Canadian Cycling Magazine Podcast

Five years ago, on June 3, 2016, Jocelyn Lovell died. During his heyday in the 1970s, he was a supreme bike handler and race tactician. His skills got him more than 35 national titles in various events on the road and the track. He won gold medals at the Commonwealth Games and Pan Am Games and silver in the kilo at the track world championships in Munich in 1978. Lovell was smart, funny, feisty and often mean. He got busted for stealing cookies, and was dealt a six-month sanction. He also swiped an assault rifle as a prank during the 1977 road world championships in Venezuela and got away with it.

On Aug. 4, 1983, Lovell was out on a training ride northwest of Toronto, when a driver of a dump truck hit him. The star cyclist then became a quadriplegic. In the following years, he dedicated himself to the cause of finding a cure for spinal-cord injuries.

In this episode, which comes out on the anniversary of Lovell’s death, three top Canadian cyclists who were influenced by Lovell—Gordon Singleton, Steve Bauer and Michael Barry—remember the complicated figure who is the first modern hero of Canadian cycling. 

How much coffee does Gunnar Holmgren travel with for a two-month stint of racing cross country in Europe? A lot. In this episode of the Canadian Cycling Magazine Podcast, the under-23 rider from Orillia, Ont., who’s with the Quebec-based Pivot Cycles-OTE, not only discusses coffee, but World Cup mountain biking, ambitious cooking exploits, ambitious cyclocross projects and figure skating. Yes. Figure skating. Before Holmgren started to really focus on mountain biking and cyclocross at around age 13, he was a serious figure skater. Since totally switching to bikes, he’s won the Canada Cup overall as a junior. He’s also been a national cyclocross champion three times: twice in under-23 and once as a junior. So tune in for a conversation with barista, cook, coach, but most of all, racer—Gunnar Holmgren.

Lucas Cruz races for the Norco Factory Downhill team. As a junior, he was national champion in 2018. In 2019, he was third overall in the junior World Cup series and just 0.01 seconds off the podium at the Mont-Sainte-Anne world championships. He joined the elite downhill ranks in 2020. At last year’s Crankworx Summer Series, he won the Kicking Horse Dual Slalom. 

Cruz seems like someone who’s always on the go. He not only races DH, but he skis, snowmobiles, hunts and rides dirt bikes. That list might only scratch the surface of his pursuits. Cruz discusses these many activities, as well as his days racing BMX, a highly influential kids program run out of Whistler and the legacy of Steve Smith. 

He also talks about the importance of having fun, which he really seems to take to heart.

You’re probably familiar with Svein Tuft’s legendary tales, such as the time he used a broken hockey stick to chase away a wolf that was menacing him and his dog, or how he had a hairy mountaineering descent in the rain. But what used to freak him out? Well, it’s not wolves or slippery heights.

Tuft retired from professional road cycling at the end of 2019. In November 2020, the Langley B.C., native moved back to his hometown with his family after living in Andorra for eight years. In this discussion, he gets into all the reasons and challenges of that move. He speaks about what he likes about being back in B.C. and what he misses about the small European country.

Things have been pretty busy for Tuft in his retirement. Near the beginning of April, he featured in a short video. He has a new podcast with his recently retired teammate Ryan Anderson. Their pod is called Back on the Bus. In March, Tuft and his wife Justine welcomed their second child, Heidi, who is the little sister to their son Gunnar. Tuft talks about the tricky business of balancing his drive and passion of exploring on his bike with the importance of being home and raising children. He also discusses why a job as a sport director with his old WorldTour team wasn’t for him. He has ideas about what can make older riders with day jobs faster. And he tells a bit about a forthcoming book. The discussion covers a lot of ground. Tuft has a lot of wisdom to share. 

Like many Canadian cross country riders, Haley Smith has been doing a lot riding on the trails around Victoria. The Ontario mountain biker and her husband, who is also her Norco Factory teammate, Andrew L’Esperance, have been on the West Coast since early January. It’s the place to train for the season ahead because international travel is not an easy option right now.

Smith is heading abroad soon, however. In about mid-April, she and L’Esperance will go to Europe to start racing. The big targets are the World Cup races in Germany and the Czech Republic. Results at those events could affect selection for the Olympics. While the chances of Smith representing Canada in Tokyo this summer are good, partly because of her third-place finish at the World Cup in Nové Město in 2019,  nothing is totally certain.

In January, Smith published a story about her struggles with mental health. In the past, she’s spoken about the problems she faced as a teenager and how, for the most part, she overcame them. But in 2020, her struggles grew more and more serious. Smith is always incredibly articulate when she discusses mental health. She’s honest and insightful, even when she’s overwhelmed with emotion, which you will hear in this interview. So get ready to tackle some big topics, as well as some big jumps, with mountain biker Haley Smith.

At 6 p.m. on March 12, Lucy Hempstead climbed onto her bike, which was connected to her trainer, and started pedalling. She kept pedalling for 24 hours. At 6 p.m. the following day, she set a distance record, which is currently in the process of being ratified by Guinness World Records.

