You are here: home » news » John's Japan Plan
John's Japan Plan · 15/05/10
Over the last few hours, many more of the teams riding the 14th Tour of Japan have started to arrive here in Osaka. It feels much more like we’re at a bike race now. With the race start less than 24 hours away, the waiting is nearly over; I sat down with John Herety to talk about his initial impression of Japan and what we could expect from the team over the coming week. I started off by asking him what he knew about the race:
“It’s a race that gets a reasonable amount of coverage back in Europe. European teams like to come and ride here and Australian teams have also ridden consistently well here in recent years. So I’m looking forward to it.”
And indeed he might, with three Australians on the team, all of whom have ridden and performed well in Japan before, it’s fair to say that the team is has come here with more than tourism on it’s mind. Without giving away much about his expectations of individual riders John expanded a little on the game plan for the coming week.
“To put the race in context I suppose you could say we’re here for three big reasons; firstly because we’ve got a good squad that should be performing and participating in races at this level to both maintain and develop the rider. Secondly we’re here because our sponsors have interests here and there’s no better way for them to develop their markets than to have the team present in the biggest races on the calendar in those territories. And lastly, doing a race like this is a great way to lead the riders into the Tour Series and prepare longer term for the Tours of Britain and Ireland.”
A long stage race to prepare for some 1 hour criteriums? It seems a little counter intuitive so I asked John to elaborate.
“We like to put them through a stage race just before the Tour Series, so for some of the guys it’s this, for others it’s the Ras. It’ll hopefully mean the riders don’t fade over the course of the five week period when the Tour Series takes place which was what tended to happen to some teams last year. Riders begin to fade toward the end of the series because in effect they’re de-training because there’s so much racing going in they just don’t have time to recover and train properly. We didn’t suffer from it last year because we did Tour de Beauce bang in the middle of it (the Tour Series) but it possibly cost us the series because the squad we left behind didn’t really have the strength in depth. This year we’ve tweaked things with the Tour Series in mind but that also means they all need stage races too!”
And in terms of the Tour of Britain, a race that is still a good few months away, what is the role of a race like Japan in preparing for that?
“The grand plan for the Tour of Britain at the end of the year means I think we need to be exposing ourselves to a minimum of 1 UCI ranked race each month to make sure that we’re competitive in the Tour of Britain. Preferably the sort of 5 day stage race like this or the Ras that mimic the type of rhythm and racing we can expect in September.”
All of which moved us neatly onto the subject of the race itself here in Japan. I’d heard a little from Zak earlier in the week about the style of racing and the type of terrain, so I asked him to tell me a little more about how he would manage the team this week and what the objectives of the team were overall:
“I think that’s definitely the case, Asian racing in general is more aggressive and doesn’t form the familiar pattern of European races where breaks get established and then brought back with some kind of logic based on the terrain etc. In asia it doesn’t seem to be like that, there’s just a never say die attitude, they attack where in Europe you wouldn’t and what that means is that nine times out of ten they fail, but more frequently than in Europe they manage to pull it off. The fact that you’re on a circuit makes it different too. People learn through the laps where to make the effort and where you can make it stick. So for us it’s ideal racing in that sense.”
And what of the overall aims for the team?
“We’re here to race the Tour of Japan and do well in it.”
Briefing the riders:
“You’ll treat the first stage exacty like Lincoln, always on the front foot and with a number of riders that could have actually won. In this stage race there’s probably only one or two in the team that could win overall, so we need to look after those guys in the first few days. The two crucial stages come later in the week at Fuji and the Keirin School, that’s when the terrain will make the selection and the cream will come to the top. The idea would be in the first few days to make sure that the riders who are capable of a ride on GC go into the fuji stage close to the lead. So whilst we’ll try and be aggressive and be on the front foot. It’ll be with those two riders in mind.”
So, two GC contenders, a host of potential stage winners waiting in the wings and only a week till Tokyo. Tomorrows time trial stage sees Kristian off first from the team whilst Darren is last man away. We’ll try to keep you updated in real time with Twitter updates, follow us on Twitter via www.twitter.com/raphacondor
