From arguing over dishes to world domination
How a terraced house in Manchester was home to a trio of great cyclists who have broken all records
IT IS an unremarkable red-brick end of terrace, nestled amid a humdrum maze of similar properties in a working-class suburb of Manchester.
But it’s an address that, as of yesterday, can lay claim to being the greatest crucible of cycling – if not all sporting – success in British history.
For its former residents can now boast among their achievements a Tour de France victory, a world road race championship, more than 50 Grand Tour stage wins, and five Olympic gold medals.
Within these four walls some of Britain’s most successful cyclists, including Geraint Thomas, the newly crowned Tour de France champion, launched their careers while arguing over the washing up, going out drinking and hiding girlfriends when their fearsome coach turned up.
Thomas, Mark Cavendish, the 2011 road cycling world champion and winner of the second most Tour de France stages in history, and Ed Clancy, who went on to win Olympic golds alongside Thomas in the team pursuit in Beijing and London, were put up in the five-bedroom house in Fallowfield, just four miles from the National Cycling Centre, by British Cycling as they joined the senior academy.
The unknown trio, barely out of their teens and away from home for the first time, have fond memories of Whitby Road, where neighbours remember them heading out on their bikes every morning when yellow jerseys and Olympic podiums were no more than dreams.
In his book, The World Of Cycling According to G, Thomas recalled the fastidiousness of “boy racer” Cavendish when it came to household chores, in particular the washing-up of the kitchen colander. “Whenever I see a colander, I think of Mark Cavendish,” he said. “It comes from when we were sharing a house in Fallowfield. He is obsessed
with tidiness. And so, every time one of us has cooked pasta, the familiar refrain is bellowed round the house, ‘Ed! How many sides has a colander got?’ “Most people will just rinse out a colander after use. Some might give the inside a quick wipe. Only Cav – a Cav just out of his teens – expects it to be cleaned and polished inside and out until it shines like a guardsman’s boots.”
Thomas said Cavendish had made his mark by turning up off the ferry from the Isle of Man “like the original boy racer from the sticks: gold Corsa, stick-on skirts around the edge, big sticker across the windscreen saying
‘Goldfinger’.” The senior academy is said to be the ultimate “finishing school”, which aims to fine-tune athletes and ensure they are ready to dominate world and Olympic race podiums.
It was founded by Rod Ellingworth, a coach the men still turn to for advice. Few would deny its success. Mr Ellingworth told The Daily Telegraph that in 2004 and 2005 when the boys lived in the Fallowfield property, it was treated as a “halfway house” – the step between leaving home and moving to Italy to train.
He has been described as “strict” by Cavendish but insists that although “there were certainly rules”, he allowed the lads to go out at night and have visitors as long as they let him know and respected each other, not making too much noise if they came home late. The young cyclists were clearly terrified of him. Mr Ellingworth described how Cavendish hid his girlfriend in a cupboard when he once popped in unannounced.
“He was into Formula One at the time and it was on TV so I came in and sat down to have a chat,” he said. “I ended up staying there and watching the whole race. It wasn’t until several years later that I found out he had hidden his girlfriend in the cupboard.”
He said the idea behind the communal house, where they were also joined for a time by Matt Brammeier, a fivetime Irish national champion, was to get them ready for living together in confined spaces, which they do to this day when competing abroad.
Cavendish has admitted the academy was “no easy deal”. “We lived in basic accommodation in Fallowfield – it’s a house in Tuscany these days – and trained hard, without much to live on,” he once said. “It was all about learning hard work, and Rod was strict. He would hide in the bushes to make sure we weren’t slacking.”
Describing what it meant to win the Tour or an Olympic medal, he said: “It is what we have been building for since I moved into that flat in Fallowfield.”
Victoria Pendleton, a fellow Olympic cyclist, wrote in The Telegraph: “It’s incredible to think of the success those guys have gone on to have.”
‘It wasn’t until several years later that I found out he had hidden his girlfriend in the cupboard’
In 2012, Britain celebrated its first ever winner of the Tour de France, making Bradley Wiggins a household name and generating a boom in cycling of which this last weekend’s massing of bicycles in London was just one part. One year later, in 2013, Chris Froome triumphed and has won three more times since. And yesterday Geraint Thomas from Cardiff secured the yellow jersey in Paris. It is a further example of how success generates success. How many young British riders watching the examples set by this trio are now waiting for their chance to take on one of sport’s most daunting challenges?