USA's Gavin Hoover hoping to clean up at the UCI Track Champions League - 'It's a big focus of my season'
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Updated 11/11/2022 at 08:52 GMT
Gavin Hoover is excited to be back on track for the second series of the UCI Track Champions League this weekend. Hoover comes in as the defending champion, one of the hot favourites and eager to make up for a disappointing World Championships in Saint-Quentin last month. “It's definitely a focus of my season,” he says. “I would target it the same way I would a Worlds or the Olympics.”
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As he puts the final touches to preparations for his UCI Track Champions League title defence, Gavin Hoover only has one complaint.
“I'm kind of sad I don't get to wear the kit for the first round,” he says.
The American, who has an interest in fashion, says he would settle for a light blue band, signifying the achievement, around the sleeve of his stars and stripes skinsuit.
Eurosport’s suggestion that they could give him a gold helmet, akin to the one Greg van Avermaet wore for the five years following his Olympic victory in Brazil, is met with an ironic smile. While the bling might have suited GVA’s personality (and mahogany complexion) Hoover is somewhat less of a showman.
Regardless, he is raring to go for the second series of the TCL. Its first edition went smoother than even the organisers could have imagined, with only a few minor kinks to be ironed out.
Hoover agrees that it was about as close to a polished product as it could have been. “I'm hoping it hasn't changed a ton,” he says.
What he enjoyed most about the 2021 experience - apart from winning a race and topping the table after the final round in London - was the sense of camaraderie in the track centre.
“The atmosphere in the pits last year was really nice,” he says. “It was a bit different to the World Championships or the Nations Cup or the Olympics, where there's quite a lot of tension, and everyone's so isolated from each other.
"You feel like a racehorse, being walked up to the line, put up there and then walked back, where someone puts an ice vest on you to do recovery.
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“This felt a lot more relaxed,” he says. “I actually got to know people, to talk to riders from other countries, make some friends, and then just go do a bike race for fun, as well. I'm hoping the vibe is the same.”
Which is not to suggest that the athletes take the Track Champions League less seriously than the other races. On the contrary, despite being only a year old, Hoover believes in terms of stature, the series is already on a par with the biggest events on the calendar.
“It's definitely a focus of my season,” he says. “I would target it the same way I target a World Championships or the Olympics.”
That targeting was made easier by this year’s track Worlds taking place just a month before the opening round of the TCL in Mallorca, on the same track that will host the third night of the series.
He finished Saint-Quentin 2022 feeling “super frustrated,” with no medals and a best placing of 8th in the scratch race.
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Asked whether the source of his frustration could be found more in the results or his performance he replies that “it’s a tricky distinction".
“Realistically,” he continues, “I at least had an opportunity to get a medal in the elimination and I think even a really well-executed omnium. I should have been in the top five, based on how I raced the World Cups this season, and how I performed relative to the guys that were on the podium before. It was a mixture of just some bad luck and some things that didn't maybe quite go the way I thought they had in training.”
Hoover is something of an elimination specialist and his results at last year’s Track Champions League certainly bear that out. He finished in the top five in each of the four races.
With the last rider to cross the line knocked out every other lap, the appeal of the elimination race lies in it being both easy to understand and offering non-stop action.
Tactically there are definite trade-offs in terms of positioning. The most energy efficient place to pedal in an elimination is behind others at the bottom of the track, but the rider who takes up that spot exposes themselves to the possibility of being boxed in. If there’s no clear air ahead in which to advance, and no space to the side either, the only way is out the back.
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The race, Hoover says, “rewards having a very good awareness of where you are, but also where everyone else is".
As the racers constantly look for opportunities to cause trouble for their rivals, it sounds like a constant battle of brains, as much as legs and lungs.
“You don't want to get to the last five guys, look around and just see the best five guys in the race,” Hoover explains. “You'd like to get there and be like, ‘Okay, well, Sebastian [Mora]'s here, but so are these three other guys I know I can definitely beat.’ Can I put them in a weird spot? Can I slow them down? Can I take the front and back-pedal a little bit and they'll go out.”
Hoover names Mora, who led last year’s endurance competition from the second round in Lithuania until the penultimate event in London, as one of the riders most likely to challenge him for the 2022 title.
Debutant Ollie Wood of Great Britain is another threat, as well as Dutchman Matthijs Buchli. Buchli is an interesting proposition on the endurance side, given he was a member of the Dutch team sprint squad that claimed Olympic gold in Tokyo.
“He's been racing quite a bit of road this year,” Hoover points out. “He's done a bit of a transition. It doesn't seem like a crazy stretch to think he can get to the end of a 20 lap scratch race.”
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Of the four cities the Track Champions League will be visiting this time around, Hoover is most looking forward to next weekend’s trip to Berlin.
“I did worlds there in 2020, five days before Covid locked down. I have a lot of positive associations with that track, and really love the city. I’m excited to go back. I have some family in Germany actually, and spent a fair bit of time as a kid there. Berlin is really a city that speaks to me personally.”
Hoover may not be the newest kid on the block, but at 25 years old he isn’t averse to the idea of going out partying after what he hopes will have been a successful evening on the bike.
“I’ve extended [my stay] a couple of days on the other side,” he says, “in order to not have to get up early Sunday morning to catch a flight".
Handily, his girlfriend, Lily Williams, who rides on the road for Human Powered Health, is also taking competing in the Track Champions League.
All we’re saying is, should you happen to spot the pair in Berghain at 4am on Saturday… No, you did not.
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After a great debut season, the UCI Track Champions League is back for season two, with Laura Kenny joining the party. You can watch it all live and on demand on discovery+. We will have extensive coverage across eurosport.com and the first race is in Mallorca on Saturday Nov 12, with the action starting at 5:30pm UK time.
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