A Voyage of Discovery

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Discovery will be placing their bets with Hammond(Image credit: Shane Stokes)

Picture this. You are a former world junior cyclocross champion who has raced for years with a modest Belgian team. In 2003 you finish 17th in Paris-Roubaix, using that cross skill to good effect in dealing with the slippery, sliding cobblestoned mud-paths of northern France. One year later you are back again, confidence buoyed by a decent early-spring campaign, and you finish an excellent third in the race. Then, a little later in the season you gallop home a fine seventh in the Olympics, attracting the attention of the world's top bike rider and his new team.

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At this time of the year many pros are trying to recharge their batteries, mental as much as physical, after a draining, demanding season. Yet when Cyclingnews gave the British road race champion a call in recent days he was positively bubbling over with enthusiasm, sounding more like a giddy young newcomer rather than a seasoned, experienced pro. The thoughts of working with Lance Armstrong are, he says, already having an effect on him. His focus is partly down to the opportunity to improve, the motivation of a new challenge, the need to impress. And, in some ways, down to a little bit of fear, too.

One effect of this new challenge is that Hammond will be sacrificing his usual cyclocross ambitions. He was eleventh last year in the world championships, despite a crash, and also took his sixth British title. While he will do some cross racing this winter, both of those big events are off his schedule. Everything is geared towards 2005, towards helping Lance, towards his new beginning, his big opportunity. For Roger Hammond, it's Discovery time.

RH: You have just mentioned pretty much all of the reasons, really. Pretty good going, that! (laughs) Firstly, for that sort of circuit I would have had to be really 100 percent. After the Olympics and the Tour of Britain, the season wasn't really going pear shaped, but I could feel that I wasn't motivated to train as hard as I needed to do if I was going to ride the world championships. Had there been nobody else interested in doing the race, I would have taken part, making do with the form that I had, but there were two young guys (Charly Wegelius and Tom Southam) who were each looking for contracts and who were both riding in Italy at the time. We only had two places available in the elite road race, so I thought it was definitely better if I gave them the chance to show themselves where they are based.

It was time for a break, too. Last year I raced right through to the end of Paris-Tours. I took three weeks off at the end of the season, but I wasn't ready to train after that. I was still tired and still mentally fatigued as well. I had to start training when I didn't really want to, so that was quite difficult. I didn't want to do that again this year. I wanted to start training on time because, obviously, next year is very important.

I think the important thing was not to get too carried away with doing anything else - I think if I really concentrate on doing a race it means I am going to be peaking in December, which is the only time I could do a cross race properly. But that is way too early to get form. So I will probably just approach cross now as a matter of surviving the races, getting through them ok, and just using them as technique training for the road. I will hopefully benefit from that. But for me, it is looking at cross in a very different way than before.

As I said, I am more obsessed with racing, I am more obsessed with training and I am more obsessed with my way of eating. I have never been like that. Well, I was like that when I first turned professional, because that is what you are supposed to be, but I don't think I was really ready for that then. I definitely went the wrong way about it back then but I am old now, 30 years of age, and I have got more experience.

RH: Well... (pauses). First off, I don't think I will be up against George. I see this as an opportunity to have one of the best spring classic riders with me, or next to me. I always get asked the question whether I am going to ride for George in the Classics. The thing is, if we are in the front with two riders, we have got twice as much of a chance to win a Classic. If I was in a position where I could open up a race so that George could win a Classic, that would give me as much pleasure as if George opened the race up and me winning a Classic. You can't win Classics any more on your own. This year in Paris-Roubaix, for example, I was in the front, desperate for a team-mate to be there. Even if it was just someone with experience, saying to me, 'this is how it is, this is what is going on, don't do stupid things', which is where I wasted energy in Paris-Roubaix this year.

I hope that with Johan Bruyneel, with Dirk Demol or with another sport director and George Hincapie that I will have a fantastic amount of experience at hand. Hopefully, with us working together, we will get big results. I hope it would be seen as a case of the Discovery team winning a Classic, not Roger Hammond winning a Classic. That is the way I want to look at things. I don't see any clashes at all. If Dirk Demol says I have to get on the front and ride for George, I don't have a problem with it at all.

