It is no easy feat to make a name for yourself in cycling if you hail from the Isle of Man. The tiny island boasts a staggeringly rich racing legacy, having produced Mark Cavendish and other top-tier pros including Peter Kennaugh, Mark Christian, Lizzie Holden and Becky Storrie. Yet, Peter’s younger brother Tim Kennaugh has forged his own distinct path off the bike, earning a reputation as one of professional cycling’s most respected coaches. His elite clientele has included three-time Olympic gold medallist Ed Clancy, Tour stage-winner Heinrich Haussler and Cavendish himself.
Kennaugh initially shared his brother’s pro aspirations. Representing Great Britain, he won a silver medal at the U19 European Championships. However, a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s autoimmune disease during his U23 years prematurely ended his racing career. Pivoting to support roles, Tim joined domestic squad Rapha Condor-JLT as a soigneur in 2013, stepping up to coach a year later. He soon launched his own business, with early clients including his double-national-champion brother. Before long he had moved up to the World Tour, serving as a performance director for EF Education First in 2018, followed by a seven-year stint at Bahrain, including working for a season with Cavendish.
Now 34, armed with a master’s degree in high-performance sports science from the European University of Madrid, Kennaugh has relaunched his solo business. Alongside amateur and Continental clients, he currently oversees the coaching programme of the EF Education-Aevolo development team. We spoke to Kennaugh to find out more about how he gets the very best from every type of rider, from rising stars to ambitious veterans.
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A grazed Tim Kennaugh (L) in his racing days, pictured alongside his brother Pete, in 2009
(Image credit: Andy Jones)
What was it like to coach Mark Cavendish?
I’d known Cav for quite a long time, what with us both being from the Isle of Man. He really supported me in my youth by giving me his old cycling kit and then paying for my rent when I was racing in Italy. We then didn’t speak for a number of years, but when he joined Bahrain-McLaren [in 2020] I began coaching him. I was a little nervous, as he’s a big personality, and when you’re dealing with an athlete as famous as that, you’re also dealing with their travel programme, their agent and other commitments that you just don’t have with most other cyclists. From a coaching perspective, I couldn’t have asked for any more. He did everything I asked of him, committed to every training session and gave good feedback.
Why did you leave Bahrain Victorious?
I had burnout after so many years working in the World Tour. I loved it but it was time for a reset. I’m happy to be back working in cycling again with the EF devo team – and I wouldn’t turn down future opportunities to work in the World Tour.
What was the personal appeal of coaching?
I’ve always been a people person, and coaching allows me to use those skills. When coaching young kids, I want them to develop as much off the bike as they do on it. Over time you go through a lot with each individual rider, especially if you’ve coached them for six years as I did with some at Bahrain. It’s great being part of everyone’s journey and supporting them as much as possible.
What are the first steps when you begin coaching a rider?
Rather than focusing on the one big goal, it’s about breaking it down and working back from that goal and its demands to establish the best processes that will lead to the desired outcome. You have to work out the KPIs [key performance indicators] and what numbers to hit, as well as devise a monitoring programme, such as a regular test to repeat to see if the athlete is on track or not. Then you bring in other members of the performance team – nutritionists, physios, strength coaches – to make sure everyone’s pointing in the same direction.
How do you make sure you get the best out of an athlete?
By making sure the training plan fits the athlete’s lifestyle and this is especially true of amateur cyclists. I can write the most scientifically optimal programme in the world, but if it doesn’t work around the athlete’s commitments, or where they are in their development, then it’s not optimal for them. Take Fred Wright, for example: when he was doing the Classics for the first time, he needed a certain watts-per-kilo figure to get over the bergs, but that wasn’t his limiting factor – what was holding him back originally was that he was so fatigued when he got to the key bergs that he couldn’t produce the power. So what we needed to prioritise first was getting him to the finish, and then once he could stay at the front of the peloton it was time to work on his power on those short, steep climbs.
How do you ensure that riders spend the right amount of time at altitude?
First of all, you’ve got to do blood tests to make sure they’re fit and healthy before they go, because if they’ve got any cardiorespiratory illnesses, they should be kept at home. In their first week there, you’ve got to keep intensity relatively low. Using wearables that test heart rate variability, or devices that measure blood oxygen levels is essential to continue managing load. Altitude works, but it does cause physical and mental stress.
How do you improve a rider’s durability?
