Text by Sam Dansie. Photographs by Cor Vos.

Source: Article taken from the February 2011 issue of Ride Magazine

South African Brent Copeland spent a decade as a directeur sportif with the Italian squad Lampre, but last season he decided to give it all up to coach up-and-coming MotoGP star Ben Spies.

Team Yamaha – Ben Spies on the left & Brent Copeland on the right

One of last season’s quirkiest subplots was the rumour of ‘mechanical doping’. Between the end of the Classics and the start of the Tour de France, the internet buzzed with allegations that teams like Saxo Bank and their outstanding rider of the early season, Fabian Cancellara, had hidden engines down their seat-tubes. It was a ridiculous notion.

Why, at a time when road racing is regarded almost as a real-world laboratory for highly sophisticated biological doping, would one of the most successful teams in the peloton regress to the point of actually putting clunking engines in their bikes? It was with peculiar serendipity that at about the same time an up-and-coming motorbike rider from the USA was being told he had to pedal faster if he wanted to excel at MotoGP. What made the little irony even more delicious was that Ben Spies’s advice came from seasoned cycling directeur sportif, Brent Copeland.

Originally from Johannesburg, Copeland spent the last ten years as a team manager for Lampre, the pro-Italian outfit that has overseen the fortunes of riders like Damiano Cunego, Alessandro Petacchi and Danilo Hondo, as well as Alessandro Ballan who won the World Championship with the team in 2008.

Recently 38-year-old Copeland, who originally left SA to try his hand as a road-racer himself, has turned to a new challenge: helping Ben Spies – with whom he shares a house near Como in Italy – realise a dream to win the MotoGP series in 201 I.

After working with some of the most successful riders in the sport, why leave?

“I’d been with Lampre for ten years and a new experience in life, a change, is always good, they say. In the beginning, it was just something Ben and I talked about around the table, and then during the season, he got more serious. I think he realised that he needed someone to look after him,” said the coach who was trackside with Spies in Aragon, Spain.

Quite how to fit motorbike riders need to becomes clear when you look at the numbers – at full tilt the riders generate heart rates similar to cyclists in all-out efforts. So Copeland, with his experience of pushing riders to their limits over the cobbles of Northern France or in the mountain passes of the grand tours made an ideal physical training coach for the 26-year-old Spies, who will take over MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi’s Yamaha in 201 I.

“The training we’re doing is very similar to what cyclists do for intervals,” said Copeland. “On the motorbike you can see their heart rate go up to 185 beats a minute. They come into the corners and recover a bit but then they’re up again and their HR shoots up. So we do a bit of interval training and Ben says he definitely feels the difference.”

But it turns out there is another important dynamic for motorbike riders to spend time on the bike – it burns time and stops riders getting bored.

“Lots of MotoGP and Superbike riders use cycling as their training – it’s the perfect way to train as far as anaerobic thresholds are concerned and it also takes up time in the day. They’ve got quite a bit of time between one race and the next, so it’s really good for them in that respect as well. They can go out and do four hours of cycling while running and gym only take up an hour.”

Working with the Little Prince

Being Spies’s dedicated personal trainer will be reminiscent of Copeland’s time at Lampre where, by the end, he was almost the sole manager of Damiano Cunego, the exceptionally talented Italian who astonished the cycling fraternity by winning the Giro d’ltalia aged just 22. By the time the South African left the team after the 2010 Giro, their race programmes were more or less identical.

“We trusted each other and we had a fantastic relationship,” remembers Copeland. “The hardest thing to leave in cycling was Lampre first of all because they’ve been like a family to me, and second was Damiano because we worked so well together.”

During their partnership, Cunego picked up three wins in the Tour of Lombardy, one win at Amstel Gold and numerous stage wins… a successful career, but one that has ultimately failed to live up to the promise of that early Giro win. So what has prevented the enigmatic Little Prince from inheriting the crown of king of the grand tours? Mental barriers, believes Copeland.

“Damiano’s problem is like a lot of people say – he won the Giro at such a young age and it came quite easy to him. And when I say easy I mean at the age of 22, sometimes you don’t really know what you’re doing and your natural talent and your ability just come out without you even knowing about it.”

But then over-thinking got in the way: “As you get older you have to start planning a little bit more. His talent and ability and that engine he has got on him is unbelievable. I’ve worked with a lot of top professionals and going out and doing distance with Damiano is something other riders aren’t able to do. He’ll go out for five hours and when he gets back he wants to do another hour; when he gets to six he wants to do another hour; he just loves being on the bike.”

So while his talent and training regimen are irreproachable, something is not firing. In his hunt for stage wins at last year’s Tour, Cunego infiltrated two race-winning breaks, but then he lost out in the closing metres of each.

Copeland continues: “What Damiano seems to have lacked recently is conviction… The talent is there – the problem is when he gets to the race, whether it is pressure or a lack of conviction – he just seems to be lacking something. We saw that in the Tour de France when he was in those two breaks and he didn’t seem like he was sprinting to win.”

Team Sky have extolled the benefits of using a psychiatrist to develop a race-winning attitude. Has Cunego ever sought that kind of edge? “I think when he was with [former manager, Giuseppe] Martinelli he tried someone, but that was more a motivation coach. More like a mental trainer than anything else, but you know you have got to believe in that sort of thing before you can take it on board.” The implication being that perhaps Cunego, renowned for guarding his privacy, doesn’t believe motivation is a problem.