Hempstead is from Ottawa and is a former runner. She’s faced anxiety, depression, an eating disorder, burnout and broken bones. Now, things are looking more positive. Her discovery of cycling is part of that complex change. She may have broken a world record on her bike, but the machine has played a more significant role in putting things back together for the rider. In 2019, Hempstead’s mother signed her up for a talent identification program that aims to steer young athletes toward Olympic goals. That bit of parental initiative has Hempstead on a path to the Games in 2024 for cycling.

So listen to this conversation with Hempstead to find out more about this 20-year-old rider with big potential. And find out just what type of pizza she crushed after setting a world record.

In February, Ryan Atkins took on his Seven Summits challenge. For seven days, he climbed, virtually that is, the highest peaks on each of the world’s continents. The place where he actually gained all that elevation was in and around his home in Sutton, Que., a little more than 100 km east of Montreal. The way he climbed was on a fat bike one day, on a virtual riding platform another and on a gravel bike as well. He also ran and skied his way to the high elevations he needed to reach.

You might remember hearing Atkins on this podcast more than a year ago. He and two other riders took on the Wapusk Trail, the world’s longest winter road that runs from Northern Ontario to Manitoba. He’s also been part of bike-based expeditions along James Bay and in Northern Quebec.

About 10 years ago, Atkins raced mountain bikes in Canada Cups and a few World Cups, such as Bromont and Mont-Sainte-Anne. He was a world unicycle trials champion, in 2006 and 2008. More recently, he’s been focused on obstacle course racing. He’s been the World's Toughest Mudder six times, the Spartan Ultra world champion twice and the OCR world champion. He likes to push and challenge himself.

Atkins’s Seven Summits challenge is, well, bonkers, especially the day he gained 6,961 m on a treadmill. That’s the height of Argentina’s Aconcagua. What attracted Atkins to this challenge with its jaw-dropping difficulty, both physically and mentally? The athlete seems to have a superhuman enthusiasm for daunting, repetitive tasks. Still, he found very cool moments throughout the challenge. They were more than just silver linings, but insights he would have never gotten otherwise. He also ate a lot of cookies and gummy bears.

If you think you might want to try climbing Seven Summits yourself, you’ll hear some tips that will help you with your own bonkers challenge.

In early February, Chris Froome posted a photo on social media. It reads, “Can’t tell if @paulopowerwatts is happy with my numbers.” @paulopowerwatts is Paulo Saldanha, the head of performance at  Israel Start-Up Nation. He’s been working to get the four-time Tour de France winner back to the level he was at before his serious accident in June 2019. Saldanha has also been working closely with Michael Woods for roughly eight years. In this episode, Saldanha discusses training those two riders. He also gets into some big questions. What role does failure play in the development of a successful athlete? Will the algorithm, the robo-coach, ever replace the human coach? Is cycling a fallback sport for athletes who don’t succeed in other disciplines? He even looks ahead to possible training innovations that might be coming to more humble riders, like those of us who aren’t pros.

The Spring Classics are starting. Do you have trouble pronouncing race names, such as Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Scheldeprijs and Brabantse Pijl. Host Matthew Pioro gets some coaching on the proper pronunciation of these races. Listen in so you, too, can talk Spring Classics like a pro.

For more on Saldanha and Israel Start-Up Nation's co-owner Sylvan Adams, check out this Canadian Cycling Magazine story on the pair from Montreal who are making big changes within the WorldTour.

Benjamin Perry from St. Catharines, Ont., is entering his first season on a WorldTour team, Astana - Premier Tech, after years in continental and pro continental outfits. If you look him up on ProCyclingStats, the site might lead you to believe that Perry came up through the North American road scene. Sure, he spent 2015 and 2016 on the influential continental team Silber Pro, and then went on to Israel Cycling Academy. But before Silber, Perry toughed it out in Europe, doing what he could to get on Belgian development outfits. His route to the WorldTour was by no means direct or close to a sure thing.

Perry’s a good talker and very self-aware of his strengths as a cyclist and where he thinks he can go at the top levels of the sport. In this interview, he speaks about the strangeness of his team camp, because of COVID-19 precautions, and also some of the zaniness there. It sounds like he made a few very smart decisions at training camp. One involved a certain bit of costume makeup that he got as part of an initiation outfit. It seems there’s nothing that went on at this camp that will ever come back to haunt Perry should he, say, ever become prime minister.

Have a listen to this chat with Perry and get to know a first-year WorldTour rider who's put in a lot of time on the road.
 

Batty is a two-time Olympian. She's won the national cross country championships at the elite level five times and claimed bronze in two world championship competitions. Last year, Batty announced her departure from Trek Factory Racing. She had been with that organization for 12 years. In this interview, editor Matthew Pioro tries to find out more about the support she'll have this year. The conversation took place not too long after Batty revealed that she is now riding Canyon Bicycles. She could stop trying to keep her bikes from getting spotted when out on the trails near Victoria, where she and her partner Adam Morka have been based since mid-January.

The cross country rider also talks about a gruesome ride she took on in 2020. You'll also hear more about what she learned doing stage races, about the tough, and still ongoing process for making the Olympic team and about taking time for self discovery.