Our Promise To You.

I was sent something to read the other day by a colleague. It’s a fascinating read, relevant to all sports and I thought I’d share it. It was a piece of research about what’s called the relative age effect. The relative age effect is a phenomenon where sports teams are often dominated by young people who have their birthdays earlier in the year or soon after the cut off date for an age group in a particular sport. In other words, selectors and coaches, more often than not, select older participants to play in the best – often representative – teams.

The research found that when coaches and selectors were made aware of the ages of all particpants, removing the relative age effect, more of the younger players were given a chance.

There are some sports where early maturation is more of an advantage than others – cycling for example. The big kids tend to dominate early and then get the attention from people in the right places and the younger, often smaller kids, miss out. So therefore the relative age effect plays a big part in our sport and I’m pretty sure that you will have had experience of this.

But is that fair?

We’re just about to open the doors of Manchester Cycling Academy and you can rest assured that we wont follow the established method and automatically select the biggest, fastest and oldest riders to join us. What we will do is to guarantee that all applicants will get a fair go and we will leave no stone unturned in our quest to give everyone who applies a fair opportunity to get themselves on to the course.

We won’t have any glass ceilings. If you want to be the best you can be, we can help you. There is only a week or so to go til our first major event for Manchester Cycing Academy and there is still time to secure your place. All you need to do is to click HERE to book your free place.