The five-man elite sprint team - ranked No2 in the world behind Germany - now live and train together for nearly 10 months of the year at the point where sports science is playing a highly-orchestrated, stronger role. Previously, the riders were in Invercargill, Feilding and Auckland, coming together for two-week camps before major events three times a year under a more traditional style coach in Justin Grace.
Aucklander Grace quit eight months ago and has joined France. He built a world class sprint squad from scratch, but tensions developed because he was apparently unwilling to follow the sports science line as far as Elliott determined it must go.
During a Herald interview last year, Grace expressed alarm, suggesting scientists were replacing coaches. Subsequent interviews with key figures put it another way - Grace baulked when the data did not fit his analysis or methods.
In high-stakes Olympic sport, sentiment gets silver so it was time to move on for the sprint team's founding father, whose charges had spent many hours of pain and progress in his boffin-world garage.
Enter 43-year-old Aussie Anthony Peden, a world track silver medallist, who represented New Zealand when sports science was at the foothills in our cycling. Peden was appointed Grace's successor in August, taking up the role two months later.
His post-racing career includes working in F1 motor-racing and on Aussie world motorcycle champion Casey Stoner's 12-person team. Peden is no one trick mad-scientist pony, but his embracing of sports science was a key to his appointment.
Newcastle native Peden emerged from the Australian Institute of Sport programme. He broke new ground in New Zealand, turning up in 1998 with a pedal crank meter when they cost $10,000 a pair. Peden admits that deprived of his AIS analyst, he didn't know how to use much of the information.
"At least I had the data to look at every night - I could see some things straight away," he says.
"I didn't tailor my training enough, but it gave me an indication. No way was it doing what we are capable of today."
Peden knows more nowadays, but his lips are mainly sealed. Under the Gold Mine national high performance sports system - heavily funded by Warehouse founder Sir Stephen Tindall - New Zealand cycling fine-tunes its own interface to extract the information required.
The main Gold Mine player is Auckland neuroscientist Dr Kerry Spackman, a man with many strings to his bow. Hundreds of millions have been invested, and a small group of sports such as cycling targeted because of their medal potential and equipment emphasis.
Peden is coy - to put it mildly - on the subject.
"What Gold Mine gives us is secret ... above what the [standard] SRM interface gives," he says. "Every leading country is doing the same.
"All I can says is this. Instead of, say, giving me power every two tenths of a second, I can get 20 readings. There is nowhere for cyclists to hide any more.
"In the real world, a hands-on coach will ultimately lead the programme, but we need to take every bit of information to find out if we are heading in the right direction.
"The ability to individualise programmes becomes infinite. It takes more time and effort, but these are the little things we do to stay ahead or in touch.
"I took two big things out of working in top motorsport. The data doesn't lie, even if that is hard to swallow sometimes. And no matter how big the team, no individual is bigger than anyone else. The most successful teams run that way.
"As a top coach, I can see a guy is not moving as quickly through a certain section and have a good idea what needs to be done. But the data will give us exactly what is lacking and we can write a programme accordingly."
The data categories include power, torque, cadence (rpm), speed, heart rate, time and distance.
Basing riders and staff in Cambridge brings many advantages, including the immediate downloading and analysis of data. Training and race day video analysis, including of opponents, is also crucial, along with the dedicated study of world cycling's fluid and tangled qualification systems.
Peden says the programme is second only to the British one, a credit to those who have gone before him.
"I seem to have been received pretty well by all the riders. They were already successful athletes and I haven't said this is how we must do everything. There will be more changes though, now we are centralised in Cambridge.
"What Justin did was fantastic. I don't want to get into the politics ... some say he didn't want to go the sports science way and others say it wasn't a problem. Justin knows this is the way you have to go, however.
"Whether he had difficulties managing that and getting the most out of it, I don't know. But the transition hasn't been a problem and the boys are fizzing off the numbers."
