Turbo Talk: Dean Downing
Deano Downing (British Cycling legend), joined me for the third installation of Turbo Talk.
We chat about his cycling history, life as a coach Downing Cycling, mental health and how making progression as an athlete can help you overcome depression.
Enjoy the video (or read the transcript below if you prefer).
Gareth: "Okay, right."
"Deano, welcome to Turbo Talk."
Deano: "Before we set this up, I was thinking, ‘have we ever met?"
"And I don’t think we have, so it’s pretty cool to do this over video."
"I was thinking, 'I might have met Gareth at the Rouleur Show?', where I meet so many people and half the time, on a Thursday, everybody's pissed."
"Good to be asked to do this, so, thanks a lot."
G: "And I'd never be riding my bike with Deano Downing, but..."
D: "Haha."
G: "Give me the story of how cycling started with you."
D: "Oh, wow. Well, yeah... I’m from a cycling family."
"My brother Russ, obviously everybody knows my brother, Russ."
"Dad was a cyclist, Ken. Our grandad, Cyril, had four brothers, and this is like, the ‘40s & ’50s we’re talking about."
"Yeah, cycling is big in our family. It has been for generations."
"So, I started racing when I was eight years old, as did Russ, a few years later."
G: "I’m from a cycling family as well. My grandad, he took up cycling just after the war. It was their way to kind of escape from the problems that the war had created."
"So, what was it like, growing up?"
D: "We used to have some great times. Me and Russ used to just race our bikes."
"In 1983 I was eight years old and I’d started racing on grass tracks. I did an under fourteens handicap race."
"I went and won.”
“I got a great picture at home, that’s like, me just coming across the finish, like, no expression and these bigger lads behind me in second. Haha."
"Then on to juniors. I was a junior in 1993."
"A long time ago, ha."
G: "How different is cycling in the UK now, to when you were growing up?"
D: "It was a bit of a ‘niche sport’. 2008, for me, it really changed in the public eye - that cycling became prominent."
"At the Olympic Games, really. When they were winning medals left, right and centre."
G: "Your relationship with your brother seems really strong. You and Russ, you know, you push each other. But also, I kind of think you support each other as well."
D: "We’ve been close since we were kids. Russ helped me massively when I said, 'Right, I'm not gonna work anymore. I want to give cycling a go.’"
"Russ gave me massive advice. Like, well, I’m not under 23 (I was like 25 at the time). What can I do, Russ?"
"He’s like, ’Well, give it a go and go to Belgium is your best option.’"
"Off I went to Belgium and Russ helped me massively with that decision."
"Since that point we were... we got closer as bike riders because we were both doing the same races. We thought the same quite a lot. Russ would attack when I wanted to attack - to win the race or vice versa."
"But yeah, it was pretty cool winning the British Madison champs in 1993. That was cool, which then got us onto the GB Track Team where we went to the worlds in 2004."
"Two brothers from Thurcroft Mining Village raced the World Championships together and got like, 10th or 11th."
"That’s a pretty cool thing to do with your brother."
G: '“Your racing career was kind of at its height pre-2008. Do you ever feel like you were born a bit too early?"
D: "It does make me think a little bit, but I’m also very proud of what I did."
"Can’t turn back the clock or fast-forward it, for example."
"There's a lot of very good British famous cyclists now, in the world. It's good to have those guys as, you know, friends."
G: "You did a lot of racing in Belgium, doing their criteriums and Kermesse racing. Then you came over to the UK and just, kind of, smashed out nearly every criterium."
"Did you learn your craft in Belgium?"
D: "Yeah, I would 100% agree with that."
"I learned how to suffer. I learned how hard to train. Er, the racing there was FAST... very fast. Every single crit was like, 45km per hour. Every single kermesse was like, that as well for 120km."
"So yeah, I learned how to push myself."
"I came back to the UK and joined the Rapha Condor team, which was the start of it all for me, properly."
G: "You were a very 'punchy' rider. Wasn't it 2002, when you won the British National Circuit Race Championships?"
D: "And what that did, it kind of put me in the UK public eye a little bit more."
