Coach Billy Innes was a little nervous, experiencing above-normal anxiety as he was about to step onto a plane in California to attend the USA Cycling Juniors Road National Championships June 21-26 in Augusta, Georgia. The Junior Nationals include time trial, criterium and road races.
You see, Innes, 40, coaches one of the country’s most promising young racers on the Team Specialized Juniors, which is directed by Larry Nolan. He is Philip O’Donnell, 15, of Suwanee, Georgia, and he’s already won a slew of championships. He is no longer a secret, and Innes knows that.
“I do worry about that kind of pressure,” said Innes of the publicity beginning to surround O’Donnell. “But we’re aware of that. I just want to go and calm the racehorse…maybe go for a ride with him and tell him that he’s done all the work, and not to stress.”
O’Donnell was the 10-12 year-old time trial national champion, and last year became the 13-14 year-old road and criterium national champion at the Road National Championships held in Bend, Oregon. O’Donnell has raced in California at the San Dimas stage race (winning the overall 15-16 category: 1st in the time trial; 3rd in road race; 1st in criterium) and Sea Otter Classic (1st in the Circuit Race, 15-16 men), as well as the Valley of the Sun in Phoenix, Arizona (1st in General Classification (GC), ages 15-16). In Phoenix, O’Donnell beat the Chipotle Junior Development Team – a feeder for their professional tour counterpart Garmin-Cervélo.
While O’Donnell recently was warming up for the Hincapie Sportswear Spring series, George Hincapie, long-time professional now riding with Team BMC, approached him and asked, “Are you that 14-year-old kid?”
And with success invariably comes the publicity.
“I am just trying to take it step by step – not trying to show off,” said O’Donnell, speaking with the maturity of an adult. “Of course, there is some pressure, this being a hometown race and my family all coming out. But I’ll just do the best I can and not worry about where I finish.”
The extreme humidity and heat of Augusta in summer time might very well punch the ticket for an O’Donnell GC victory. “The heat will probably be the biggest factor,” said O’Donnell. “This should be an advantage for me, since I am used to it in Suwanee.”
Indeed. It has been hot and humid recently in the Atlanta and surrounding areas.
“He knows when the races begin – the time during the day,” said Innes, a former professional racer now riding with the Team Specialized masters team. “So he’s been training (in Suwanee) at these same times to acclimate to the heat. I am keeping him and the other guys more and more away from air conditioning while they’re in Augusta, so they’ll be better acclimated.”
Innes says the road race “will be a battle of attrition – who recovers best from the other events (time trial, criterium) because of the heat.”
Innes is keenly aware of the “burnout factor” for a racer of O’Donnell’s age. “The burnout thing comes from the brain, and not from the body,” said Innes. “I try to keep it (training, racing) as fun as possible. I don’t want them to be doing math while riding, and what I mean by that is, one-and-a-half miles of sprints, followed by one-and-a-half miles of this, then one-and-a-half miles of that. That’s for the pros, and not for young guys.”
“These kids are so young, and they recover so quickly. But that can be a catch-22 in that one might tend to over-train them because they do recover quickly. I try to stay away from that,” said Innes.
O’Donnell has been paying attention. “I have a passion for riding my bike…and I have a coach I can trust,” said O’Donnell. “He has experience, and I know the training plan he puts me on is what I should be doing.”
Sounds like a formula for long-range success: trust between a coach and his pupil, who has a passion for riding a bicycle.
If the past is any indication of the future, then more championships will come for O'Donnell.
And a calm will come for Innes.
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