‘But he’s the only guy who’s won 20 races,’ Herety told Ellingworth and Lillistone. ‘You’re only saying “no” to him because he doesn’t fit the criteria – but maybe the criteria are wrong.’ Ellingworth and Lillistone appealed to Keen, who agreed in this case to apply some flexibility and that the young rider from the Isle of Man should be accepted to the Academy. Herety won the argument: Mark Cavendish was in.
‘The first time I met him properly,’ says the red-haired, freckled and youthful Ellingworth of his introduction to Cavendish, ‘I was stood outside the [Manchester] Velodrome in the car park, and I heard this car hurtling towards me. It was a gold Corsa; it had a “007” number plate and “Goldfinger” written along the top [of the windscreen], and bald tyres. I just thought, Oh my god …’
In fact, Ellingworth had encountered Cavendish previously, at his coach-led racing weekend the year before. Cavendish was there because he was on the national junior squad. ‘All I remembered from that time was that he was this barrel-shaped guy,’ says Ellingworth. ‘He had a sprinter’s position, on this yellow bike, but his set-up was all wrong. He didn’t shine. But what I do remember was that he came up to me in the car park afterwards, and said: “That’s the best few days I’ve ever had on the bike. Can I come along to the next one?”’
Ellingworth met Cavendish again when he applied to join the Academy. Eight applicants were invited to be interviewed for the initial six places. ‘There was one sneaky question,’ says Ellingworth. ‘We asked, “How did you get here today?” I thought it would tell us if they’d been paying attention; and some of them, who’d been driven by their parents or a mate, didn’t have a clue. But Cav was good; he could name every road.
‘The thing about him was that, while a lot of guys were telling us what they thought we wanted to hear, Cav said things with more passion, and he was dead upfront. He’d been working in a bank and hadn’t been doing much training. He’d put on a bit of weight and he was struggling to get it off – he was upfront about all that.
‘I remember ringing him afterwards, telling him he’d made the cut. He said, “I promise I’ll never let you down.” I said, “I just need you to work really hard.”’
A priority for Ellingworth, landed with a squad of six boys barely out of adolescence – Cavendish, Matt Brammeier, Ed Clancy, Bruce Edgar, Christian Varley and Tom White – was to establish some early principles. ‘I wasn’t too bothered about the bike riders,’ Ellingworth says. ‘My view was that we had to get the structure in place.’
That structure involved a daily routine, which, in year one, and on a typical day in Manchester, where they were based, went as follows: 7.30am, report to velodrome; 8–11.30am, road training; midday, lunch; 1–3pm, French class; 3–6pm, track training; 6pm, home.
Then there was the racing. ‘I pitched it high when we worked out the racing programme, in terms of its intensity,’ says Ellingworth. ‘It was just a gut feeling, but I was thinking that they had to do at least 80, 90 races a year, whether track or road. It didn’t matter which it was. I just wanted them to be thinking, and talking, about bike racing. So they’d be coming home in the car, talking about the bike race. Cav in particular: he’d be dissecting it. “Did you see that attack? Did you see that guy fall?” But that, for me, was them learning. The previous year they’d only done 22, 23 days of racing. That was only 22, 23 days of learning. It wasn’t enough.’
In this sense, Ellingworth’s principles derived from road racing, where a diet of regular racing is de rigueur. ‘It was track and road all year round,’ he explains. ‘We’d mix and match. But the main emphasis was skills and drills. I wanted to get their skill levels so high; because no one else in the world was working on those things in this way, in a training academy type environment.’
It wasn’t just cycling. ‘As well as the French lessons they did nutrition courses,’ says Ellingworth. ‘I used to set them homework, too – little essays. A thousand words on life in the Academy, or a thousand words on [Australian professional] Stuart O’Grady, or whatever. Most of them did those on a computer, which was good – it gives you the word count straight away.
‘Cav wrote his out by hand,’ Ellingworth continues, smiling knowingly. ‘I thought: he’s going to think I’m not going to count how many words he’s done.
‘Well, the thing was,’ Ellingworth adds, ‘I wasn’t interested in the content. All I was interested in was that they’d followed instructions and organised themselves to do what I’d asked them to do. They could’ve written “blah-de-blah” as far as I was concerned, as long as they wrote it a thousand times. Routine, discipline, and organising your time: that’s what I was looking for. It’s like a bike race. You don’t come and say: “I’m going to start riding now.” It’s when I say; not when you feel like it.
‘So I counted how many words Cav had written: 853. Did I let him have it. I made him do it again. To be fair, he laughed. He said he knew it wasn’t a thousand.’
In the first year of the Academy, 2005, the racing programme was primarily in the UK, with the Academy riders – who raced under the Persil banner, the washing powder company being a British Cycling sponsor – fed a diet of Premier Calendar road races. The elite Premier Calendar series included a long-established event, the Girvan Three-Day over the Easter weekend, and Ellingworth’s team made a strong early impression by winning stage one, courtesy of Cavendish.
For Ellingworth, though, the education extended beyond racing; it covered attitude, too, and conduct. Cycling – road racing especially – is riddled with little acts that are officially outlawed, but often subject to officials and other teams turning a blind eye. If, for example, a rider is off the back of the peloton – after a puncture or crash – then he will often regain contact by tucking in and sheltering behind the cars that form the convoy behind. That was okay in Ellingworth’s book, as long as it was for a legitimate reason, such as a puncture or crash. ‘There was to be no cheating,’ says Ellingworth. ‘No getting in the cars if you’d been dropped; and definitely no holding on to the car. If you got dropped, you got dropped.’
The weekend of the Girvan Three-Day also underlined, for Ellingworth’s squad, their mentor’s work ethic. ‘The Girvan finished on the Monday, and on the Tuesday I had them back on the track,’ he says. ‘I took them to Belgium soon after that. We did 10 days of ‘kermesses’ [kermesses being road races on circuits typically 5–15km in length, covered numerous times, of which there can be several a day in Belgium at the peak of the season] and I got them doing a kermesse one day, a rest day the next, then another kermesse, another rest day, and so on. But the rest days would be three to four hours on the bike – nice and easy, with a café stop at the end, but that time on the bike was important.
‘There was one day in Belgium when I told them: “I want you to do three hours non-stop, then have a café stop at the end of your three hours and tootle back.” I usually followed them in the car but on that day I stayed back to do a bit of work.
‘About four-and-a-half hours later they appeared back. That seemed fine: they’d done their three hours, they told me, then stopped at a café. But later, as we were all having dinner, Cav had a camera, and he was showing all these pictures. And I happened to catch sight of one of the pictures. It showed them sitting in a café in a town centre. Well, I recognised the town and it wasn’t anywhere near where we were staying.
‘I was furious. I told them, “Don’t bullshit me.” And I made them get changed and go out and do another four hours hard. At night, with me following in the car.’
The next month, when they went to ride in a round of the British Under-23 series in Cornwall, Ellingworth issued his riders with their instructions at the start. As the riders representing the Academy – supposedly the cream of the Under-23s – they were expected to dictate the race. And Ellingworth wanted them to do exactly that; or at least try to.
‘I do not want a break