our route
Millar used to be a neighbour after the two had raced together for Cofidis from 2001-2003. “He moved here to try to sort his head out after he’d been busted,” says Rob. “He got a flat above the doctor’s surgery and played his music loud all day long. Eventually the GP, who was a big cycling nut, knocked on his door. He couldn’t believe it when he saw Dave Millar standing there. He just said, ‘Listen, you can play your music as loud as you want in the night, just keep it down during the day please’.”
We skirt Chapel-en-le-Frith, where Bradley Wiggins lived before moving to his current address in Lancashire. “They gave him the keys to the town after he won the Tour,” says Rob. “Typical Brad, he didn’t turn up to receive them.”
In view of the worsening weather, it’s a pleasant surprise to discover we are approaching Winnats Pass from the top, not the bottom. We will be tackling its 20 per cent slope in the downhill direction. Result. Even Rob is pleased. “I’ve never actually ridden up this climb in its entirety, and that’s a record I’m happy to preserve,” he says.
By the time we arrive in the village of Hope, Rob is eager for his next caffeine fix. His usual haunt is closed, so we settle for a cafe a few doors down. Rob can’t believe his luck at the sight behind the counter and is soon snapping away with his phone at the lovingly restored Fracino 2 espresso machine. I’m more taken with the mince pies and roaring log fire.
“Chapel-en-le-Frith gave Bradley Wiggins the keys to the town. Typical Brad, he didn’t turn up to receive them”
Steep or steeper?
Back on the road and I manage to get us both lost. I’d understand if Rob got impatient in view of it being so damp and cold, but instead he’s remarkably sympathetic, telling me: “When I was a junior, I went to Barcelona with the senior squad and kept having to stop to blow up a slow puncture. Eventually they said they’d roll on ahead slowly until I caught up. When I got going again, I saw someone in the distance with a backpack on and gave chase, but it turned out to be a girl on a scooter. I ended up getting back to the hotel after dark. Imagine that – the senior squad losing a 17-year-old junior!”
I ask a walker in the village of Cressbrook for directions to the pre-arranged meeting point where Henry will be waiting. I’m slightly disconcerted when he frowns and offers me the choice of “the hilly way” or “the really steep way”. It’s so cold my brain manages to get them mixed up, and Rob and I find ourselves toiling up the one-in-six gradient of Monsal Head, a regular fixture on the National Hill Climb calendar. We don’t even have the
consolation of the views, as Monsal’s famous Headstone Viaduct is almost completely obscured by low cloud.
In Bakewell, Rob insists we stop for one of the town’s eponymous delicacies, insisting they are referred to as ‘pies’, rather than ‘tarts’. In fact, the overpriced tearoom we stop at calls them ‘puddings’, though the even bigger shock is the sight of Rob ordering a mug of tea rather than his usual coffee. The cold is obviously affecting him, too.
It’s now a race against the clock to make it to Derby before it’s dark, and the Christmas trees and fairy lights of assorted picture postcard villages – notably Winster and Wirksworth – are reduced to watery smudges as we speed through to Derby.
Backontrack
More than 26 miles of Siberian spruce and 265,000 nails went into laying the UK’s newest track, though those stats are less important than the temperature as we strip off some layers – easy there, Rob - and enjoy a few laps of cycling in warm and dry conditions for the first time all day.
Riding on the velodrome’s boards is exhilarating at the best of times, but even more so in the company of a two-time world champion, even if he does decline my offer of a madison-style slingshot.
Referring to his victories on the track – which include gold and silver Commonwealth medals as well as his world titles and three Olympic medals – Rob says: “That moment on the track – when you’re going down the back straight and you’re on the skis in perfect unison – that moment is just one per cent of all the effort that’s gone into getting there. It looks beautiful, but it’s like having a bin over your head and someone banging it with a hammer.”
We finally have to make way for a taster session that’s about to start, and as we return our shoes and bikes Rob reveals he was once offered a job as a director sportif with Team Sky.
“It was great money, but I like my life just as it is,” he says. “I can be commentating [for Five Live] on the Tour, coaching on a TV programme like [Channel 5’s] Tour de Celeb, or just be at home sanding someone’s rear end.” And this time he isn’t referring to being naked.