Pro-spotting in the Canary Islands

For the past five weeks, I have been lucky enough to guide cyclists in Gran Canaria and Tenerife. Though it sounds blissful, the Canary Islands happened to experience some of its worst weather in years, with high winds, torrential rain and enough snow to block large roads.

Then, thinking I would be returning to Scotland for some decent weather, I was greeted by the Beast from the East.

Anyway, I am not going to turn this into a weather column.

The Canary Islands are a popular haunt for cyclists looking for some winter sunshine to train in with hotels like The Parador drawing numerous professional teams for winter training camps.

The Parador is situated in the crater of the dormant volcano of El Teide and at an altitude of more than 2,000m.

El Teide itself is the highest summit in Spain and reaches 3,718m in altitude, so it’s no wonder that it snows there from time to time.

During my time there, spotting pros became a regular occurrence with Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas from Team Sky often waving at us as they cycled past. Astana was another big pro team out on the road while I was there.

It got me thinking about other sports and how often fans get a chance to meet their heroes while out training. Most sports people and teams will have venues where they train regularly. But more often than not these venues are not open to the public, leaving little opportunity to see them.

In the cycling world, the venues are the ampitheatres of the mountains and the roads around Europe.

For instance, I have seen riders from Laurent Jalabert and Richard Virenque in the 1990s, to Chris Froome and Vincenzo Nibali in recent months. All of them were out training and happy to smile and wave as I gave them a friendly shout of “Allez! Allez!”.

Watching these riders train and ride also highlights how good they are compared to mere mortals such as myself. In Tenerife, I saw one young rider from the Bahrain-Merida team riding intervals, on the short, but incredibly steep climb out from Masca to Santiago.

In the time it took me to reach the summit, he had been up to the top and back down again, before lapping me for good measure.

I looked like a sweat-soaked rag, drooped over my handlebars while he sauntered past looking like he was on a wee recovery spin. On another occasion, I saw six riders from Team Sky descending at speed down the 30km descent to Orotava. Their formation was a sight to behold; they were tightly packed in a two-up line, with wheels, front and back only centimetres from their teammates. Maintaining such a tightly-packed bunch on the descent must have taken an enormous amount of skill and concentration, but they rode past with a friendly hello and then continued chatting among themselves.

Road cycling is often seen as a sport that doesn’t require a huge amount of technical skill, as opposed to sports like tennis, football, or even mountain biking. Fitness is considered more of a determining factor of success, and that is true to a point, but being in fine fettle will only take you so far. Technique plays a huge part too – the pros are paid to practice and make it look easy, but amateurs can watch and learn.

Looking at how a professional rider holds himself on the bike, watching how they pedal fluidly and how they move their weight around a bike on a descent and then practising to replicate that in your own riding will reap benefits and make your riding more enjoyable.

You may even be mistaken for a pro next time you are out riding in Tenerife with your Team Sky replica kit on.

Team Astana out training in Tenerife.