Part Six: Struggle, Success and Purpose
Timothy John
“Now, as I mentioned earlier, while I was gathering flash interviews, my co-host Phil Jones, Brother UK’s Managing Director, was having detailed conversations with some of the scene’s primary movers and shakers.
“Phil, of course, is a member of British Cycling’s elite road racing Task Force, as well as the leader of a business that has stood at the side of the domestic sport for more than a decade.
“At the end of the evening, Phil and I found a quiet corner of the hotel bar to discuss another superb edition of The Rayner Foundation’s annual dinner and to reflect on how the Foundation’s excellent work contributes to the wider ecosphere of elite and professional cycling, in the UK and internationally.”
Timothy John
“Phil, one of our continuing themes on the Brother UK Cycling Podcast is the challenge being faced by the senior national competition, the National Road Series, but what we’ve heard tonight, again and again, from people like Giles Pidcock and his riders is that the scene works for juniors very effectively. There were nine rounds this year of the junior National Road Series, and Giles has placed six of his riders with WorldTour development teams next season. Clearly, that part of the puzzle works.”
Phil Jones
“Yeah, it was fascinating talking to Giles. I think what he’s done is opened up and revealed what work is getting done, almost aside from all the systems and academies and various other things that are often done by British Cycling, Giles seems to have developed a little super system himself.
“If we think back to the way things are going in the way that WorldTour teams are developing at the moment, they are literally just diving in and grabbing juniors now with a view to them
being future WorldTour riders.
"I think there’s something in that, and clearly Giles has an amazing strike rate. If he has that many riders ascending to WorldTour, then clearly he is doing something really, really right."
Timothy John
"Yeah, and these are not small teams. These are riders going to Jumbo-Visma, they’re going to DSM-Firmenich. They’re going to Axeon-Hagens-Berman, which has been the leading WorldTour development team - excuse me, independent development team - for many, many years. Giles’ success is real.
“Another very positive line we heard this evening, and one that we’re keenly aware of as the sponsor of two women’s teams, is that the British women’s scene is firing on all cylinders: a
level that it’s never fired at before. Somebody who gave us testimony to support that was Lizzie Deignan.”
Phil Jones
“Yeah, that was amazing. We were very lucky tonight, Tim, because we’ve had Lizzie Deignan on our tale and her husband Phil, so that was a real treat to have dinner in her company: one of our most successful ever women’s cyclists. Quite an incredible palmares.
“If you contrast what’s going on in the women’s racing scene in the UK at the moment versus the men’s, it’s very, very different. Very, very different. In fact, we have talk that there could
be four women’s Continental teams in 2024, and, of course, that contrasts massively with the men’s scene where there won’t be that number.
“So something is going on around women’s cycling, whether it might be over-investment, I guess, by some large brands to bring the sport up to the parity level that it needed to be. Let’s be clear about that. There’s an over-investment happening to deal with the underinvestment of the past. Let’s make that clear.
“But, as a result, it’s an exciting thing in my opinion, to have, suddenly, four UCI Continental [women’s] teams in the UK, going abroad, having a racing programme in Belgium, in France, in Portugal, in Ireland to develop these riders. I think there’s nothing but good times ahead for the women’s scene. It looks really, really positive.”
Timothy John
“Absolutely. We can justifiably claim to have played our part there as the sponsor of two women’s teams for at least the last three years and mixed teams before that, so that is a success story.
“The one piece of the jigsaw that is still not working is the senior men’s scene, and it was interesting: we talked to a number of riders this evening - Sean Flynn, Lewis Askey - WorldTour
professionals who were sad almost on behalf of their colleagues: that young British male riders are finding it hard to graduate from the domestic scene.”
Phil Jones
“Yeah, it’s funny, you know, because we’ve had conversations tonight, and I won’t name every single person, but there were some significant people in the room tonight who have influence at WorldTour level and domestic level, and what’s evident is that the British racing scene is not looked at externally as a place, where, if you have a race win…Let’s say you won Lincoln, that doesn’t carry much weight with, let’s say, a director sportif or a scout from a WorldTour team.
“What carries weight is if you are a British riders who’s gone abroad, competed with similar level riders, duked it out and then got yourself a race win against other really competitive
riders from a broad range of teams and backgrounds. That seems to be the hunting ground that they are looking for.
“What can we learn from that? One thing we can learn is that we can still have a conveyor belt working here, from juniors upwards, to send people to the WorldTour. That’s evident. We’ve only got to see tonight, at the Rayner dinner, there are 21 riders who have the potential to go to WorldTour. Not all of them are going to make it, but some will. We have a background and a history and a winning pattern of how to do that successfully, which is great.
“The question then comes: in the past, maybe the job of the domestic racing scene was to bring people through, step by step by step by step, but that is clearly changing. That is really changing, and now the domestic racing scene has to look at that and say, ‘Is it the job of the domestic racing scene to try and propel people to the WorldTour?’ It may not be. It may well be about providing a competitive racing environment for people who either just want to race at the weekends or someone who didn’t make it to the WorldTour, who still wants to race.
“They might stay in the sport. They might become a physio, they might become a bike fitter, they might become a mechanic. Just because you didn’t make it to WorldTour, doesn’t mean
there’s not a career in cycling for you. There could well be.