"In 2003 I was Champion for the whole year because it was in September the following year. The whole season I was British Crit Champion in Belgium. It was just so cool. I was getting paid €50 to go to the start of an amateur crit race."
G: "What was it like to win the (British) Crit Championships again in 2008 with Rapha Condor?"
D: "To win it in 2008 when everything was kicking-off in a good way for (British) cycling."
"I remember it vividly, somebody in the break said, 'SHIT, Hayles is coming across.'"
"And I was like, 'Right, okay... If Hayles is coming across... I've gotta go. I don't want Rob Hayles here.' He's like, world-class, you know?"
"I hit the break of five/six riders with two to go."
"I got a gap."
"Coming up to the finishing straight, I remember vividly saying to myself, 'DO NOT LOOK BACK. DO NOT LOOK BACK.' Because, my teammate, always used to have a go at me:
“You look back too much, Deano. You look back too much.”
And I had that in my head."
"So, I never looked back and just drove it to the line."
"I got to the line and I knew I'd won so I put my hands up."
"But literally, the bunch came flying past me... and I beat Rob Hayles into second, haha."
"Yeah, so, that was a big turning point for me as well, British Cycling wise, because the year after - the Tour Series came along. Lots of televised criteriums and I was British Crit Champ.”
"The Olympics came along, like the week after the championships."
"Wiggo, Chris Hoy, Vicky Pendleton, the boys in the Team Pursuit. It just put cycling in the UK on the map. Which was pretty good."
"So yeah, that was a good day, that was."
G: "Massive."
"What's it like, going from being a professional cyclist to then becoming a coach? Where it's no longer about your performance and your results, it's about helping other people achieve their best performances and their best results. What's that like?
D: "Currently, it's amazing. It's taken me five years to get where I am."
"But yeah, back in 2014 when I stopped racing, and Yatesy (Sean Yates) at the end of September said to me, ah, you know, they'd been trying to get me on board as a new coach on Trainsharp."
"I was a bit unsure, as I'd never done it before. I'd been qualified as a British Cycling Coach. That's all pretty much admin and paperwork, really."
"Yeah, so, Yatesy persuaded me to give it a go with Trainsharp. They helped me massively in the first two to three years. I learned a hell of a lot, about data and planning, power to weight, different types of riders, physiology of riders. I learned a hell of a lot in three years with Trainsharp, which I'm massively grateful to. And then I took it out on my own with Downing Cycling two years ago."
"It's dead exciting to put plans together and get people in the right mindset for their races, but then take it to another level of getting people in the right mindset for the L'Etape du Tour, for example."
"It's a massive, massive event for somebody who's not a pro cyclist. Who's been working hard around a full-time job, full-time family, minimal hours. How do they get the best out of themselves?"
"So that's what's really exciting. I've got a really good mix of different types of riders that I work with."
G: "How do you feel as a coach when they put their hands in the air? Or when they feel proud of a performance that they've created?"
D: "I feel fortunate that I've worked with some, and still do work with some fantastic riders. So, currently working with Alice Barnes, double British Champion last year."
"I was there, that day when she won the time trial. I followed her in the car with her parents."
"That was just mad. It was great, I was stood at the side of the road watching her and got invited to jump in the car, so I did. To see her empty the tank, and she's like 'Ah, how have I done?', while she's sat on the ground, and I said, 'You've just won.'"
"It's pretty good."
"Working with Ben Tulett, everybody knows that I was Ben's coach for, er, three years, It was. Then when he signed with the Alpecin team, he got passed over to their coaching team."
"To be there and see him win the World Championships Cross Juniors, twice, was, that was insane. Quite possibly one of the best days of my... definitely the best day of my cycling coaching career, that's for sure."
"I had one guy who came to me, to work for the Yorkshire Dales (sportive), and he took thirty minutes off his time from the previous year."
G: "Woah..."
D: "That was really cool when he rang me and said, 'I can't believe I've taken thirty minutes off my time.' But stuff like that is really cool. It's not about winning the bike races, It's about the massive progression they can make."
G: "Let's use Alice Barnes as a case study. How did you help her step it up to National Champion level?"
