Friday 1 December 2000
Scottish cycling will be looking to build on the sport's recent success in the Sydney Olympics with the appointment today of the first ever full-time national coach for the sport. The four year appointment has been made possible thanks to an award of £155,610 from sportscotland Lottery Fund.
Graeme Herd (32) is a graduate in Sports Science and currently lectures in Sports Coaching subjects at North Glasgow College. Herd was the Scottish Development Manager from 1995 to 1996 and is the Senior squad manager for the next two years. He represented Scotland as a rider at the Commonwealth Games in 1994 and as the road coach to the Team in 1998. Herd commented, "I am delighted to have the opportunity to work on a full-time basis with Scotland's elite riders.
"...we want to see more Scots on the winners podium..."
"Currently we are on a high with Olympic medals by our track riders, Tour de France yellow jersey by David Millar, and a big increase in top 20 Premier Calendar places by our road riders. I want to be able to build on these results by working with the riders and the current managers.
"My aim will include medals in the Commonwealth Games as well as bringing riders up to the standard where they can be passed on to the UK World Class Performance Plan, or to an elite continental team."
The new National Coach will work closely with the Cycling World Class Performance Plan management team in Manchester. Today's announcement brings to 12 the number of national coaches who have been appointed under sportscotland Lottery Fund's National Coach Support Programme. National Coaches have been appointed under the scheme in: Football (women's); judo; curling, swimming, badminton, athletics (endurance), cricket, hockey (x2), triathlon and volleyball.
Alastair Dempster, Chief Executive of sportscotland, said, "The role of the coach is a vital component in helping an individual or team to achieve success. If we are to continue to develop and sustain successful performances by Scots at world level we have to invest in the full time coaches to support them.
"The recent success of the GB Team at the Sydney Olympics has shown what a combination of proper performance planning, backed up by proper investment, can deliver.
"As a nation we want to see more Scots on the winners podium which in turn creates the role models we need to inspire more youngsters to take up sport and become more active, more often."
- Scottish cyclists, Craig MacLean and Chris Hoy, won silver in the Olympic Sprint at the Sydney Games as part of three man team which included individual gold medallist, Jason Queally.
- The total amount awarded to date under sportscotland Lottery Fund's National Coach Support Programme, to support the appointment of national coaches in our major sports, is in excess of £1.5m
- Graeme was born in Johnstone. As a track competitor he won bronze in the British Championships Team Pursuit in 1994 and silver in 1995 and 1996. On the road, he was 4th in the 1994 British 20km Time Trial before retiring from racing due to back problems.