“Simon, let’s start with you. You and I first met in 2013 when you were running IG-Sigma Sport, a UCI-registered men’s team, but your history in our sport goes much further than that and began as a rider. Tell us how you discovered the sport. Give us an overview of your riding career.”
“Yeah, crikey, now I’ve got to admit to my age, I guess. My love of cycling started in 1982, when I was a young boy and has progressed as a rider and then various other levels to management, which is where we are now. I’ve been in the sport for many, many years, and it’s one I love and feel passionate about.”
“I think as a rider, Simon, you were on the cusp of that very early development of British Cycling from a national federation to what has become a superpower in world cycling. You were on the fringes of what later became the World-Class Performance Plan, working with Peter Keen, I think. Tell us a bit about that.”
“So, yeah, as you say, it’s an amazing situation now that British Cycling and British riders find themselves in. I was slightly on the cusp [of the World-Class Performance Plan], if not slightly before.
“I took myself to Belgium at the age of 17, 18, as a first-year senior. I’d go to races in Europe - Belgium, Italy, France - and I’d be the only British rider in these events. Now, I see the start lists and there’ll be three or four British teams. So, yeah, it’s very different now. It’s for the better.
“Peter Keen was involved. It was at a time when Chris Boardman was becoming a household name through his Olympic successes, and Peter was his coach at the time. I went down to
Chichester University, Peter’s base when he first started, for some testing.
“I got on the national squad as a result of that test. It was at a time when numbers and power-to-weight ratios [were first analysed]. I forget the exact number, but I think it was something like 5.4 watts per kilogram, but that one test got me onto the national squad at the time. It’s crazy that you do one test.”
“You, this year, I think, will celebrate a unique achievement. When you and I first met, as we discussed, you were the manager of IG-Sigma Sport, a men’s UCI Continental team that rode in the Tour of Britain. This year, you’ll be doing the same thing in a parallel field with the women’s team.”
“Yeah, so I believe that’s correct. In 2013, I was the manager, the DS of a men’s team in the Tour of Britain, and this year, it’s already been announced that our UCI women’s team, CAMS-Tifosi, will be taking part in the Women’s Tour.
“So, yeah, quite unique, I believe. The first manager, the first DS [to work] at both events, so, yeah, quite a unique and quite a proud thing for me, as well. It shows the years of
“It’s interesting, having made that shift from men’s professional cycling to starting Team OnForm, which, although it is a mixed team - it has a junior men’s team and a senior men’s team - began, I believe as a women’s team.
“You also had tremendous success with Brother UK-Tifosi p/b OnForm, now CAMS-Tifosi. You’re pretty well placed to describe the differences between managing female athletes and
male athletes. You could probably write a book on it. What’s the headline?”
Simon Howes
“I’ve been asked this question a few times really about how do I manage the boys differently to the girls. I actually find it quite a difficult question to answer because I don’t believe I do it any differently. We call it the Simon way, my way, I don’t know. They’re athletes. You mentioned that in the question. They’ve both got the same drive, the same passion, so you deal with them in the same way.
“Actually, the differences lie individually. An athlete might need telling off or a firm word, or the opposite. They might need comforting, progression and development, so you deal with
them individually. It’s not so much about male or female, it’s about individuals.”
Timothy John
“Give us a sense of the early days of Team OnForm. It’s grown rapidly. It’s a talent pipeline now to CAMS-Tifosi on the female side. How did it begin?”
Simon Howes
“As you say, it grew very rapidly. In the first instance, I’d been to a round of The Tour Series and come back and thought I would run my own team or seek to put my own team together. Obviously, when you have those initial thoughts, there are so many things that you need to put in place. There’s sponsorship, riders, management, support, volunteers - all of those things.
“The initial goal was to set up a women’s team and that has spiralled. I won’t say it spiralled out of control, but it spiralled very, very quickly from being, potentially, a six to eight-rider women’s team to, as we’ve already mentioned, a men’s team, a junior team of girls and boys. So it went from being a six-rider team to 40, I think in year one. It was mammoth task, in terms of riders.”
Timothy John
“It occupies a particular place on the spectrum between club cycling and professional cycling. It’s an amateur team - and it is a team, isn’t it? It’s by invitation. It’s not a club - but you’re operating to professional standards. Tell us about balancing those requirements. You’ve got people with full-time jobs, for example.”
Simon Howes
“It’s an amateur team. There’s no question that it’s an amateur team. The riders work part-time. Everyone involved in the team is a volunteer, so everyone gives up their own time to support the team. That said, that’s not an excuse not to be professional in every single thing we do. So it’s definitely an amateur team, no question, but run professionally and that’s really important to me. It has a club feel, but results and professionalism are the key drivers. It’s very much an amateur team with a professional set up."
Timothy John
“Tell us about that set up, because it’s the full nine yards, isn’t it? Anyone who’s been to a race and seen the Team OnForm presence would know at a glance that you’re doing the job properly.”
Simon Howes
“Some might say that we show off! It’s not showing off in any way. Having been a bike rider, I know what my expectations would have been, so the team are run to meet my expectations. If it’s not set up as how I would have wanted as a rider, I don’t believe I’m delivering the team as it should be. So we start with the gazebo. Lots of teams now do. We were, probably, four years ago, at the forefront of gazebos.”
LAUGHTER
Timothy John
“The forefront of gazebos!”
Simon Howes
“It’s now become a competition about who can bring the biggest. We talk about staff (we call them staff, but they’re really volunteers). In year one, we had a psychologist and still do now. We really take rider care as the key.
