Brian Smith won the British National Championship twice and finished 45th at the 1992 World Champs in the same group as Sean Kelly. He didn't float through any of it. On this episode of the Roadman Cycling podcast, he talks about what actually separated him from the riders he beat, and it wasn't power numbers.
Key Takeaways
Smith's whole point about winning is worth sitting with. He says he never once won a race feeling good. Both national titles were hard, the second one came a couple of weeks out from the Giro, and his view is that anyone who says they were floating is talking nonsense. His prep for the 1992 Worlds tells you everything: no races except criteriums for five or six weeks, so he'd do five or six hours himself, salt still on his jersey, then go straight to the chain gang and ride on the front for 30 to 40 miles without missing a turn. He was replicating what a race feels like at the back end when you're already cooked. That's the session most people skip.
The MTN-Qhubeka stuff is just as useful if you coach or mentor anyone. Smith didn't bring in a sports psychologist or overhaul the African riders' training. He brought in Steve Cummings, Boštjan Hagen, and Serge Pauwels and put them on the same bus, in the same rooms, eating the same food, doing the same training. When a young rider is doing everything identically to someone who has won at WorldTour level, something changes. Suddenly the young lad thinks, if he can do it, so can I. That's it. That's the whole intervention.
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The marginal gains conversation Smith has here connects directly to the Team Sky episode. Go listen to that one first. And if you want more on the mindset side of racing, the Ben Hermans episode covers what it actually feels like inside a Grand Tour.