It is not a common occurrence to see a Scottish-born bike rider in the thick of the peloton in cycling’s grand tours.
From Robert Millar in the 1980s to Brian Smith in the 1990s to David Millar (who represented Scotland but lived most of his life outwith these shores) in the 2000s there has never been more than one Scot at the sharp end of road racing at any one time.
It is not a great ratio. And that is why one man is focused on changing this, and he is confident that in the not too distant future, Scottish professional bike riders at the top level will become far more prevalent.
James McCallum knows what it takes to become an elite bike rider; during his career, he won a Commonwealth Games medal on the track, became British National Circuit Race champion and was a regular on the podium at national road race championships.
Following his retirement in 2014, the Edinburgh man became a coach, directeur sportif and board member of Scottish Cycling and he was ideally equipped to reshape the Scottish road racing landscape, especially as he had long been troubled by the inability of this country to produce more than a few top-level road racers.
McCallum devised a plan, which has led to him setting up The Cycling Academy. It is a project aimed at building a pathway for young Scottish riders to take them to the top of professional road racing.
“Even when I was still racing, I would continually be asked ‘why is there not a professional racing team coming out of Scotland?’ and I never really knew the answer to it,” the 43-year-old said. “It’s been 20-odd years since we had a home-grown pro, and I mean a real elite pro, people who are riding at the very top level in the world and going to races like the Tour de France.
“There’s always been young riders but at some point, they all fall off a cliff. So we wondered where are they going and what’s happening to them? Because there’s no obvious, valuable path for them in this sport other than the British Cycling, Scottish Cycling track programme.
“There’s obviously varying degrees and varying layers of professionals in cycling but not a lot has been happening in Scotland to get road racers to the very top and so I knew I wanted to try to change that.”
The past year has seen The Cycling Academy start and progress being made. A training base in Linlithgow provides a hub for riders while constant dialogue with World Tour teams helps McCallum develop and tweak the training and racing programme for his riders.
He is not doing this alone, however; alongside him at The Cycling Academy is Smith, who remains Scotland’s most recent home-grown grand tour rider as pathway director, while Peter Ellen, who founded and was CEO of the renowned record shop, Fopp, is on board as managing director.
Already the signs are encouraging. With only three riders last season, McCallum’s charges scooped up five national titles this year.
“Our goal is not to create a professional team, it’s to give the riders the skill set required to get to the top,” said McCallum, who was named Scottish Cycling’s Performance Coach of the Year for 2022 as a result of his work with the likes of Finn Crockett and Cameron Mason.
“We’re now at the point we have the data to know what the riders need to be doing but we’re also realistic in that we know that they’ve also to juggle academia and everything like that.
“We want to make sure we can hand them off to a team at the age of 18, 19, 20 or whatever with as little friction as possible and make sure they have what they need and then we will, hopefully, have this conveyor belt of riders who can then come back and help inspire the next wave.
“We’re trying to create pros before they’re even on the road and we want to break down the barriers and show that it is possible.”
McCallum’s current dilemma is working out how to generate enough funding to continue growing the Academy. He estimates a budget of between £50,000 and £100,000 would comfortably allow him to run the team exactly as he wants but relying on private benefactors is always a precarious position to be in.
The recent launch of their continental apprentice fund is another step forward but McCallum is well aware that being too ambitious too quickly will likely lead to The Cycling Academy crashing and burning and so he is fighting his natural instinct to move at 100 miles an hour.
McCallum also wants to provide a holistic programme that develops riders as people as well as athletes. Too often, elite programmes are focused solely on medal-winning success, with everything else regarded as superfluous.
“We’ve created a programme for the athletes which includes everything they need; psychology, training, support – really everything a governing body would provide.
“But we also want to create cool human beings and work on their personal development as well, not purely just as riders. And they’ll have fun doing it.
“Also, there’ll be athletes who don’t want to make it so for them, we want to make sure there’s an exit strategy. Even that is quite unusual; often the thinking is get the medals then, once you’re finished, bye. For a lot of athletes, that’s the reality.”
The next year will be vital in the continuing development of The Cycling Academy.
McCallum is well aware of the challenge ahead to fulfil his ambition but he believes Scotland has what it takes to regularly produce road racers of the highest calibre. All that needs to be done is for them to be pointed in the right direction.
“The talent is there, it’s just not being harnessed,” he says. “We know which gaps need to be filled, we now just need to get the cash to allow us to fill them and that’ll help us do what we know we can do.”
