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Raise Your Game: When you're training young athletes, is there more emphasis on the physical side or the mental side?

Darren Tudor: I think the key thing for young people is that they're learning all the time. At the National Youth Track Championships, for example, I'm not just looking at their performances, but also how they conduct themselves in terms of preparation and their warm-ups. How are they dealing with the non-cycling side of things? Those are the important things for me.

If I was at a National Senior Championship, watching someone like Bradley Wiggins, then I'd be interested in his performance. But with the youngsters you're watching all of the other stuff that helps shape them into a complete athlete.

RYG: What are you looking for?

DT: The athletes that prepare themselves well. If you look out at track centre, you can see the well prepared ones. Their bikes are ready, their rollers are set up ready to warm up, and they know exactly when they are racing. Then you see the other people who are still messing around with their bikes.

When you get closer to the event, the ones that are less prepared start flustering and making mistakes, whereas the ones who are well prepared can just get on their bikes. They're the ones that do the best.

RYG: So how do you improve the preparation of the less organised athletes?

DT: As part of the Olympic Development Programme we spend about 110 to 120 days a year with the junior bike riders. That is split between training camps and races. The big things that we try to work on at the training camps are preparation and organisation.

For example, when the GB team goes away to junior races all the riders prepare their own drinks for the races. All the other teams will bring people to organise their stuff for them, but we let our guys do that themselves, because it's all about progressing to the next level.

RYG: How could someone in cycling, or everyday life, improve their preparation?

DT: Ultimately, most of these young cyclists will want a full cycling career. A lot of them still want to do their GCSE's and A-levels though, and it's obviously hard to balance the two. They have to meticulously plan and organise their lives. They don't really have much of a social life either, but they know that this game is all about sacrifice.

RYG: As well as their preparation, you're also helping them with their time management skills?

DT: We know that their schedules are very busy, and a typical junior rider on the ODP trains about 17 to 23 hours a week. It's a massive commitment for them, with exams and everything else, so we plan around things like that. When they have exams, for example, they do less training, or they don't do a particular race until their studies end. Then they become, more or less, full time bike riders.

We sometimes give the male endurance athletes tasks to do. We get them writing about the history of the sport, and learning how to take a bike apart and putting it back together from scratch. That way, they really understand and learn about their sport.

RYG: So they learn skills through cycling that they take back to school with them?

DT: They've just done an essay for us. Some of them have written over 1500 words on how to build a bike. Some of the riders have been training on the road since March 2008. So before we went back onto the track, we got them to write an essay on the principles of endurance racing and how to lead in a team pursuit effort. We don't really mark them, as it's more for their own understanding rather than right and wrong answers.

RYG: Is there an element of maths involved in cycling?

DT: In the individual pursuit they ride to a schedule, so they have to work it out; how they'll start and the times they need to hit. They'll have someone trackside then, letting them know where they are in terms of their schedule.

RYG: What would you say to a young person thinking of getting involved in cycling?

DT: We see plenty of kids coming through this sport, and every generation has its talented ones, but you also have your hard workers, and it's sometimes the hard workers who come to the top.

When someone is 15-years-old they might struggle, but if they've got the work ethic then they will eventually rise to the top. The ones who get it are the ones who want it the most.