Copeland thinks – and hopes – that Cunego’s fortunes may change in 2011. The Italian has vowed to focus mainly on hilly Classics which many believe are his strength, and he is teaming up with a new coach, the revered Aldo Sassi and a highly experienced directeur sportif in Roberto Damiani, who is returning to Lampre-ISD next season.

ON CUNEGO:

“He’s very much his own man. Very down to earth, he lives up in the mountains near Verona, nothing materialistic.”

So have you been to any bike races, Mr Copeland?

• 5 x Tour de France – 3 as manager (sports director), 2 as masseur 4 x Giro d’ltalia – 2 as manager, 2 as masseur
• 6 x Vuelta d’Espana – 4 as manager, 2 as masseur
• 4 World Championships – (the first as the youngest manager ever) with the South African national team in Valkenburg, Holland 1998; Verona, Italy in 1999; Verona, Italy in 2004; Mendrisio, Switzerland in 2009
• 1 Junior World Championships -for Japan national team as masseur
• 6 x Classics of the North – Amstel Gold, Fleche Wallone, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, 3 as manager, 3 as masseur
• 6 x Tour of Switzerland – 4 as manager, 2 as masseur
• 3 x Tour of Qatar – as manager
• 5 x Tour of Japan – 1 as manager, 4 as masseur
• 6 x Japan Cup – all as manager
• 3 x Tour of Lombardy – as manager
• 4 x San Sebastian Classic – as manager 4 x Paris-Nice – as manager

… some smaller races and tours, such as the Dauphine Libere, Tour of Slovenia, Tour of Poland, Basque Country, Tour of Catalunya, Tour of Portugal, Tour of Austria, Tour of Holland, Tour of Belgium, and a never-ending list of one-day races!

WORKED WITH ANYONE FAMOUS?

Some of the riders he has managed include:

Cunego, Ballan (whilst world champion), Simoni, Vandenbroucke, Ballerini, Camenzind (whilst world champion), Astarloa (whilst world champion), Petacchi, Svorada, and of course Robbie Hunter.

Crossing over

After moving to Europe to race, but failing to secure a contract as a pro-rider, Copeland moved into team management. Initially he secured a place on the Swiss amateur team, VC Lugano, for whom he had previously ridden. In tough times he rode his bike during the day and then had to massage riders afterwards. He completed masseur’s and trainer’s courses sanctioned by the Federazione Ciclistica Internazionale (Italian Cycling Federation) – yes, obviously the course work and exams are in Italian, and yearly updates are required to obtain a license! Later he also completed the prestigious UCI training courses.

Through his links in the sport, Copeland made the introductions necessary for a young and ambitious Robbie Hunter to secure a spot on the Mapei team. When VC Lugano moved to France, Copeland was stranded in Italy. Robbie repaid the earlier favour and helped Copeland land the job he would hold for a decade. They share a close friendship and Copeland admires Hunter’s determination.

What does he believe sets Hunter apart from other SA riders who have tried to make the leap to Europe?

“Definitely his character and his will to win. I think it’s died down now, but he’s got to that age where he realises he is a worker and he’s just doing it as a job. But as a youngster they would say you’ve got to work for another rider, and he would insist ‘no, I’m sprinting well, you’ve got to give me a chance’. That will to win was unbelievable; he’s really got a strong character. Unless you’ve got a talent like Robbie, it’s not easy to get out there and have the team working for you.”

Interviewed before the team changes were announced Copeland said: “Daryl is definitely a talented rider, I think at RadioShack they are using him as a worker and not giving him much of an opportunity to show his true colours.”

Copeland has sympathy for Impey, but believes the 26-year-old must stand his ground against team managers who could pigeonhole him as a domestique.

“It’s really difficult to show yourself out there, especially when you’re a South African on a foreign team. I think Daryl’s a little bit afraid to say what he really wants out of it [cycling]. He might be a bit reserved and then the team managers might just say ‘Daryl we want you working for the first 100km today’ and he’s going to say ‘ok’, whereas a Robbie Hunter would question the decision.

“If you put the manager on the spot every now and then and make him take some responsibility, it shows the character of the rider. And if a rider does that – obviously in a mannered way – you look at him and think, this guy could be a leader.”

Robert Hunter wins the sprint at the Vuelta 1999

A different perspective

Despite his immersion in the world of superbikes now, Copeland says he still enjoys the thrill of continental bike-racing; a passion shared by many riders on the MotoGP circuit.

“What I enjoy about cycling is that the racing is very complex. It really is like a game of chess that unfolds in many dimensions over time. In MotoGP the race is just 45mins long, full of adrenalin, and not so convoluted. But the rest – everything else about MotoGP – is very impressive. There’s just a different professionalism about it. It’s also much easier to organise logistically. You know you come to one track and you’re here for four days, whereas with cycling you’re moving every single day. You do 23 days in a Tour and by the time you get to the 15th day of a long tour you’re drawn out.”

For all his commitment to his new project Copeland has not completely turned his back on his days behind the wheel of a Lampre car advising riders, giving them the long bottle and playing chess at 40km an hour!

“It’s the reason why I came to Europe in the first place.”

“It’s something I’d always loved to have done. “It’s always been a small dream of mine to do something like that – like Shayne Bannan has done with Australia. When he started out, Shane and I were very close and we were doing a similar thing. I put down the same proposal to the South African Cycling Federation but nothing came of it, and look what he’s done with Australian cycling.”