Tom Scully looks to cycling calendar beyond lockdown

A career headlined by comebacks has helped Southland’s most accomplished road cyclist overcome the challenges of a European lockdown.

Tom Scully, a multiple Grand Tour rider with EF Education First Pro Cycling and the 2019 ILT Southland senior sportsperson of the year, has spent the past two months cooped up in his Andorra apartment, nestled between France and Spain, only allowed to venture outside for a few hours a week.

For someone used to training outdoors more than 20 hours a week, the change has taken some time to get used to, but Scully counts himself one of the lucky ones when he looks at the carnage Covid-19 has caused in the countries around him.

Scully had been eyeing up a big Spring Classics campaign before cycling came to a grinding halt midway through the opening race from Paris to Nice.

He had been looking forward to the cobblestones, crosswinds and short punchy climbs which are a feature of the World Tour at this time of year, races that are made for his body shape and determined mindset.

“Me being a bigger-framed rider, I’m in what we call the plus-80kg club. Anything that’s not too steep, but is flat or windy, doesn’t affect us too much, we don’t get blown around too much and we can keep the momentum going across the cobblestones,” Scully told me during a Zoom interview.

“I do love it and it’s a shame we only got to opening weekend this year, but right around the corner was going to be a big spring campaign which unfortunately got canned. It’s pretty hard to take for my Belgium teammates and for all of us, but we will wait it out.”

Scully has known hardship in his cycling career. By his own admission, two junior world track championships were not the successes he hoped for. He’s been on the wrong end of teams struggling with finances. But worst of all was a crash during the Tour of Ireland in 2010 which left him lying in a hospital bed for weeks, contemplating his cycling future.

“There was a time when we didn’t know how bad it was or how well it was going to recover. We put a pretty good plan in place way back then around doing the right things at the right times to slowly build back to full fitness,” he said.

“I think the biggest thing that I did learn from that, and I read it all the time in the cycling news, someone’s had a big crash and has a bad injury – you never think that’s going to happen to you. You just think it’s going to be golden and everything will go alright, I’m not going to be one of those headlines. When it does happen you get put right back into reality and that’s when you work out who your strong network of support is and you work back from there.”

Scully, also known affectionately as ‘Scud’, became the first Southlander to ride the Tour de France in 2018, backing up at cycling’s biggest event again the following year.

With his team stacking its roster with climbers in preparation for a heavy opening week of climbing whenever the 2020 Grand Boucle gets underway, Scully’s focus for the first half of the season was the Classics, with a potential tilt at the Tours of Italy and Spain later in the year.

And with the cycling calendar thrown into turmoil, Scully and many of his fellow New Zealand professionals could return home to ride the SBS Bank Tour of Southland, an added bonus for local fans.

A hilly course for the Tokyo Olympics meant that event was never on Scully’s radar, even as a potential support rider for George Bennett, but he is interested in the road world championship which is set to be held in two years’ time on the Belgium cobbles.

Scully has enjoyed joining his Cycling Southland club mates on virtual rides via the Zwift platform earlier in lockdown – joking about getting ‘dropped’ during the second ride as he struggled to get his head around the technology.

For a rider who spent a lot of time living in a small flat above good friend Glen Thomson’s bike shop in Invercargill, connections with home are important.

He messaged Corbin Strong after the youngster claimed the world points race championship title earlier this year, following on from Scully’s silver medal in the same event in 2014.

And he also messaged Eddie Dawkins after the sprinter announced his retirement a few weeks ago.

The pair traveled the world together in New Zealand track cycling teams.

“I remember my first training session at Kew Bowl and he was there with Laurie Tall and a bunch of others. We rode the Junior Tour of Southland, the Yunca Tour – he even loaned me one of his bikes when my bike wasn’t up to it in my first ever tour,” Scully said.

“He’s had an outstanding career, so it was just awesome to be a part of it really and share some of it with him.”

Retirement is something that Scully hopes is still some way off for him.

“I had my 30th birthday this year, so the years are slowly catching up on me,” he said.

“Someone in my role in the team, I’m a helper, I’m not there to win the races so as long as I’m staying fit, healthy and injury-free I can have an extended career. I’d like to go at least another five years…whether my body lets me or not, some guys are able to go out to their late 30s.”