Once the most prestigious bike race in the country, The Milk Race was an annual cycling event, sponsored by the now-defunct Milk Marketing Board, that ran from 1958 until 1993. After a twenty-year hiatus, it returned to the streets of Nottingham city centre last year and looks set to be a regular event on the sporting calendar. We spoke to professional competitor Ed Clancy, an Olympic gold cyclist, about the sprint on two wheels.
As a Yorkshireman from Huddersfield, Olympic gold cyclist Ed Clancy has more interest than most in the route of the Tour de France since this summer the great race will be spending two amazing days in his home county. “I know where I’d like to be when it comes through!” says Clancy. “I live near Holmfirth and the race will pass about fifty yards from my back garden, so ideally I’d like to be there with a barbecue and a few beers. But in reality I think I’m going to be doing some promotional stuff that weekend so we’ll have to wait and see.” So why isn’t he taking part himself? The short answer is a) his team, Rapha Condor JLT, doesn’t do the Tour and anyway b) Clancy is not a multi-day stage road racer like Tour winners Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome who won in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
Comparing himself to a middle-distance competitor, rather than a marathon runner, Clancy says he just doesn’t have the endurance to compete in the big bike tours where teams can be racing for up to 250km in a day. His strength is in speed over shorter distances - which is why he’s picked up a string of gold medals for track cycling, including one for the GB team pursuit at the 2012 London Olympics, and why he’s suited to racing in city criterium events like the revived Milk Race, which returned to Nottingham on May 25. Last year Clancy finished third in the elite men’s race behind Team Raleigh’s Alex Blain, and winner and Rapha Condor JLT team-mate Felix English. This year Rapha Condor and Raleigh both gained places in the top three again, although Clancy himself was not on the winner’s podium, despite having been near the front for most of the hour’s intense top-speed racing.
To the thousands of people who watched the elite men’s and women’s races in the sun this year and last, The Milk Race may look like a disorganised blur of colour as dozens of riders pedal like hell around a city centre circuit. But, as Clancy pointed out before the race, there is a good reason why top-flight competitive cycling is often described as ‘chess on wheels.’ Races are fluid, quickly changing and complex events which reflect the strengths and weaknesses of team organisation, the tactical abilities and egos of individuals within those teams, and the strategic requirements of managers and sponsors. “There’s always this jockeying for position because everyone wants to be at the front but nobody wants to lead until you get a breakaway - six times out of ten it stays as a breakaway,” says Clancy. But, it’s also a numbers game since teams all have their lead riders which their team-mates are expected to support. Well organised teams bunch together to protect and support the lead rider who is the one who should sprint first over the line. “There is strength in numbers,” says Clancy. “What you don’t want is to be stuck in a five-man group where three of them are from Team Raleigh.”
For Nottingham, for Raleigh and for British bike racing, it’s good to see the red, black and gold colours of Team Raleigh back on the circuit. In both of the revived Milk Races, though, Raleigh has frustrated Clancy’s ambitions. After his third place behind Raleigh last year, the 2014 race saw Team Raleigh French rider Matt Boulo take second while Velosure-Giordana’s Mat Cronshaw finished third. Winner Graham Briggs, of Rapha Condor JLT, spoke of a fast circuit where riders were taking corners “on the edge of grip” - a grip which one rider failed to keep as he clipped the kerb near Bridlesmith Gate and crashed. The race was restarted fifteen minutes later and by the time the final laps came round Clancy had been dropped by the three leaders. The elite women’s race saw a smaller field and one where the lead pack was dominated by the black and orange of Wiggle Honda. At the end, though, it was Scottish rider Katie Archibald, of Pearl Izumi Sports Tour International, who kept Olympic track champion Laura Trott and Charlotte Becker, both Wiggle Honda, in second and third places. The winners of the men and women’s later posed for the camera drinking the obligatory bottles of milk - a reminder of the Milk Race’s long heritage, despite opposition from a small number of vegan protesters who wandered around the crowd holding placards reading ‘Milk is Murder.’
Now 29, Clancy says he has accepted what his strengths are and that he was not made for cycling’s Grand Tours. Even so, he admits that there have been times when he felt he was missing out. “Yeah, a few years ago, after the Beijing Olympics, I could see Brad going on to big things. I did feel, not really upset, but wondered why I couldn’t make it happen myself. But I hope I’m in a better position now.”Well, an MBE, awarded in 2008 following a gold for the Team Sprint at Beijing (which included Wiggins) was surely proof of recognition for his talents, so maybe he’s just modest - or a ‘say nowt’ kind of bloke in that Yorkshire way. If he was to try his hand at the kind of long-distance racing that Wiggins is good at, Clancy reckons he might be good enough to be a “bottle carrier” - one of the domestiques, or team riders, who can be raced to exhaustion to support their team leaders. But now, with his second Milk Race done, Clancy has a full season of other city races ahead of him including the Elite Circuit series, a night-time race in the capital called the London Nocturne and, on 1 June, a criterium up the road in Doncaster. When he’s not racing he’s training on his bike most days and can do 500 miles in a week.
When we spoke to him he was out training on his bike near his home in Holmfirth, which brings us back to the Tour de France since stage two of the race, on 6 July, will pass through on a 200km route from York to Sheffield. Which of the two big British winners, Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, does Clancy favour? At the time of writing Wiggins hadn’t been confirmed for the Team Sky effort although his recent victory in the Tour of California underlined that he’s back on form and he has said that he would support Froome’s bid for the yellow jersey. But, a lot can happen in the Tour; so, who? “I can’t pick a winner.” Clancy responds. “They’re both nice blokes although I have spent more time talking to Brad. So far as I can see they get on well together so it depends on their form at the time. [Team GB boss] Dave Brailsford runs a tight ship.” Given possible developments between Wiggins and Froome ahead, this is probably a wisely non-committal answer.
The Milk Race took place on Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 May in Nottingham city centre.
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