Mark Elliott intends to adopt the "softly, softly" approach with his cyclists at Beijing.
Elliott (41), the Wanaka-based High Performance Director for BikeNZ, has experience in elite sport, with involvement at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and the Winter Olympics in Turin in 2006.
He coached Bevan Docherty to a silver medal in the triathlon in Athens and was involved in the Winter Olympics as performance director for the New Zealand Winter Performance Programme.
"It is a learning process every time you go to an Olympics," Elliott said.
Athens presented the biggest learning curve as to understanding what athletes need at the elite phase of competition and how support people can help them.
"I understand what they need at this stage, and more importantly what they don't need," Elliott said.
"They don't need hype.
"The Olympics is a bit of a circus and the last thing athletes need is pressure put on them by a management team.
"You need to make it as low key as possible because there is so much intensity around the competition."
How do you do that?"You always look ahead and have an understanding of what the cyclists need so things are done before they are asked for.
"You must go about your job in a calm and collected way and make sure the cyclists are protected from what is going on in the background."
Elliott's job in Beijing is to direct and co-ordinate the BikeNZ programme from August 4 until the mountain bike cross-country on August 23.
The long cycling programme starts on the road and continues with track, BMX and mountain biking.
There are 13 days of cycling competition.
Elliott sees medal prospects in the experienced track team, and he wants the young BMX riders to enjoy the experience of the Games.
"There are a raft of medal prospects across our bike programme," Elliott said.
"These guys wouldn't be going to Beijing unless they were [prospects]."
Does he foresee any problems?"I don't see any because logistically we have covered everything off,"he said.
"The only problem I see is the challenging environment that Beijing will create around people who are not flexible in their approach.
"The Chinese will have only one answer - yes or no. There is no grey line.
"If no is the answer we need to understand that this is the response and we will have to be flexible to get around a no answer.
"That is the only problem I see around the whole campaign.
" I believe we have got the systems in place for the cyclists to perform at their best without any issues behind the scenes."
Bevan Docherty won the silver medal at Athens.
Can he go one better this time?
"That is what the last four years has been about," Elliott said.
"There is nothing else.
"He has done the right preparation and we had to make sure the last four weeks of training were spot on.
"There is a group of athletes who are gunning for this as much as Bevan.
You can't control them. Bevan is a big-match athlete and has to take that into the race."
What has he done in the lead-up?"Bevan has a house at Boulder in the United States and has been training at altitude," Elliott said.
"He lives there full time."
Docherty has been on the podium in the World Cup and at the world championships over the last two months.
"I know he is in good shape.
He has been doing oxygen supplementation work at altitude so he can train at a higher intensity on the bike and treadmill while he is up there.
"Bevan has done the base-work and I know he is in the right shape.
"t just comes down to putting it all together on the day."
Elliott has worked with Docherty for the past six years.
"It was a very proud moment in Athens. But the sport has moved on.
"It will be another proud moment if he has adapted to the changes."
Elliott sees Docherty's main rivals at Beijing as being 2002 world champion Ivan Rana and current world champion Javier Gomez, of Spain, Alistair Brownlee and Will Clarke (Great Britain), Courtney Atkinson (Australia), Daniel Unger, Jan Frodeno and Christian Prochnow (Germany) and New Zealand's Kris Gemmell (second in the Austrian World Cup), who is competing in his first Olympic Games.
Craig Palmer (32), a sports science lecturer at the University of Otago's School of Physical Education, is the sports science expert with the the New Zealand cycling team in Beijing.
He is also the personal coach of Alison Shanks and Hayden Roulston, both of whom are top-five contenders at the Games.
John Hellemans, a staff member at the New Zealand Academy of Sport in Dunedin, will be in Beijing as the personal coach of New Zealand triathletes Kris Gemmell and Andrea Hewitt.
