You’ve probably noticed that in this year’s edition of the international UCI AC Heating Cup, there is no option to register children aged 5-6 and 7-8 for the races
Why is that the case?
For an explanation, we asked the series director, Ondřej Paur (Lampík), who initiated the decision.
Ondřej Lampík Paur – leads the AC Heating Cup UCI, the Plzeň Region Cup, Horská kola Stupno, assists the VIF Bike Team Stupno, supports Ondřej Cink from the junior ranks, and has recently also been supporting the Talent Cup.
Ondra, what led you to the idea of canceling these two children’s categories?
The decision was driven by long-term, intense moments from the races of the youngest children, including at our own AC Heating Cup events. These moments unfortunately left a negative impression on me, and I’ve been wondering why this is the case, how it’s possible.
I would call these moments PARENT vs. OWN CHILD
This topic also provides an answer to one of the long-standing problems of Czech mountain biking, and ultimately led to the decision to switch to a new, one-day format for the UCI AC Heating Cup races.
I am aware that my decision may be seen as controversial. For every person, there’s a different opinion, but I made this choice based on my own experience. As a kid from a small village, I used to just hop around on my bike in the village, building jumps, and we only started racing at the age of 13. We raced without our parents and were really excited for those events. I didn’t become a professional, but the result is that even at 33, my love for cycling hasn’t faded—it’s actually growing stronger. I feel a responsibility primarily to the discipline of cross country (XCO), and with that comes the weight of the problems I’ve long observed in the Czech XCO scene.
The BIKE TEAM STUPNO lineup in 2008 – it wasn’t until his junior years that "Cimbál" first won his championship jersey. On the right, Paur and "Jahoda" Jan Rajchart.
First of all, I’d like to throw out some key questions and try to quickly answer them:
- Why has the current best Czech biker, Ondřej Cink, not had a successor for several years? Just as it was clear after Radim Kořínka that the next leader would be Jaroslav Kulhavý, and just as it was clear that after "Kulhec" the baton would be passed to "Cimbál," why has no one else emerged in the last seven years?
Ondřej Cink, as the number one on his home turf in Stupno.
- It’s similar for women as well—where are the new Terka Huříkové, Kačky Nashové...?
- Why is there a high dropout rate among racers right after they finish the junior categories?
- Why don’t our talented racers last and grow into the Elite category, and why don’t they then fight for top positions in the World Cups?
- How is it possible that we often see young kids crying even at the starting line?
I love organizing races. It’s a demanding process, it’s a show, it’s emotions, it’s a challenge to ensure everything is prepared and handled as best as possible. It’s an opportunity to bring people together—organizers, the community—and in the end, it’s always about the "bike" and, above all, it should be about joy, pleasure from making good use of free time.
The mascot of the AC Heating Cup is a dog named Alfík, who cheers on the kids during the race day and magically brings smiles to their faces.
We organize races primarily for children, for their health—of course, physical health, but also mental health, which, it seems to me, is slowly being forgotten...
Alfík is everywhere there are children.
We also organize races to maintain the quality of the Olympic discipline XCO, which I consider the queen of MTB. If we, as organizers, do our job systematically and well, the result should bear fruit—the ability of Czech riders to compete with the world elite. As Czechs, we will once again cheer for our representatives and together conquer medals and world successes, just as we did with Katka Nash, Jaroslav Kulhavý, Zdeněk Štybar, and Ondřej Cink. However, at the moment, I see a slight gap that has existed for a few years now. We don’t have a strong young rider who would step up, full of energy when entering the Elite category, and still be able to compete with the best on the world stage.
Many talented young guys give it a try, they fight for one, two, or three years, but they remain inconspicuous. In terms of results, they place in the second half of the starting field at World Cups, and unfortunately, there’s no promise of a “new knight” emerging.
And we have much more professional support and opportunities for the national team (Czech national team) than we did in our time. Viktor Zapletal and the team are "going full throttle," with a well-organized program for talented riders, great training camps, trips to high-quality international races. I’ve noticed that the national team is able to send more riders to races (with funding), which increases the chances of "launching a talent" into foreign pro teams. However, this isn’t happening completely, because dominant individuals are missing.
European Championship in the Netherlands 2009 – the junior team lineup at that time: Nesvadba, Boroš, Paprstka, Skalický, Šimrle, Dvořáček, and Paur.
High ambitions of parents
There are certainly more reasons, and one of them is the high ambitions of the parents of the youngest children. At competitions, I see an infinity of situations that did not exist during our childhood and should not have existed.
