Rio Olympics a lifetime in the making for Australia’s track cycling coach Tim Decker

ONE of Tim Decker’s earliest lessons in cycling and in life came when he was 15 and would ration himself just one bread roll a day for lunch at Horsham Tech School.

Track cycling coach Tim Decker is ready for Rio. Picture: Sarah Reed.

ONE of Tim Decker’s earliest lessons in cycling and in life came when he was 15 and would ration himself just one bread roll a day for lunch at Horsham Tech School.

It was 1988 and he wanted a new BMX bike to race at the national championships so his mum — who was raising three kids on her own after Decker’s father died when he was 13 — made him a deal.

If he could save half the money she would pay the rest and he’d get his new bike and go to the Aussie titles.

“Mum used to give me $2 a day for lunch so every day at school all I had was a bread roll, which back in those days were 20 cents, and I pocketed the other $1.80,” Decker said.

“And the other thing I did was get a Herald paper run after school four or five nights a week.”

Decker got his BMX bike but never went to the national titles because in the time he was saving up he also fell in love with track cycling so put the rest of his money towards a racing bike as well.

Now 28 years later Decker is coach of Australia’s men’s track endurance program of which the backbone is the team pursuit gunning for Olympic gold on the velodrome in Rio in August.

The 43-year-old has been the national coach for the past four years when he took over from Ian McKenzie who led the Aussies to a silver medal in London in 2012.

But for Decker it feels as though a lifetime of work has led him to this point and it all started on the Horsham BMX track as an 11-year-old.

“Even in those days I used to love helping my little brother — it wasn’t coaching but teaching,” said Decker who won the prestigious Melbourne to Warrnambool Classic in 2007.

“He was more talented so I used to get him doing gate starts, so I’ve always had a passion for teaching and helping others.

“Then when I got into cycling it started to escalate and over time I built the belief and it was all about wanting to be an Olympic coach.”

Australia’s team pursuit and omnium line-up for Rio is yet to be decided but an extended group of eight riders led by Decker flew to America this week to start their training camp.

Some of them Decker has known almost their entire lives and he has been there for their highs and their lows.

Decker and wife Michelle have two sons — Austen, 3, and Cohen, 8, — but in this sport, in Decker’s job and his journey from Bendigo to Adelaide as the South Australian and then national coach, it’s like he’s a father to at least 10.

The riders are more than just athletes to him and if you ask the riders they’ll tell you the feeling is mutual.

“You spend as much time with them as you do with your own family, and my job description says this is just a job but it’s a passion, it’s a part of my life,” he said.

“Every group has it but what’s really special about the group at the moment is they’ve all had highs and lows and I’d like to think I’ve ridden the wave with them or sometimes been involved in those highs and lows.”

Decker was holding the stopwatch when Jack Bobridge — the oldest member of the team pursuit squad — broke the ‘unbreakable’ 4km individual pursuit world record in 2011. And he was also holding the stopwatch when Bobridge tried to break the world hour record in 2015 but fell short and had to be lifted off his bike at the end.

He was there for Bobridge who lost his way in the sport for a time and was the one who coaxed him to come back to the track for a crack at a third Olympics and that elusive gold medal.

On November 5 last year Decker called a meeting of the entire men’s track endurance squad and coaching staff to discuss what the 10 months leading up to Rio looked like.

Jack Bobridge attempts to break the hour world record in Melbourne as coach Tim Decker urges him on. Picture: Ian Currie.

As the group sat in a big circle in the upstairs room at the Adelaide SuperDrome, Decker was last to address the group. Towards the end of his presentation he became emotional as he recounted the very serious wake-up call he got the year before.

Decker had undergone emergency surgery for bleeding on his brain which was caused by a cycling crash just weeks earlier.

As focused and driven as ever, Decker was about to fly to London for a world cup when Michelle insisted he see a doctor about his headaches. The doctor ordered scans and told him that had he boarded that flight he might not have walked off at the other end.

Surgery forced him to stop and think and he arrived at the conclusion that he needed to listen more, to be more opened minded and to have more empathy or understanding for what his riders were going through as he pushed them hard every day.

“I think the accident was a big smack in the face and a bit of a turning point of to one — realising that it is OK to be a little bit vulnerable, you’re not superman and unbreakable, and that’s what I wanted the group to know,” Decker said.

“The persona I had before was that — unbreakable — because that’s what I was asking of the athletes.

“You want to be in control of everything but you’re not, and I guess that taught me that it’s OK because when you are vulnerable then sometimes you’re giving yourselves opportunities to learn more and have different experiences.”

Decker does sometimes stop and think about his own journey, which included leading Australia to this year’s team pursuit world title in London, but with just six weeks to Rio his mind quickly moves on.

“I do (reflect), but the journey is not done yet,” he said.

“The first part of the journey is to try to get two Olympic gold medals out of the men’s track endurance program (in the team pursuit and omnium).

“We know there is work to do and other teams are coming and we certainly know the world titles were the world titles in March, and the Olympics is the Olympic Games in August.

“What we need to be is the best at the Olympic Games, that’s where it counts.”

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Originally published as Rio Olympics a lifetime in the making for Australia’s track cycling coach Tim Decker