USA Cycling announces National Development Program staff changes
Dec 12, 2012
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USA Cycling on Wednesday announced effective January 1, 2013, the hiring of two coaches to support its National Development Program (NDP). Jack Seehafer will manage the women’s endurance program. Havoc, Inc., led by former BMC Racing Team sport director Mike Sayers, will manage the Under-23 men’s development program. In addition to the two new hires, Jamie Staff has been promoted to the high performance director of sprint programs for USA Cycling. Sayers, through his company Havoc, Inc., will direct USA Cycling’s U-23 development efforts from USA Cycling’s new training base in Holland. He will oversee all aspects of the successful, 14-year-old U-23 program, from race selection to rider development and serve an integral role in supporting and instructing young riders as they attempt to transition to professional careers.
"We're extremely excited about adding Jack and Mike to our world-class coaching staff,” said USA Cycling President and CEO Steve Johnson. “The USA Cycling U-23 and Women’s development
programs have been profoundly successful in developing America's best emerging riders; and, under Mike's and Jack's expert tutelage, we are confident these programs will continue to produce our future generations of professional cyclists. We’re also excited by the opportunity to expand Jamie’s role to include oversight of our BMX programs. Jamie’s past successes as both a BMX and track rider make the consolidation of these two programs a natural fit."
In his new role as the high performance director of sprint programs, Staff will not only oversee the track program, but he will also work with the elite level BMX athletes and contribute to training programs.
Staff, a British Olympic gold medalist born and raised in Ashford, England, joined USA Cycling in 2010. He was a member of the gold-medal winning team sprint squad in Beijing and also earned a keirin world title (2004) and team sprint world titles (2002 and ’05). Attracted to the track late in his career, the 39-year-old got his start in BMX, winning a world title in that discipline in 1996 and attaining world number one status in 2000 and 2001.
Under Staff’s tutelage, Jimmy Watkins, a full-time firefighter in Kern County, Calif., finished sixth in the men’s sprint at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
“I’m very excited to go back to my roots and hopefully have a huge impact on a lot of the elite athletes becoming more professional,” Staff said. “I hope I can give them some of the tools necessary to compete at the highest level competitions around the world. I’m extremely excited to be working with such talented athletes. I hope to have them performing highly on the world stage.”
After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.