HOWARD Leigh

General
RETURN TO TRACK
He began his international career as a track cyclist before switching over to road cycling and competing on the World Tour for teams such as Orica GreenEDGE and IAM Cycling between 2010 and 2016. He decided to return to the track in 2017 with the intention of making the Australia team for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. "If I didn't think that I could make the Olympic team then I probably wouldn't have made the decision to leave the World Tour and I would have kept toughing it out for another three or four years, or however long I could do it. It was a boost of confidence, backing myself to make the team and then realising that I can. The way that we train is not even in the same realm as what we do on the road, so mentally it was a big challenge switching what I thought was training hard to then training hard on the track. Your school of thought on the road is always being as skinny as you can and going longer and having more and more endurance. And now with the way the team pursuit is going, we're not track sprinters but we're not that far away from what they do now. Instead of losing weight now it's constantly trying to hold onto muscle that we build in the gym. It is a completely different school of thought." (cyclingnews.com, 12 Apr 2020; procyclingstats.com, 26 Jun 2019)