For all young riders with dreams of becoming the next generation of British professional bike racers, a new group consisting of coaches from Go-Ride clubs has been formed in the South East to create the South East Cycling Academy, an initiative to provide coaching for the older youth groups and juniors in the disciplines of road, track and mountain biking.

Supported by the British Cycling Talent Development and Go-Ride Regional programmes, the idea behind creating an Academy is to pool together the regions racing focused riders, and provide an opportunity to learn, to benefit their racing. It also aims to provide an inspirational pathway for riders wishing to progress to regional and national level competition, and onto the Regional School of Racing programme.

The Academy is split into discipline groups, with the first road/circuit based session taking place at CycloPark, Gravesend. More details of this session can be found here;

South East Cycling Academy - Circuit Coaching Session

All Academy sessions including the session at CycloPark will be aimed at Go-Ride club riders in the South East region from the following categories:

• Youth B track/road or juvenile mountain bike (1999 and 1998 birth year for 2012)
• Youth A track/road or Youth mountain bike (1997 and 1996 birth year for 2012)
• First Year Junior age riders in the three disciplines (1995 birth year for 2012)

These age categories are a wider age group than the Regional School of Racing Programme covers, and it is hope that by including Juniors, the coaches can support their needs at a time where drop of in participation is high.

Please note, that for the 18 February, there is also a UK School games element to the session, therefore Youth riders from non-go-ride clubs or teams are also invited on this occasion. Please see details of the UK School games selection process.

For coaches, the academy allows the group to share best practice, learn new race specific coaching ideas and help develop sessions that can filter down into their club coaching. The academy is run by volunteers, so if there are coaches from Go-ride club that wish to know more and be involved, please contact John Scripps at johnscripps@britishcycling.org.uk.