How amateur pair pushed the rules to upset the British elite
Pursuit riders exploited F1 background and crowdfunding to reach the national track squad
With UK Sport funding of roughly £30million in the run-up to Tokyo 2020, and more cash rolling in from heavyweight commercial partners such as HSBC, the Great Britain Cycling team are one of the best-funded in the world. Their talent identification programmes strive to find the best athletes from an early age and the goal is then to bring them right through the system, from academy to senior level. At the National Cycling Centre in Manchester, riders on the performance pathway enjoy access to world-class coaches, facilities, sports science, not to mention use of the velodrome itself.
So, how did two amateur riders who live in a flat-share in Derby, whose main backer is “the credit card”, and who blew most of their initial £4,500 budget last year on an unsuccessful trip to Poland, wind up being named in the GB team for this week’s Track World Championships in Apeldoorn?
The story of Dan Bigham and Charlie Tanfield, and their KGF track team, has been one of the best and most heart-warming of the past 12 months. Set up in the wake of the 2017 National Track Championships, where they raised eyebrows by winning three titles, including the prestigious team pursuit title (in a competition record time of 4min 4sec), Team KGF consist of four riders: Bigham, Tanfield, Jacob Tipper and Jonathan Wale.
Inspired by their success, they decided to see how far they could go if they dedicated themselves to their craft. They set up Team KGF, moved into a flat in Derby near to the velodrome there, and started to cast about for sponsors.
“Our initial intention was just to show what we could do, really,” Bigham explains. “Our reasoning was, ‘If you can ride a 4:04 just chucking it together at the last minute, off four weeks’ training, then how far can you go if you do everything right? If you live together, train together, nail your equipment, your strategy?’”
The answer, it seems, is right to the top. The quartet set themselves an ambitious target of a 3min 57sec in the team pursuit, a time which would make them medalcompetitive at elite level. Within 12 months, they have ridden a 3min 56sec and won a track World Cup event. How did they manage it? Basically by being cleverer than everyone else. Or “smaller and more nimble”, as Bigham describes it.
Bigham, 26, is an engineer by training. He used to work for the Mercedes F1 team in the aerodynamics department, but left in 2013 to try to take his cycling a bit more seriously. “In F1, it’s all night shifts and weekends,” he says, adding: “I didn’t think I could be anything amazing but, equally, I wanted to give it a go.”
He has brought an F1 attitude to cycling. Team KGF use £90 skin suits which Bigham helped to develop, and which he reckons are “faster than the suits GB have”. And like all good F1 engineers, he seeks out loopholes in the regulations.
“The UCI have had a few issues with our bike positions,” he admits, smiling. “We push the rules a little bit, just like anybody does, like [Chris] Boardman and [Graeme] Obree did [in the Nineties]. To me, there’s no spirit in the regulations. If you can read them in a different way and that gives you an advantage, so be it.
“They [the UCI] didn’t like our interpretation of what’s known as ‘the 10cm rule’ on the handlebars. We argued our case, it was signed off and, since, they’ve released a clarification to change how they measure our riding positions.”
“It hasn’t all gone to plan, though,” he adds. “Tipper had quite a bad race in Poland and didn’t get through the rounds. We pretty much burned all our budget just going to Poland.” How much was that? “It was £4,500, but we managed to get another £7,000 from a private donor and we also did some crowdfunding, which got the budget up to £8,500, which enabled us to go Portugal, Switzerland and Belarus over the winter.”
It was in Minsk, last month, where Team KGF beat Russia to claim gold in 3min 56.015sec.
Naturally, there has been a certain amount of jealousy from rivals and better-established national squads. But Bigham insists that, for the most part, everyone has been supportive. GB head coach Iain Dyer invited Bigham and Tanfield to train with the national squad after their fourth place at the track World Cup event in Manchester last November.
And Boardman, he says, is “really into what we’re doing”.
This week, their aim is simple, to make the GB pursuit team and win some rainbow stripes. But their success so far on a shoestring budget does beg the question: do they want to stay “nimble” and see how far they can get on their own? Or do they want to make the transition to the GB programme full time?
“Umm, how to say this?” Bigham laughs. “It’s an interesting one. I think you’ve got to be on the programme if you want to go to the Olympics, it’s a simple as that. But, equally, I think it’s really cool what we’ve done. With GB, you have the support staff, the track, the cool tech. There’s so much they’ve got that we don’t. But you don’t have the ability to do your own development. I’d like both, really.”
‘I didn’t think I could be anything amazing, but I wanted to have a go’