Interview with Rob Hayles

Rob Hayles is really enjoying his cycling these days – especially in the summer which is really his ‘off season’ from the track World Cup and the championship events in which he has become one of Great Britain’s most successful and consistent performers. Who wouldn’t be chiper when the sun is shinning and you’ve got a few hours’ riding around some great Hampshire lanes ahead of you? Hayles is President of  the i_Team web cycling club http://www.i-team.cc/  and, at 38, has got nothing to prove on the bike but since his wife Vicki, a former Olympic swimmer, had their first child Madeleine, he seems more at ease and determined to make the most of the remaining years of his career. Pictured Right – Rob with Gareth Peters and Geoff Loveman (Fareham Wheelers Cycling Club) at Wickham Church. Hayles during the summer months looks quite different to the gaunt, alabaster-skinned apparition of the track that most of us see on the telly when he’s being interviewed about another medal, or maybe one of his famous crashes. The hayles phizog has a good tan and he looks fit after a racing trip to Luxembourg where he captured some GB youngsters at the Fleche du Sud. “I’m having a whale of a time,” says Hayles with a roguish grin when asked about his solo sponsorship venture with Parker International “Any problems are my own and in the races I can just play off the other teams.”

Emotional: After the intensity of the winter track session which includes six days of racing , World Cups, the track World Championships and the Commonwealth Games, the traditional road race season represented something of a shift in emphasis for Hayles. There’s no let-up in the racing – Premier Calendars and crit series – but he gets a break from coaching programmes set by British Cycling’s Simon Jones. “I tend to leave Simon alone.” says Hayles. “During the summer there isn’t the day-to-day contact that we have during the winter. The track can take a lot out of me emotionally so I just ride the road for fun. Building up for the Worlds and the Olympics I feel the need to win – the hunger is there and I know what it’s like to experience it.” Today’s ride is a trip down memory lane for Hayles, who has come down south from his Peak District base, outside Manchester, to visit his parents in Hampshire and to try out some of the roads used by the new Southdowns Challenge Cyclo-Sportive that takes place this year (2006) on September 3. Hayles’s dad John, a track sprinter who hung up his bike for a 30-year career as a wrestler with the stage name ‘Killer Kowalski’, follows in his car with a friend and the brains behind the sportive, John Ellwood. You can find out more about Rob Halyles on his website www.robhayles.com

Overlord, over here: Hayles is joined by three members of the Fareham Wheelers, Gareth Peters, Phil Burton and Geoff Loveman, and the first photo-call takes place at the D-Day Memorial Hall in Southwick. Nearby Southwick House was the HQ for Operation Overlord in 1944 and where, on June 5 that year, General Eisenhower gave the green light for the invasion of Normandy the following day. The hall will be the HQ for the Southdowns Challenge and from there we track north-east in the direction of Cowplain and Buriton. Despite the ‘Southdowns’ monicker it’s true there are no really monster climbs in this area, which forms a triangle of peaceful East Hampshire countryside with Portsmouth in the south, Petersfield in the east and Winchester in the west. Three Fat Ladies: Butser Hill is the highest point, at 888 feet, but the route skirts around the north of Butser after crossing the A3 and then arrives at Langrish where the 80 miler does a northerly loop (via Charlwood, New Alresford and Cheriton) on the top of the 50 mile lap which heads west via West Meon. West Meon is well-known for being the burial place of Thomas Lord, after whom the London cricket ground is named. Guy Burgess, the infamous spy who, as secretary to the British Deputy Foreign Minister, transmitted top secret Foreign Office documents to the KGB on a regular basis, is also buried there. This is great cycling country with many quiet lanes, shaded by trees in the Forest of Bere and then more open along the soft contours of the chalk-based South Downs, which after a couple of hours, begin to take there toll on the legs. On one of the longest climbs of the ride, to the school at Ditcham after about 20 miles, Hayles maintains a strong, even pace which opens up cracks in the gallant Fareham defence and is evidence of his good form having put in some punishing rides up north with friend and former Cofidis team-mate David Millar. When the sportive takes place on the first Sunday in September it will provide a sporting, very agreeable and pretty tough challenge to riders on both the 50 and 80 mile routes. One tip is to use good tyres as some lanes can be quite gritty, especially after heavy rain.