IT is easy to feel that British Cycling’s headquarters in Manchester are the centre of the universe in terms of the cycling world. Certainly the ‘medal factory’ knows how to produce world and Olympic champions but there are plenty of track sprinters plugging away outside of the walls of the Manchester velodrome who are just as thirsty for success.
One such rider is Jamie Alexander who, at the weekend’s Revolution Champions League event at Glasgow’s Sir Chris Hoy velodrome, put in a string of impressive performances, including setting a personal best in the 200m. However, in the third-place ride-off in the sprint, the 24 year-old was up against one of Scotland’s brightest prospects, teenager Lewis Stewart, and while Alexander looked to have done enough to pip his younger compatriot on the line in the deciding sprint, he was ultimately deemed to have clipped Stewart and was duly disqualified.
For Alexander though, the Revolution was an opportunity to race some of the Britain’s top sprinters. Being based north of the border, the reigning Scottish sprint champion has limited opportunities to race at the highest level and with the 2018 Commonwealth Games now only four months away, the 24 year-old has his sights firmly set on booking his seat on the plane to Gold Coast.
With the likes of Olympic medallists Chris Hoy, Craig Maclean and Ross Edgar previous Commonwealth Games medallists, Team Scotland has a proud tradition of achieving success in track sprinting and there is every sign that Gold Coast cold yield more silverware.
2016 Olympic champion Callum Skinner as well as European medallist Jack Carlin have considerable pedigree and Alexander is desperate to be a part of that. To give himself the best opportunity of making Team Scotland next year, he recently gave up his job working off-shore to become a full-time athlete and he has been encouraged to see the benefits of his move already, with the Team Scotland criteria already safely ticked off. “It’s been good being full-time, things are going well,” he said.
“When I was working off-shore, I’d train on a spin bike after completing a 12-hour shift was obviously not ideal. But after just a couple of months of full-time training, I’d taken half a second off my personal-best. I’m still taking chunks off my times and racing at the Revolution has been great because the best type of training is racing.”
Alexander has plenty of incentive to continue improving. Both Carlin and Stewart have recently been invited to join the GB senior academy and as a result, have relocated to Manchester. They have improved leaps and bounds due to their involvement in GB but rather than be disheartened by that, Alexander uses his rivals progress as motivation.
“The level of Scottish sprinters at the moment is unreal,” he said. “I remember when Jack Carlin was still in Scotland – I was around the same speed as him at the time but since going down south, he has improved so much. He did 9.8 seconds recently, which is so fast. Seeing the other guys doing those times drives me on, though – I would love to be doing those type of times so it definitely pushes me on in training.”
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