IT was back to earth with a bump for Jack Carlin this week as he jetted back to a snowy Manchester after a warm-weather training camp in Australia with his British Cycling colleagues. Now his next challenge is making sure none of the eager whipper snappers on the GB cycling scene are able bring him down a peg or two when the HSBC National Track Championships get under way in his home velodrome this afternoon.
Being able to call yourself best of British is quite an accolade – especially in a sport like track cycling where these islands are so strong – but Carlin has bigger things on his mind. The 21-year-old from Paisley has two silver medals to defend, or improve upon, when the UCI World Championships get under way in Poland at the end of next month. That, and the 2019 version which follows, are crucial staging posts as he bids to put himself in pole position for the Olympics in Tokyo 2020. But his quest, like that of John and Katie Archibald, all begins at the Manchester velodrome today.
“We were out in Melbourne and it was a good place to go out to build up to worlds,” Carlin said. “But it has been slightly depressing flying back into Manchester with all the snow about the place and the jetlag, I’m not going to lie! There is an indoor velodrome out there but we were using the gyms out there as well and we were on the road quite a bit just to get the miles in. While the coaches aim is for us to get fit and strong for the worlds, but our aim is to wind up our team-mates as much as we can!
“Wherever you are in the process of elite sport, you always treat the biggest race you have faced in the way you would treat the Olympics,” he added. “So my Commonwealths and World Champs is someone else’s nationals, if you know what I mean. Everyone has to go through it. Everyone has to see where everyone else in GB is at.”
Worlds selection has yet to be confirmed but having consolidated his place during 2018 as GB’s premier exponent of the individual sprint, Carlin is so sure of one of the two roster spots for Poland in that event that he has the rare luxury of declining to defend his title. Instead, he will focus his efforts on a tilt at the keirin, the event where he scooped a hugely popular bronze medal at the Emirates Arena, and defending his crown in the team sprint. With teams entering either under a team name or a region, Carlin’s Manchester-based star-studded team alongside Phil Hindes, Jason Kenny and Joe Truman will go under the prosaic name of North West ‘A’.
“It is going to be tough racing whatever race you are racing in,” said Carlin. “It is such a prestigious thing to win. The whole academy is racing along with guys like Matt Rotherham who aren’t in the programme.”
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