It would be disingenuous to suggest the Kiwi riders don't have access to some of the best technology from time to time but the steel ergometer bike in BikeNZ sprint coach Justin Grace's garage is an illustration nothing beats hard work.
It was built for him by his dad in the early 1990s when Grace enjoyed moderate success as a sprinter on the international circuit.
"We are still training on the same bike today,'' Grace says with a chuckle. "We had that as our centralised place to come in and do the really hard yards when we couldn't train on a track during the winter in New Zealand.
"We replicated what we would do if we had an indoor track and just wrote the programmes based on the best fit to that. I had carpet put down and a workshop set up in there.
"There have been a lot of ill young men lying on the floor since then. It was basically bare bones. It was the same sort of thing with John Britten building a motorcycle but I was just trying to build some athletes.''
Grace was convinced this country could produce power athletes, despite widespread scepticism, and persuaded others at BikeNZ sprint cycling was worth investing in.
It helped that many endurance events New Zealand had traditionally excelled at, like the individual pursuit, were dropped from the Olympic programme and a greater emphasis placed on sprinting, but there was little to suggest this country could become a major player on the world scene. BikeNZ and then Sparc were prepared to invest money to see if they could.
"I said, 'let's try to replicate what a world-class institute of sport would do but we will do it in a garage,'' Grace explains. "We really took a global approach to it but did it No 8 wire kind of stuff. It worked.''
It has worked so well that in the two years since the sprint programme was launched, they have gone from mere competitors to extremely competitive.
At last week's Oceania track cycling championships in Invercargill, BikeNZ riders won all the sprint events - usually the domain of the excellent Australians - and set new national records in the sprint, team's sprint and 1000m time trial in the process.
This week's World Cup meet in Cali, Colombia, is a good chance to measure themselves against the world's best from France, Germany, Great Britain and Russia and, although New Zealand crashed in qualifying for the team's sprint, there are many from those countries sitting less comfortably in their bike seats with only eight months until the Olympics.
The original plan had targetted Rio in 2016. Sam Webster, Eddie Dawkins, Simon Van Velthooven and Ethan Mitchell, all aged 20-22, are mere babies on the international scene and it was thought they would need a few more years of hardened competition and training to peak. That apex might still be a few years down the track as they get stronger with age and experience but London is the immediate goal.
There is intense competition among the four for a place on the three-man sprint team and selection for that will have implications on who competes in the keiran and 1000m time trial.
Van Velthooven has been the major improver in 2011 and won three titles at the Oceania championships but is unsurprised by their achievements.
"All of us have been riding since we were 10 years old so we know the basics and are far more advanced than people think,'' he says.
"It's about training and having a goal together. Our goal is to win an Olympic medal and we are eager to prove to ourselves and the country that we can do that. If we don't perform in London, we will feel like we have let people down. We will be going full gas to hopefully win the gold medal.''
Grace won't discount that happening next year. He's an ambitious individual but even he might admit to some surprise with what they have achieved so far.
"It was always a 2016 project, for sure,'' he says. "The plan goes to 2016. There was a best-case scenario and that's where we are tracking right now. We are right at the top end of the curve.
"We are achieving what most people in New Zealand didn't think we could in such a short period of time. It confirms my belief from many years ago that the right amount of attention and support New Zealand can produce power athletes and I think we can do it in any sport. We can do it in athletics, but we don't have a depth of power sport coaches because it's never happened before.
"We have always gone out with that grunty, go-out-and-hurt-yourself, run-over-the-(Waitakere Ranges)-five-times-a-day mentality and it's worked for us. We love that stuff as New Zealanders. We aren't really that big, bulky, flashy people. New Zealanders don't relate to that and so we haven't created a depth of coaching in those areas. I guess I just like to be a little bit different.''
His garage is testament to that.