With all due respect to all parents and of course thanks to them for choosing cycling for their children, sometimes their approach seems too extreme, stressful and sometimes I feel like they are trying to get their own adult ego out of their child.
For us, everything was more relaxed, we perceived cycling as fun - a game. Those who were more focused, got into it, but we made our own decisions, based on our feelings. We went to the races primarily without our parents, usually with two coaches in a team car, and when our parents came to the race, they only arrived on the day of the start and we actually hardly even knew about them. Except at the finish line or at the team tent.
Moreover, we were in charge of everything ourselves: preparing the bike, packing the bag with clothes, food, preparing before the start, agreeing with the mechanic at the depot which bottle to take when and how, and so on.
Today, when it is shortly before the race and the children are lined up at the start, a parent stands next to them until the last moment, who, firstly, has nothing to do there, secondly, gets in the way, and thirdly, in a high-pitched, aggressive tone full of emotion, until the last moment, "pushes the child into the ears": you have to, you have to, take it from the left, jump over them there, in that place where we have repeatedly trained, do you understand?! Then do it, etc. Unfortunately, they can no longer see the face of their own son or daughter, who are stressed, exhausted, tense, and very often start crying from all this right at the start. They are afraid that they will disappoint their mother or father, who obviously wants to win more than the competitor.
Very often, parents even manually dig out stones from under their children's rear wheels, at which point I, the organizer, think to myself: oh my, we're probably in Formula 1, man.
The children don't even have the opportunity to enjoy the relaxed atmosphere with their friends - competitors - at the start. And I'm afraid this is not the right approach for children who should one day be world champions.
We want our children to seek active movement, friends, experience, learn tenacity, respect and if one of them becomes a world champion, we will say yes, it made sense and it makes sense to do it. We also want world champions, but gradually, naturally. No one can be a world champion right away and no one can be the best across all children's, teenage categories and even in the Elite.
I could name the guys who went from schoolboys to juniors with me and were dominant, collecting Czech Championship titles one after another, and when we finished the junior category - the ground fell on them and they didn't stay on the bike even for recreation.
Czech Republic XCO 2007 – Jakub Friml wins again. Tomáš Paprstka on the left, Paur on the right.
It was not possible to beat Frimlin much from the students, he always rode like a machine, strong in the cadets, but in the juniors he slowed down and suddenly the racing and riding ended... without any taste.
In short: they ran like a machine at full power and then fell.
Exaggerated time
Maybe we grew up like logs in the forest. As a child, I still climbed trees, kicked a football, ran with the fire department, went to the scouts, jumped in the swamps behind the church over the swamp. We had general exercise, always outside, until hunger came and we came back battered. When we then started fooling around on bikes (if you could call them bikes), they were paperweights, totally in scrap and we maintained them ourselves. Ondra Cink and I were building a jump arena in the forest in a quarry when our bike "spills over", we replaced the seven-speed chain with a riveter, disassembled the headset and lubricated it, we constantly changed tires, changed cables, bowden cables, all without the assistance of adults. The more we competed, the better the bikes came, but we never had the material that the elites had.
The year 2004 and 2005 when the Author GANG was rocking: Spaceman, Damijan Sirišky, Micha Prokop – they were our role models, we wanted to be able to jump like them, we spent whole days in the forest on jumps, XCO races were just an addition, Lampík recalls
The training was a feeling, then I didn't live to see my first heart rate monitor and wattmeter. We wrote down every training session in a diary: where I rode, what the weather was like, that a dog started after me behind Stupno, that Ćinky punctured it twice and we changed the inner tube in the ditch.
The team coach gave us a pattern for training and we followed established rituals at the races, but we were swimming in it ourselves, we were SELF-SUFFICIENT!!!
Today's online era is great, you can learn and read everything on the net. Unfortunately, it is oversaturated with information and advice. The parent absorbs this information, although it is mostly materials and procedures copied from professional elite competitors, and tries to apply it to their child.
I'm referring to another issue, which is that a parent is many times smarter than a coach who has been doing it for 25 or more years and supposedly does it all wrong. Parents want to be there when their little one starts rolling on the rollers in the tent, beeping his intervals, monitoring his heart rate (and pushing him to the limit and putting him under pressure). And the child, although he doesn't know it, actually feels like he's "at work" and can't fail.
I don't understand the stories of what often happens around the track, how parents can yell, sometimes even vulgarly, at their own children... The little girl is driving and screaming, literally crying, but from stress, because the parent running next to her behind the tape obviously wants more!
I don't think children should be thrown into a puddle (on race day) and have to figure it out on their own. Yes, they are young and don't always have the brains or experience, but there is a coach and a group of their friends there.