The rider obviously needs a strong aerobic capacity first. High training volume helps, for sure, and then it’s a case of developing their threshold. From a race-specific perspective, you’ve got to know the duration and difficulty of the effort that’ll be required repeatedly in the race, and then you plan training sessions around that. I often test it by comparing someone’s fresh power with the same effort at the end of the ride and seeing how much the drop-off in power is.
What message do you find yourself repeating?
Reminding riders, pros especially, to trust the process. People always want confirmation of how they’re going, but it’s not about chasing a specific number or peak power – it’s instead about being consistent. Holding pros back is the biggest challenge as a coach. Rather than adding to a training plan, it’s often about stopping them from doing something, or taking something away. It’s the reduction that creates the biggest improvement in performance. Adding altitude, heat training or increasing gym work might mean that all of a sudden the athlete isn’t recovering properly and isn’t adapting as well as they should be.
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a coach?
When I first started, I was really quite young and I had imposter syndrome, as I was working with guys older and more experienced than me. Also, I didn’t go to university, so I was constantly watching lectures and learning more about physiology, coaching and managing people. Once I got into the World Tour, it became even more demanding. There are so many external experts that sometimes it felt like I was trying my best but just treading water. You get back from races and training camps and you’re so busy that you don’t have time to keep up with things. Now that I’ve stepped away, I’ve had more bandwidth to look into topics that I find interesting.
What’s one data point you think is underused?
RPE – rate of perceived exertion. We have so many measurements – power, heart rate, lactate, so much data and everyone’s always looking at the 1% to improve, but still people don’t leave an RPE comment on their training files. There could be a million different reasons for a higher or lower heart or lactate measurement, and RPE is really useful to try to explain that.
What’s your view on the role of AI in coaching?
I think it’s great for the general population. If I go to the doctor’s or see a specialist, thanks to AI I’m now so much more informed. It’s the same when I talk to cyclists I coach – they’re able to get so much info now that they can ask better questions. I also think a 12-week training plan produced by AI for a beginner is generally not bad. What you’ll find with AI, though, is that the more you know, the more mistakes you spot in its recommendations. I see it going the other way: rather than growing dependent on AI, people will crave human connection and want someone on the phone to offer an understanding ear, to hear their tone of voice or disappointment after a race.
What’s the future of coaching?
Because there’s now so much data, I think we’re going to see more coaches on teams, as it’s going to become very difficult for one coach to train eight riders properly. We’ll likely go down to three riders per coach, and the coaches will end up being like a GP, referring the athlete to individual specialists who will work alongside them.
Kennaugh spent seven years as a coach at Bahrain Merida/Victorious
(Image credit: Bahrain Merida)
Coach’s CV: Tim Kennaugh
Age: 34
Hometown: Douglas, Isle of Man
Notable riders coached: Mark Cavendish, Fred Wright, Peter Kennaugh
Best achievements as coach: Developing Phil Bauhaus as a sprinter
Best achievements as rider: 2nd – Points race, U19 European Championships (2009)
Favourite motto: Don’t run before you can walk
Train like Cav – with caveats
Don’t prioritise heat training: “An amateur athlete can’t do everything, and if there were 100 things I could prescribe to an athlete to improve performance, heat training wouldn’t be at the top of the list. It definitely works, but if you keep adding additional stresses on top of work and family life, then it will lead to taking extra days off. Keep your cool!”
Focus on regularity, not load: “If you’ve got a slightly easier training plan but it’s consistent, then over 12 months you’ll see bigger benefits.”
Don’t stagnate: “I see a lot of damage done by riders repeating the same training cycle and structure: a big ride on Saturday and Sunday; easy days on Tuesday and Thursday and rest the other days. That works for a while until you get bored and go backwards as you’re not giving your body a different stimulus. Mix things up.”
Don’t forget intensity: “Every four weeks, you want to be including a macro cycle in which you train with greater intensity, before you go into an easier block. If you usually do six hours of training a week, in the fourth week, do eight or 10. Or instead of four sessions a week, do three but make one of them longer.”
Replicate climbs: “Even if you live in a flat area, you can do torque efforts, sweetspot and FTP intervals at a lower cadence of 50rpm. Alternatively, find routes and training sessions on an indoor trainer that simulate climbing. Use technology to your advantage.”
This article was first published as part of the ‘Masterminds of Performance’ series in the 16 July 2026 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only) while digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazine’s Direct.