D: "It's a hard one, because, Alice... she knows so much. She's been around so she got so many people around her that help her. Like strength and conditioning coaches at British Cycling, she's in one of the worlds best teams, advice there all the time. But she just said that she'd self-coached herself for a couple of years."
"I had a proper conversation with her at the World Champs in Innsbruck. What we ended up doing is structuring her training, so she didn't get really big spikes of tiredness and then crack and then get ill."
"In 2019 she wasn't ill… at all."
"Generally, before, she'd be like, 'Nah, I'm going to go out with the GB boys and push myself.' And she'd put herself in a hole."
"So, we just put a bit... a lot more structure, a lot more power data training, worked on her time trialling, testing her out on the road, seeing what she could do for twenty minutes, for example. Moving that up and just working a lot more closely."
"Hopefully, instilled a bit more belief in what she could do."
"So we just all work together for Alice, really."
G: "In this day and age, there are so many Apps to help amateur cyclists, to help professional cyclists build their own structure, build their own routines and create their own training program. What are the benefits of actually investing in a proper coach?"
D: "It's always a tough question because there's lots of coaches out there, there's lots of great coaches out there... and everybody's different."
"It's kind of like, all about managing the riders expectations."
"But also, when they're up, It’s dead easy. You know, when Ben was winning races when Alice wins races, it's great."
"When Alice or Ben or anybody else is on a bit of a downer, what do you do then?"
"It's a whole package of coaching, not just a training plan for the month."
"I really enjoy all the contact that I have with all my coached riders. Whether it be on the phone, on video call or meeting up with some of them when I'm at races, etc."
G: "What makes you unique as a coach? You know, the difference between me using Zwift as a training platform, and me having a coach like yourself behind me. You know, what's the difference?"
D: "The experience of being a bike rider."
G: "Yeah."
D: "I can put my experience in there... of them feeling like crap, they didn't hang on, what can they do?"
"So it's about 'believe in yourself a bit more.' So then the week after, when they do another race and they hang on, they go, 'Ah, I remember, I can do this. Dean says I can do this.' So they hang on and then they go and win the bike race, or they get a podium. Whereas last week, they couldn't hang on because they didn't believe in themselves."
"Yeah, I feel fortunate that I've got, you know, a bit of everything. I've learned about the science over the years."
G: "In 2015 didn't you have quite a serious crash, quite a serious road incident?"
D: "I've had quite a few crashes in my cycling career as a racer. But then in 2015, I'd stopped racing and I was out with the lads, on a Friday-run bike ride. Coffee and cake type ride."
“Cruising back into the village and a van came really close by. I hot a bollard, but I hit it with my knee. I bust my cruciate ligament and my medial ligament. There and then I knew something was wrong.“
"Russ says, 'Come on, get up." I was like, 'I can't...'"
"Everything just stopped in the line. I wasn't able to work, I wasn't able to ride my bike. That was the start of a few, er... some big problems, personally, for me."
"That was a tough time, to be fair."
G: "How did you 'bounce back' from that? How did you get to where you are today?"
D: "A lot of good friends, family, help, a good network of people behind me - or at the side of me. Yeah, saying, 'It will be alright', but at the time it's not alright."
"Because you're not earning any money. You've got a wife and two children to look after. Er, and that's what the whole spiral downwards was, it was like money orientated. I wasn't earning any money, I wasn't able to provide."
"But also, as well, I always felt like, because of what happened, I was outside of the cycling 'limelight'."
"So, I picked up the phone to John Herety (Rapha Condor Manager) at the end of 2015 and John gave me a lifeline of a few months work in the middle of the summer, which was great and that kept me in the 'limelight'. So people like John helped me massively."
"But during that period it was still pretty shit..."
"I was forty in 2015, so I ended up randomly going to the doctors for a health check-up. In the end, I walked out with some anti-depressant tablets."
G: "Wow..."
D: "Yeah, so, just because he went through the questions with me and he recognised the signs, 'How are you feeling after stopping sports?' He knew me well enough."
"It did settle down and feel a bit better and 2017 was great."
"But yeah, It's self-belief and all the people that helped me to move everything forward and get back to working hard and hitting my own personal goals of staying fit and building my own business."
"So yeah, all the help that everybody gave me around that time frame has pushed me on."