“I always say a happy rider, a happy racer is a successful rider, a successful racer. The more we can offer those riders - mechanical support, soigneur support, psychological support, and being an organised team [the better]. Organisation is massively important. Many teams aren’t as organised as they can be. We try and deliver above that, so, as you say, an amateur team with professional standards.”
Timothy John
“Rebecca, this must be music to your ears. You will have watched this from across the paddock last year. You were involved with Brother UK-FusionRT, and we’ll talk about that in-depth later, but give us a sense from a rider’s perspective about what Simon has just discussed: having that support, creating happy riders able to deliver top performance.”
Rebecca Richardson
“Yeah, so I got some experience of this with FusionRT, which was my first team. I was lucky that it was my first team because the manager, Terry Williamson, had a huge amount of experience, and it just so happened to be the most successful season that the team had enjoyed, and one that he retired from. As an introduction to the sport at team level, it was a fantastic experience.
“But you go to races and you look around and OnForm were always a team that I had looked towards and been impressed by the way that they present themselves. I’ve looked at the
pathway and the development aspects and Simon’s approach.”
Timothy John
“And, more generally, that connection between being a happy rider and a successful rider, because, of course, the major part of your career, which we’ll discuss later and in a separate podcast, is as a hill climber. The hill climb, of course, is a solo event where you’re very much running your own show. You’re responsible for your own happiness, if that’s the right phrase.
“Tell me about that connection and how you manage that pressure, that expectation, and make sure that you’re in the right frame of mind when you start the race.”
Rebecca Richardson
“Yeah, you absolutely need to be in a good mental place. It’s all about mental stability and, more than that, you need to have some positive mental aspects. Going into racing, it’s a team sport but it’s an individual sport too. You have to have your own motivations and they need to come from quite deep inside you: why are you there? What’s motivating you to race?
“For me, riding for a team for the first time, I was really motivated to be a good team player and learn some of the tricks of the trade. It gave me immense satisfaction to help team-mates who’d maybe been going through the cycles of becoming better and developing as riders and then watching them succeed: riders like Claire Steels and Emma Lewis and Molly
Patch. Actively helping them in races, covering moves and things like that, was my motivation last year and that created some happy, good feelings.
“Moving onto the hill climb scene, I came to the end of the road racing season and realised I wanted to do something for myself. I wanted some of my own successes. I started doing the hill climbs and could never have imagined where that would have taken me. Obviously, it’s taken me quite far with the wins that I’ve had and that really spurred me on for this year with the road racing.”
Timothy John
“Give us a sense of…I mean, I don’t want to get too far into hill climbing, because we’re going to discuss that separately, but tell us about the role of a specialist hill climber within a road race. How are you able to place those skills at the team’s disposal?”
Rebecca Richardson
“We did a training camp last year with FusionRT, and it was in Mallorca. It was quite hilly, and the team had some really good hill climbers there. I won’t beat around the bush: I’m one of many fantastic hill climbers, and if they came to any hill climb competition, I would be worried! It just so happens that most people are pretty tired by the end of the season and don’t appear. I’m quite humble about that.”
LAUGHTER
“In the team, there were some really good hill climbers, and, actually, there were some very nuanced characteristics about how people climb. When we practiced at the team training camp, it became quite evident where some people were stronger on a hill than others.
“For example, me and Claire Steels had quite different characteristics, but we could help each other in a race. There were a couple of occasions where I paced Claire on some low gradient climbs, where I was much stronger, where I knew I could cover any moves, and protect her going into crosswinds as well. And knowing too that she had the kick, where I didn’t,
to come over and attack. I believe it helped the results she got in a couple of races. That was really satisfying for me, yeah.”
Timothy John
“Simon, you must be looking forward to having this skill at your disposal: having somebody who understands climbing at that level. As Rebecca says, it’s a nuanced activity amid the hurly-burly of a road race.”
Simon Howes
“That’s exactly right. Whenever you look to build a team, you search for riders who have their own individual characteristics and abilities: sprinter, climber, rouleur, team player, etc. It’s very important, and that’s why Rebecca is in the team because she’s our climber. And, as we know, races vary throughout the season from a town centre crit to a hilly stage race. Obviously, it will be great when Rebecca comes to those races.”
Timothy John
“Yes. Phil, you and I, got quite a good insight last year. We went to the Vitus Pro Cycling p/b Brother UK team camp in Calpe, where they had a timed ascent: a miniature hill climb. Well, there was nothing miniature about it. It was a pretty serious climb. It was a hill climb competition within the wider context of a team training camp, and it was interesting to see the different approaches that the different riders took that day. You were helping with the timing, Phil, I seem to remember.”
Phil Jones
“Yeah, it was really interesting. That uncovers which role each rider has within the team. We had Ed Clancy. He’s just about brutal power. The character that he brought and the status that he brought was almost as important as his performance on a bike. He was really a statesman in the team, which I thought was great.
“And then, equally, they had someone like Adam Kenway, a former national hill climb champion, who was really up for it and thinking much more about his pacing. Ed was like, “Ok. I’m
just going to try and survive and get up,’ and Adam was like: ‘Yeah, I want to go for this, and it’s going to be a really good test for me.’
“I think there was no better demonstration of what each rider’s role is until you come to that moment of truth: ‘It’s an almighty great climb, and we’ve all got to try and get up it, and who is going to be quickest?’
“There was quite a bit of competition within the team as well; quite a bit of banter. I thought it was as good a team building exercise as it was in gaining data for Cherie Pridham to understand who is going well and who’s not. It was fascinating, and I was very happy I was in the team car, because if you’d sent me up there, I probably would have done the reverse of a Strava KOM and [we would have] seen who had have been the slowest time up. That would have been me.”
LAUGHTER