What does it take to get to UCI Continental / Semi-professional level?

[fuggitivo]

Hi,

Does anyone here have experience with continental teams? (possibly outside of the european circuit, I know that the level there is very high and they’re focused on developing WT riders)

I was wondering what it takes to get there from a performance/power point of view, knowing that obviously results are a different thing.

I would also like to know more in general about how those teams work, so if you have any direct or not knownledge about it I would love to hear that.

[onemanpeloton]

Not directly linked but this thread has some crossover

Pro/Elite training

This is a great book. One of my favorites for training and balance between what actually matters in sport rather than focusing just on the training. I think the entire passage is important here regarding why he doesn’t like recovery weeks: The classic way of setting up training progression is to do three weeks in a row of hard training, or progressively harder training week over week, followed by one week of recovery. This program of training hard, then recovering for an entire week makes it …

[OreoCookie]

I can’t speak to cycling, but I’d like to mention something that seems left field, but is actually very important. My dad has managed several pro sports teams, one of which was at the very top nationally for a decade (women’s hockey). One fundamental aspect are sponsorships, because cycling isn’t a sport with the same mass market appeal as, say, soccer. A lot of not-mass-market sports are run on a shoe string budget. So one of the hard parts is acquiring sponsorships and keeping sponsors happy.

Getting sponsorships and having experience interacting with sponsors is IMHO a very important skill for a pro athlete. What my dad was good at was getting buy-in from the employers of the players (who had to have a 9-5 job in addition to being a pro), so that they got fully paid time off for training, during the season, for training camps and during the championships. Not only might this provide some income for you and/or equipment (which, let’s face it, is quite expensive in cycling), but make you more valuable for the team. There are quite a few athletes who punch way above their weight when it comes to sponsorships as compared with their athletic performance. Anna Kournikova, for example, was IMHO more successful off the tennis court than on it, especially considering her relatively short career (which was cut short due to injuries). This is pure speculation on my part, but I reckon someone like Justin Williams has a better income than many pros who rode in this year’s Tour de France.

[onemanpeloton]

Think I’ve heard this somewhere before

How to Become a Pro Cyclist (Ask a Cycling Coach 275)