G: "Yeah, I think when times get tough, you realise how strong the cycling community is."
"I find that when times get tough, you need to be on your bike, peddling out your problems. but if you cant be on your bike (due to your injury) surely that was a challenge?"
D: "Over the last two or three years, my weight has gone up and down, up and down. When I was depressed, I used to drink a lot in the house. I'm safe enough in my own house because nobody can see, but my wife sees it, my kids see it, so I put a lot of weight on because I wasn't riding and I was drinking."
"And that just sends you into a spiral again. So, you have to snap out of that sometimes, with chats with your friends. I just go on and off all the time. I still do today."
"I had a big accident in July 2017 as well, on the chain-gang."
G: "I didn't know that?"
D: "I bust my collarbone... again."
G: “Aww."
D: "Through just rushing around, to go out with the lads. There was like, Ben Swift (Ineos) was there, Tom Stewart (Canyon DHB), Russ, Graham Briggs (Vitus Pro). It will be an awesome laugh, it'll be good fun, I haven't seen them for ages."
"One lad hits a bit hole in front of me and I hit it as well. It split my collarbone in half, bust two ribs and punctured a lung."
"That sent me downwards again. But, I was in a good space because I had several coached riders, they knew about it. I spoke to them and they were fine with that. So, I had income coming in so that didn't cross my mind at all."
"All it was, I had to repair myself and get better. So it was a bit of a different situation to the two years previous."
"But it did make me think about, you know, I didn't want to ride my bike anymore."
"I had a few beers over Christmas, put a bit of weight on. At the start of this year, I was like, 'I need to start riding my bike again.'"
"Set myself some training plans to do on Zwift. The last nine weeks I got a hell of a lot fitter. But it's been good for my mindset."
"Yeah, cycling is a great motivator for fitness, but its good for your head as well."
G: "Why is cycling so good for our heads and not just our bodies?"
D: "It's a bit mad because in the last nine weeks I've only been out on my bike outside once, and this is before the lockdown. I love riding outdoors, but then also, I wanted to be FIT."
"How do I become fit and fit that in around my family and my work?"
"I work over there (points to his computer and desk) in my office. But, like jumping on my WattBike for an hour and doing a session to progress is really good for my mindset, even if it's indoors."
"You know, it makes me feel good, releases some endorphins and I can see my own progress."
"Some people do say, 'God, you should get outside, why don't you come out with the lads?' And I'm like, 'well I can't, I haven't got enough time to ride for two/three hours with the lads on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. I know what I can do. It's good for my head, fits around my business, around my family."
G: "You said the word 'progress.' I know that progress is the thing that keeps me healthy, The feeling that I'm achieving something."
"Yeah, and everybody's progress is personal."
"And I get this with some people that I know, like, 'God, did you see all the boys in Ineos's numbers up Alpe Du Zwift? They're insane. That can't be right?' But if you're thinking about somebody else's progress then you're doing it wrong. It's got to be about yourself."
"So, If you feel, Gareth, that you are progressing riding your bike, It makes you feel happy. It has to because you're progressing."
"It just makes you feel good, doesn't it?"
G: "Yeah, totally. That's it, you nailed it."
"It's been good to chat."
G: "I think the opportunity that I've found (with lockdown), is being able to speak to people like yourself and really get to know the cycling community a little bit deeper."
D: "Yeah, that's cool. It's really good what you're doing, yeah."
"Who else have you got lined up?"
G: "Tomorrow, I've got the great Andy Tennant."
D: "Yeah, he's always been a top-class bike rider."
"Me and Tennant used to room together sometimes on the Rapha team, but also on the Madison Genesis team. He was always a lot of fun."
"I saw your one with Russ Ellis. He's a friend of mine. I read your one with Sean Yates, that was pretty cool. Yatesy is ace, let's say he's been a part of my own progress as a coach. It's good to be asked to do this, so thanks a lot."
"00:52:21 and we've done 21km."
G: "Nice. More 'base'. More 'base'.'
D: "I'll catch you later, Gareth, Yeah?"
G: "Cheerio."
D: "Yeah, more 'base', yeah."
"Cheers, mate. Bye-bye."