Many, perhaps most – especially among the young cyclists Harris coached – were not particularly interested in the method. Cycling – sport – is all about results; what matters is where you cross the line. But Hoy was different. Even as a fifteen year old, he was fascinated by the method, the theory behind the practice, even if he didn’t always understand the finer points. ‘Chris has got an interest in anything that makes sense,’ says Harris slowly. ‘If he can see there’s a logic and an end result to it, then he becomes very interested indeed.
‘A lot of competitive athletes are prima donnas when it comes to performance testing,’ he continues. ‘They don’t treat a test any differently to a race. If they fail, they don’t blame themselves or say they’ve had a bad day. They blame you, the equipment, the world at large … but Chris, unusually, never did that, even as a youngster.’
The performance testing he is referring to came thanks to his infamous ‘Kingcycle’ machine – Harris’s equivalent of the Back to the Future time machine. When he began using this, in the late 1980s, it quickly gained a reputation as the ultimate performance-testing device; it was the holy grail of testing, in the very vanguard of sports science.
The Kingcycle: even the name could provoke fear, awe and excitement, in equal measure. In fact, to some – as Harris suggests – it seemed to assume greater importance than race results. The ‘magic number’ given out by the Kingcycle – and, in those days, only the Kingcycle – could (or so it was believed) determine ability, potential, future prospects … everything. It could provide the key that would unlock the door to the cycling equivalent of Narnia or, alternatively, confirm that you might as well just hang up your wheels and take up art, music or reading instead.
And presiding over the Kingcycle was Harris. He was the man with the secret; he held your future in his hands, on a piece of A4 paper, containing an array of graphs and numbers, spewed out of a word processor at the end of a test that was close to torture. What the Kingcycle did, in short, was to reveal a measurement that was far more significant than speed or heart rate, both of which could be easily measured by a computer or heart rate monitor, but neither of which, crucially, necessarily revealed anything of actual significance. A fast speed could be achieved with the aid of a tailwind, or gravity; and a ‘good’ heart rate – well, what constituted a good heart rate?
But power: power was the key. The power that you could generate through the pedals could not be dismissed; whether you were going uphill or down, into the teeth of a gale or with the wind at your back – none of these variables affected the power you were able to transmit through the pedals. In short, what separates Lance Armstrong and Chris Hoy from mere mortals is not the speed they ride at but the power they generate.
Back then, though, ‘power output’ was a mystical, mythical concept. Measuring it was problematic, if not impossible. You couldn’t just go into a gym, lift some weights, and measure your power – it was cycling-specific, and the only way to gauge it was through the pedals. The question remained: how?
It was Harris who came up with a solution. He may even have been the first in the UK to do so. Without being remotely boastful, he seems to suggest as much: ‘I cobbled together something, a forerunner to the Kingcycle, and reprogrammed a little Spectrum 128 computer to work with it. But because it wasn’t very well engineered it was very hit-and-miss. We were getting better at it, but then the actual Kingcycle came along.
‘I spent a lot of time going to Manchester and Derby to attend coaching seminars organized by the British Cycling Federation, and it was at one of those that I learned about it. It had been developed by an electronic signalling company. It was a breakthrough: here was a machine that could give you the magic number – it could tell you the number of watts a cyclist was able to generate and sustain before collapsing, so to speak.
‘I think I had the highest number of tests for any one machine,’ he adds with obvious pride. ‘I bought it myself. It was terribly expensive; the set-up was well over £2,000. And it was very labour intensive: finding a lab to use it in, setting it up, packing it away. You had to know what you were doing and try not to kill anybody.’
He isn’t joking. And that phrase – ‘before collapsing, so to speak’ – only hints at the truth. The reason the Kingcycle provoked fear was that it was painful. Actually, painful doesn’t begin to cover it. What happens is this: your bike is fixed into a rig; the front wheel removed, handlebars held in place, back wheel sitting on a roller. As you climb on the soundtrack would be Prokofiev’s ‘Montagues and Capulets’, the ‘Dance of the Knights’. Just the thought of it could set your pulse racing.
You begin pedalling. It’s easy. Dum-dee-dum. There is little, if any resistance, for a minute, two minutes, three minutes. Then it starts to bite. Just a small bite – a nibble. You begin to feel a little resistance. The pedals aren’t quite turning themselves any more. Still, it isn’t hard. A rhythm comes easily. Seven minutes, eight minutes. Now you’re pushing more; and your breathing isn’t so regular. Sweat pricks at your brow, causing it to itch. You begin fidgeting, moving your hands around the handlebars, searching for a position that is comfortable. But comfort is a foreign land, a thing of the past. Now it’s really starting to hurt. The sweat is running down your arms, finding its way into the crevices of your hands. You wipe your hands on your shorts and replace them. No sooner have you done so than they’re soaking and uncomfortable again.
Nine minutes, ten minutes. Now you’re pushing the pedals, pulling them up, really aware that you’re not pedalling smoothly, but forcing them round; and it’s hurting your muscles, and you’re struggling to maintain the ninety revolutions a minute that the monitor attached to the Amstrad computer, perched in front of you, is telling you to maintain. If you fall below that then the game’s a bogey, it’s all over; and the worst thing is, you know you have at least another two minutes of this.
The seconds pass very slowly, v-e-r-y … s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y. Your heart feels like it might be close to some kind of explosion; your breathing accelerates to a point where it can accelerate no more. And, all the time, the resistance is increasing; it’s getting harder, and harder, and harder to just keep pedalling. Eleven minutes. You did thirteen last time.
And now, though you are edging ever closer to the point of total exhaustion, the mind games begin – horrible mind games. You make deals with yourself. If I make it to twelve, I’ll stop. I’ll alter the rhythm: that’ll make it easier. I’ll do fifteen seconds hard, fifteen easier, fifteen hard. Oh Christ, that’s not working. Maybe if I move my hands to the tops of the bars it’ll be easier. Maybe if I straighten my back it’ll be easier. Maybe if I straighten my arms it’ll help. Focus on your breathing; focus on your breathing. And stop that song, that brain worm, playing on a loop in your head – something really irritating. Hang on, maybe if I move my hands back to the drops of the bars it’ll be easier. Twelve minutes. Shit.
‘And stop!’
The voice of Ray Harris, standing by his monitor with a clipboard. You collapse into a puddle of your own sweat, panting like a dog, and await the whirring of the word processor, and the sheet of paper with the magic number: the number that could wipe away the pain of the previous few minutes, or increase it tenfold.
Like a sadist, Harris chuckles now at the pain endured by his subjects, or victims. ‘Oh, it was the holy grail alright! But you always got guys who thought they could beat the system. And you don’t beat the system! It always gets you in the end. It’s bloody painful; sheer purgatory towards the end. There’s no way around that. Doesn’t matter who you are: it’s going to hurt. But it does give you this number at the end that tells you the kind of power you are capable of generating. And that, ultimately, tells you how good you are.
‘I had Chris in for testing, like everyone else, and I must say, he was never one who wanted to steal the book to have a look at the figures. Some did. Some would blow their top when I told them the figure. They just wouldn’t believe it and they’d come