Located in the town of Aigle, close to the banks of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the World Cycling Centre (WCC) is an elite coaching and training centre for some of the most promising young cyclists in the world. Launched in 2002 by cycling’s world governing body, Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), WCC’s mission is to identify talented athletes from around the world and help them realise their potential in the four main cycling disciplines – road, track, BMX and mountain biking.

A vast majority of the athletes who train at WCC are from countries whose cycling federations lack the resources needed to help talented youngsters reach the very top. “The WCC was established as part of a UCI strategy to make sure that every cyclist – no matter where he or she comes from – has an equal opportunity to reach their full potential,” says Belinda Tarling, high performance manager at WCC. “We focus on developing nations, those UCI member countries that simply can’t offer talented individuals the infrastructure and amenities they need. The WCC has been built to provide athletes from those countries with an opportunity to compete on an equal footing with riders from more developed countries, who already have access to many first class services.”

Facilities at the WCC are impressive and include a competition-standard, 200m indoor velodrome, a BMX racing track, an athletics track, artistic gymnastics and trampoline hall, a fully equipped health club and a 500m running track. There is also an onsite laboratory, enabling WCC sports scientists to conduct anything from bioimpedance tests and spirometry to lactate testing and bike fitting. Additional facilities include a restaurant and conference rooms. WCC is also the home of UCI – the federation’s HQ is located within the compound.

Since its launch, WCC has built up a great track record in finding and developing world class talent. Athletes who have trained at WCC have achieved 34 UCI World Championship titles and three Olympic gold medals and a total of 39 assorted UCI World Championship and Olympic silver and bronze medals – as well as countless national championships. At the Rio 2016 Olympics, 14 of the riders across the four disciplines had trained at WCC.  

UNEARTHING GEMS
The WCC concept is based on identifying raw talent from across the world and bringing it to Switzerland, ensuring promising cyclists benefit from first-class coaching, training and sports conditioning. To help with this, WCC operates five satellite sites – in Japan, South Korea, India, South Africa and Argentina, which act as ‘talent spotters’.

The identification process is innovative and mixes traditional sports conditioning with performance data analysis. At the heart of it are the satellite centres and a network of indoor conditioning bikes, supplied by UK-based Wattbike, installed at each centre.

“A couple of years ago we decided we needed to have a more structured approach to our testing and talent identification,” says Tarling. “We wanted a more scientific approach to development and the identification of athletes and their progress.”

As part of efforts to improve structures, UCI signed a partnership deal with Wattbike, which resulted in the WCC coaches and technical team working together with the supplier to come up with a unique testing protocol tailored for UCI’s needs. The protocol allows the WCC team to assess and compare data of cyclists from around the world to identify extraordinary talent.

“We came up with really nice test which works really well for us,” says Tarling. “The sports scientists at Wattbike, led by Eddie Fletcher, were able to help us to work out how we would add algorithms and extrapolate data from the test.

“They also took time to talk to different teams here, such as our BMX coaches. They analysed the BMX starts and came up with a test of optimum length and resistance.”

Tarling adds that the data mined from the Wattbikes during testing can also be used to identify which riders are demonstrating the right underlying physiology to excel in a particular cycle sport, from BMX to track cycling – a unique tool in the sporting world.

COMPARING NOTES
“We now use the Wattbikes to test every athlete that enters the system,” says Tarling. “We now have comparative data from several hundred athletes over the last two years. The great benefit for us is that we can ask our coaches to test a promising athlete at a satellite centre – say, in Argentina or Korea – and we can have the data from that athlete’s performance immediately. We can then compare it to existing data sets and if it’s good we can start looking at them more closely with the view of possibly bringing them over to Switzerland to train.”

Fred Magné, director of UCI World Cycling Centre, adds that the influence of the Wattbike partnership on WCC operations has been “astounding”. According to Magné, it shows how a well-planned sports science and conditioning programme can help in other areas of operations.

“It has completely changed our strategy going forward,” he says. “It allows us to be more ambitious and reliable in our identification of talent on a global scale. For the first time in cycling history, we can legitimately compare performance data from all over the world, allowing us to reassess what constitutes world class talent.

“With the use of the Wattbikes, we are now able to identify talent in nations where it previously would have been impossible. It has opened doors that were once closed and we are very excited to see what other advancements we can make in the sports science world in the future.”

RIDING AHEAD
Around 70 per cent of the centre’s funding comes from direct grants from the UCI, the rest from private companies and other sponsorship and partnership deals. Since 2002, WCC has welcomed more than 1,000 cyclists from around the world.

“Keeping an athlete here for a month costs around 9,000 Swiss Francs – for the training, the coaches, equipment, food, accommodation and medical costs,” says Tarling. “A huge percentage of our athletes receive nothing from their national federations for their attendance here – they simply can’t afford anything.”

The partnership deal with Wattbike also means that for riders arriving from different environments – UCI has 180 member federations across all continents – the transition is less challenging.

“Standardising our operations has not only helped with identifying talent,” Tarling says. “The bikes also help with acclimatising. We’re in Switzerland but our athletes may come from Africa or South America in March – when it’s -7°C here. So we don’t like them to go straight out into the freezing temperatures because they would just get sick. We can run the first week of training happily on the Wattbikes.”