Gearing up for greatness: Talent identification and development in professional road cycling

Most of the teams in professional male road cycling consist not only of their professional team but also have an U23 development team. This thesis aims to extend the knowledge about talent identification and development within these U23 development teams in professional male road cycling. In Chapter 2, the presence of the relative age effect in (semi-) professional road cycling was investigated. The results showed that there is a selection bias when selecting riders for Continental development (CT) teams at the age of 19 and 20, favouring riders that are born in Q1 (January, February, March), at the expense of relatively younger riders out of Q4 (October, November, December). As this effect diminishes at professional level, it shows that this is mostly a selection error in development teams, which can give a relatively younger cyclist (Q4) fewer chances in his path to becoming a professional cyclist. In Chapter 3 we investigated the influence of anthropometrics (weight and height) of cyclists in relation to the speciality (one day, climb, sprint, time trial (TT) and general classification (GC)) of the rider and the landscape (elevation span) of their home country. We showed that the average anthropometric measures (body weight and body height) of professional cyclists in a country are correlated with the relative number of PCS points scored in GC, sprint, and climb races (but not with TT and one day races). We also showed that countries with relatively larger and taller cyclists have a less mountainous (elevation span) landscape compared to countries with relatively lighter and smaller cyclists. In Chapter 4, we investigated the role of durability in talent development. 16 semi-professional cyclists executed a performance test three times during a cycling season: PRE (December), START (February), and IN (July), including the measurement of TT performance (1-min and 10-min) in ‘fresh’ and ‘fatigued’ state. We found that TTs of 1 min are more affected by accumulated load compared to TTs of 10 min and that durability (‘fatigued’ TT of 1 min) and longer TTs (10 min) improve more during the season compared to ‘fresh’ performance and shorter TTs (1 min). This shows a similar pattern as the changes in substrate oxidation, which is therefore probably playing an important role in this. As a follow-up to this study, we investigated in Chapter 5 the relationship between training and performance, as assessed in the ‘fresh’ and ‘fatigued’ state. No clear relationship was found between higher or lower training load and performance in the 1-min and 10-min TT. However, CarbOx in the ‘fresh’ state showed a strong correlation with training volume and CarbOx in the ‘fatigued’ state showed a strong correlation with time spent at a PO below LT1 intensity. Different trends were clearly observed in the relationship between training load and the change in performance between tests for ‘fresh’ and ‘fatigued’ performance. In Chapter 6 the planned intensity and training load set by the coach was compared with the executed and perceived training intensity and training load of the cyclists, all measured using the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) score. The results indicated that the training program was executed differently from the coach’s plan, and even when the training was execution in duration as planned, the perception of the training session was different compared to the intention of the coach. In addition, the perception of similar training sessions could differ between individual cyclists. Based on the findings of this thesis, some suggestions for improving the talent identification and development process in professional road cycling are made in Chapter 7, mainly focussing on individual progression of the cyclist.