Talkingshop: Tom Scully at the Tour of Britain

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One of ‘the’ riders of the Tour Series, Kiwi Tom Scully will be one of Team Raleigh’s hopes to make an impact in the toughest Tour of Britain yet

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It’s Friday the 13th and at the headquarters for the Tour of Britain in Peebles, I wasn’t having much luck finding any riders to talk to until the latter part of the afternoon when teams started to arrive. One of those was Team Raleigh and Tom Scully kindly came down to talk to us about the Tour of Britain.

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Tour Series and on a tough course at Redditch, Tom Scully rode away to win solo. 

The race will be his season 2013 wrap-up event and in it, he will be riding a special 2014 version of the Militis bike with SRAM Red groupset and Cole wheels.

The Kiwi has ridden the Worlds before but admits this will be one of the bigger stage races he has done. He is also well aware that this Tour of Britain will be very much different to the Tour Series where he had so much success. Because of that, he headed south to prepare.

“I have been in Spain with one of my teammates to go ride some hills and have a change of scenery before coming back to ride a few kermesses to sharpen up. I think we’ve had as good a preparation as we could have had coming into the Tour of Britain and I’m looking forward to how the next eight days unfold. I don’t think any day is going to be easy in this Tour and the closest thing to much of the racing we have been doing will be stage 8 in London which will be twice as long as the crits we did.”

“I think the weather will play a big part in the race too.”

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Team Raleigh will have the talented Tom Scully in white here to call upon as well as the experience of Alex Blain.

Tom adds its pretty cool to be selected to ride the 2014 Militis which is equipped with SRAM Red like his other Militis bikes. With the likes of Wiggins, Cavendish and many other top stars in the race, it would easy for a young rider to be intimidated by that but not Tom who is pretty level headed about his approach.

“It is a fantastic thing for the race but looking at it, they are just names and numbers. I have a lot of respect for what these riders have achieved but if I went into the race worrying about them, half the battle would be lost already. We’re just going to go out there and ride our own race and see what we can do.”

Asked for an ideal situation on a stage, he says “I think a breakaway is always going to be on the cards and its all about trying to pick the right one that is going to go all the way to the line. There will be a lot of riders trying to do that as well but every day you go out there and pin the number on, something is going to happen. 0 kilometre, the race will start and its anyone’s game from there on.”

Tom says the last stage race for him was the Tour of Normandy where he won the prologue and with a day to go to the Tour of Britain, says he’ll be trying to drag his stage race legs out and see what happens one day at a time.

Thanks to Tom for his time and good luck in the Tour of Britain, 2013.

 

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