RH: I'm not sure yet. I am going to the first training camp at the beginning of December and I will get to know the programme a little bit more there. I have heard talk of a major Tour, with the new Pro Tour setup. But as I am not sure if that (Grand Tours being part of the new ProTour) is definitely going ahead yet. So I think it is a little early at the moment for me to comment on which races I will be riding.

RH: Yeah... it is difficult to know because I have never ridden a three-week Tour. So I don't know what it is like to ride one. All I know is that in the smaller Tours we did, when you reduce from eight riders to six riders it massively changes how you can control a race. So I guess on a three week Tour, to lose a rider on a nine-man team is quite a big thing. It does give opportunity to other teams, though.

The Pro Tour is a very complicated setup at the moment. There are teams which have to invest a massive amount of money to ride in the Pro Tour, but if they open up the Grand Tours to teams who haven't made the same investment, you have to ask why the Pro Tour teams ever invested all that money in the first place? Then again, it would close up cycling a lot if you didn't let those wild card teams ride the Pro Tour (races).

Being on the receiving end of it for the last six years, it was always very frustrating not to be able to ride the World Cup races - especially the ones that suited you - just because you didn't get a wild card entry, even if the team deserved it. It is difficult to judge; there are pros and cons to both sides. I think somebody is just going to have to make a decision and say, 'This is how it is going to be.' I think everybody will then just have to make the best of the situation, which is how things were always done in the past.

RH: Well, it totally depends on who you talk to. If you talk to the guys on my team this year and it is totally devastating for them. This year MrBookmaker has doubled his investment, he has brought in another sponsor, the Bio Tech people, and they are investing a load more money. But after investing two and a half times as much money as before, they are not even going to be able to ride the big races.

So for them it is devastating. On the other hand, I think for the riders in the Pro Tour it will be great, because you can predict exactly what is going to be going on all year long. It will make an elite club, which I think for the bigger teams is going to be more beneficial to them. It depends on which end of the spectrum you talk to with regards the response you get. The bigger team you talk to, the more positive the response.

RH: Yeah, I guess that is true. At the start of this season there was a lot of talk about the Pro Tour and so that was an additional motivation for me this year, to make sure I had some sort of choice in the matter, really. If I had had the same season as last year, I wouldn't have had a choice with regards to what races I could ride. I would have ended up being in a non-Pro Tour team - then you'd just be in that situation where you don't know what races you would be riding next year.

RH: Well, to me it was a dream. It (Paris-Roubaix) was just so close. I got to the point were I was actually disappointed with third place there. Now, looking back, it is great to be able to take check of it, to say 'hang on a minute, you were third in Paris-Roubaix', but at the time, I was a bit disappointed. The funny thing is, a year ago, if I was third in Paris-Roubaix I would have been bouncing off the ceiling for the rest of the year.

This season has been an amazing, amazing experience. It has changed my mentality in races and given me a bit more confidence, too. Certainly, going into the Discovery Channel team after having that season means at least there is a chance I will be able to do my job within the team. I think if I had gone to US Postal last year, with just the results of the preceding season to my credit, I think I would have been worried wondering if I was going to be good enough. But if I can come back to that level (of this year) and be within the Discovery Channel setup, I think I should be good enough to be ride as part of that team in the Classics.

RH: Yeah. It was time for a change, as well. I mean, Stuart O'Grady was seven years or so with Credit Agricole and then changed to Cofidis. Even with all the problems they have had at Cofidis, he has had an amazing year. When you have been in the same team for a long time, I think that sometimes you just need a change. Even if it was not going to be a better team, the change is like a breath of fresh air. It gives you new motivations.

RH: No, it is a long project. I am just trying to get it into a good condition. The main problem has been that ruddy hole that I fell through the week before the Olympics. I got home from Dortmund in Germany on the Sunday and I was meant to be leaving for the Olympics on the Monday. I walked across the pavement in front of the house. With all of the rain, it had just washed away all of the earth underneath the pavement. So the pavement looked fine, there was no evidence of anything gone. But when I stepped onto it I went straight through!

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