This week, Will and James are joined by Lidl-Trek’s head coach, Mattias Reck. Born and raised in Sweden, like most people in his profession Mattias started out racing as a pro before moving into performance coaching. In 2017 he joined Trek-Segafredo, where he soon found himself nurturing the talents of a young Mads Pedersen (Swedish and Danish languages are pretty similar, says Mattias, which certainly helped with coaching). Today that relationship continues – Mads is something like family now – albeit Mattias is also personally responsible for a host of other riders, ‘mostly the Danish ones’ plus women’s WorldTour stars Shirin van Anrooij and Fleur Moors.
We joined Mattias just after Paris-Roubaix, where Pedersen had finished seventh. Not quite the result the team was hoping for at the start of the Classics campaign but a victory of sorts given Pedersen’s awful crash at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana at the beginning of February, which saw him undergo surgery and only return to racing in late March.
Here, Mattias explains such emotional highs and lows of rider and coach when the proverbial hits the fan; the mental fortitude needed for rehab; and the care teams give to their riders, from check-ins to chats with team psychologists to the role of e-cycling platforms such as Rouvy for rehab. Mattias also explains why he thinks riders are getting faster, the latest thinking in nutrition and carb fuelling, the importance of fatigue resistance, the paradigm shift in training, and why cycling needs to tread a careful line between exploiting young talent and burning out careers early.
Chat begins at 9.50
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