Children should gradually absorb motivation, self-confidence, experience, tenacity, communicate with the team, be able to help, and be humble - these are the key qualities of a strong competitor.
When they pass the categories with a smile on their faces and reach the juniors, then yes, at that moment let's push the saw hard and make it "work", because there's no other way if you're aiming for success.
Only from the junior category do they face routine and stress in the following years. They must be diligent, able to accept defeat, but the main thing is that they remain passionate about cycling and do it because they want to.
Keep believing and wanting, keep going with gusto
But if we "dachmat" children from the age of six, pushing them to achieve results, it is very likely that, as has been happening for a few years now, they will sooner or later give up. They will no longer have the moral strength or motivation to continue, and they will also find that apart from stressful cycling, they did not manage to do much else in their childhood.
I'm not saying that children aged 5 to 8 shouldn't race. They certainly should, they get to experience the racing environment, they get to know friends, but I think it should take place at local races, fairs, additional races within marathons, at regional or county races - more for fun. There are, for example, races within the Talent Cup, the Pilsen Region Cup, the Prague Cup, Kolo pro život, Prima cup and others.
There's just a chimney sweep race going on, cool, let's go have fun, try it, little one, little one will go crazy.
But if you line up the whole series – it costs money, time, trips, constantly packing bags, the child traveling for hours in the car, accommodation, very often across the whole or half of the country for an 8 to 15 minute race. Wouldn't it be better to choose local races and in the meantime devote yourself to the all-round development of the child's movement, trips, nothing as organized and stressful as the above mentioned?
There are a lot of races today, really a lot. Thanks for them, of course, but is it necessary to crush a string of races all over the Czech Republic with a child of five to eight years old?
We have the highest XCO competition, the Czech Cup - everyone wants to go there, it's TOP, you see world-class pros, a great spectacle, beautiful locations - we're going with our little ones, that's clear, we never wanted to miss the "Czech" (Czech Cup) ourselves, but think of it as a short vacation, relax your schedule... there's no need to be at the racetrack for 3 days straight.
I see parents on the track already on Thursday evening and on Friday as well, who are running on the track-alongside the track behind their little one, who is racing only on Sunday and has a race of minutes. The parent pushes him into sections that he cannot handle and already 2-3 days before the race I see stress and tears on the child's face.
Maybe it would be nice to slow down, reduce expectations and only go on longer trips occasionally, giving the child a chance to rest from the racing noise and the environment.
I say this despite the fact that as race organizers we will lose some participation in the race, the local organizer will lose part of the entry fee to finance the entire event, but unfortunately, my love for discipline and the belief that it is necessary to slow down and relax in the youngest categories won out. I am convinced that if this happens, it will subsequently bring us strong, tenacious competitors in a few years who will follow in the footsteps of Cink, Kulhavý and others...
I am also supported by the fact that in some countries, such as Norway or Sweden, it is forbidden to hold organized competitions for the youngest children and they can only compete there from the youth age.
I apologize if I was too critical in some parts, but these are facts collected from the racing environment and I'm afraid that this is not the way to go in the long term.
Many of you wrote to us directly at Joycycling.cz, asking if there was a mistake in the registration that children were not allowed to register – yes, they are not. Yes, at small races (Pilsen Cup and Talent Cup).
I'm sorry that my best friend Ondra Cink remained competitive in the world of XCO alone and doesn't have a partner - a successor, he also carries the pressure of ensuring TOP results for our country differently.
"Činky GANG" is waiting for its horse Cimbála during the 2016 World Championships in NMNM, where Cink and Kulhavý were chasing Nino and Absolon and fighting for the podium. Vysočina Aréna was literally on fire that day.
It was one of the strongest races and experiences I could have been at with Ondra. And whether Ondra or Kulhec was there – it didn't matter, the guys just did it that day and were there and on home soil! I miss this, recalls Ondra Paur
Ondra and Ondra – an inseparable duo
Try to imagine that you will take your foot off the gas and that you will not have a champion at home tomorrow, but in a few years and a stronger one. Starting conditions are not important for children at all, quite the opposite. Ondra Cink took off his boots at the age of 13 and always had the worst lap, but he believed and did not stop.
2022 – Ondřej Cink takes the "next" Czech Championship title, this time on home soil in Stupno. The birth of Cink's daughter Nelinka is celebrated with the accompaniment of Lampík and confetti
I believe in a better tomorrow, I believe in strong stories.
With regards and love for discipline,
Lampík
HOME in Stupno. This year May 10th as UCI C1