“These are some of the questions that we’ve been grappling with in the Task Force work that we’re doing. We have to work backwards really to say even though the sport has been brilliant and has served a lot of people well, what we’ve got to look at is the model for the sport moving forwards, taking into account all things, including that the route to the WorldTour seems to be changing a lot.”
Timothy John
“Yeah, we are living in extraordinary times, aren’t we? It’s almost difficult to keep up with the amount of WorldTour development teams that have been formed, even within the last three years. INEOS, strangely, is an exception in that it doesn’t have a development team, and yet teams like DSM, and squads like FDJ, they can’t get enough British riders. They are impressed by the work ethic, they’re impressed by the strength, by the standard of competition.
“Isn’t that a strange dichotomy? You’ve got the professional ranks, who are desperate to recruit young British riders, and, yet, races like the Lincoln Grand Prix, which, as you rightly say,
is a fantastic race, cut absolutely no ice with WorldTour teams.”
Phil Jones
“Yeah, and, clearly, that’s not great, because if you’d won Lincoln, you would come away and say, That was a very hard race to win. Of course it is. Look at who’s won Lincoln in the past. The difficulty is that it’s not held in the same esteem when it’s coming to the cut about who WorldTour teams now want.
“It sort of strikes me that now, if you’re a developing U23, let’s say, actually it might already be too late, even at that age. It seems that the clock is being wound further back, and what we’re looking at now is who are the juniors, somewhere between 10 plus, who are showing an aptitude, a skill, a capability, an interest, a motivation, an ability to race a bike?
“It seems that learning from other sports, cycling now seems to be really looking at this and saying, Could this all be about having better academies, better feeder systems, rather than
waiting for someone to make it in a domestic scene and then trying to place them later on to perhaps plug a gap or do something else with them later on.
“It strikes me that they are going to change the way they do things, and we’re going to have far more junior development pathways from whatever is going on in the junior scenes in each of these countries into the WorldTour.”
Timothy John
“Yeah. It’s funny, isn’t it, that The Rayner Foundation, despite this incredible proliferation of pathways to the WorldTour that is now occurring, the Rayner Foundation remains a constant: it will always be there to help young British riders make it to the WorldTour.
“They’re not blind to these changes, and we heard tonight, didn’t we, Giles Pidcock speaking from the stage talking about the Gateway programme, and the Rayner Foundation funded
84 junior riders this year. Clearly, they’re hip to these changes as well."
Phil Jones
“Yeah, and I think Giles is clearly a driving force behind all that. It was great to chat to him tonight and to hear about Tom’s success, and Giles, as Tom’s dad, observing all that.
“I asked Giles directly: ‘What is driving you to do this? What is making you so passionate about bringing these young people through?’
“He was very much, 'I’ve seen what it can do for Tom.’ He said: 'There’s not a big enough story being told about cycling being a potentially lucrative career for you as a young person.’
“If somebody says to you in school, ‘You have the possibility to make it as a Premier League footballer,’ then what’s your immediate response to that?
“Your immediate response is they’re going to have a massive pay day, they’re going to earn a fortune, and they’re going to earn in week what I earn in a year.’ That’s what we think about Premier League footballers, don’t we? And what Giles was saying is that we’re not really telling the story that at WorldTour, that’s also possible. You can become a star at WorldTour and have that same seven-figure salary success.
“Look at Mark Cavendish, look at Chris Froome, look at Geraint Thomas, look at Bradley Wiggins. Look at these people who become superstars, globally renowned and known, and
who earned great sponsorship deals and income riding for these WorldTour teams.
“He suggested that we’re not telling that story: we’re not telling the story that cycling can be your profession, whether you’re a mechanic, a physio, a soigneur, statistician, driver: it doesn’t really matter.
"Cycling is an industry that you can enter, and you can enter it as an athlete, and you might make it to the big time and earn a lot of money, or you might make it as part of the background team, running a team, being a team manager, being a director sportive, or whatever it might be, and I thought that was a very interesting point.”
Timothy John
“Absolutely, It’s wonderful also that despite this professionalism, despite these opportunities to earn significant amounts of money, a charitable organisation like The Rayner Foundation remains at the heart of helping young British riders to enter that world.
“You really get a sense of their credibility, their authenticity at an event like the dinner. I know that Jos aims for an atmosphere similar to your old school cycling club dinner. It’s that with
bells on, isn’t it, but there is a really nice atmosphere in the room.
“It’s not a cut-throat environment. It’s a very friendly, very welcoming environment where you can sit down next to one of the best cyclists this country has ever produced and have a nice, one-to-one conversation.”
Phil Jones
“Yeah, without a doubt. When I first got into cycling, which I guess was about 2008 when I bought my first bike etc. Within about three to four years, I’d heard about what was at the time called the Dave Rayner Fund dinner. Everybody went to it at the end of the season. Everybody, It was the place everybody came to see out the end of the season, have a bit of a late drink, see everybody in the industry and the sport.
“Here we are now, I guess, 15 years on from that. I’ve been to three now, I think. We did the Tour of Britain One Day Ahead in 2018. That was the one year, when were handing over the
money, I couldn’t come to the dinner, so James Golding came and did that work.
“Then, of course, we came into 2019, when I came. Then we went into Covid, of course, and post-pandemic.
“The times when I’ve been, I’ve really, really enjoyed it, and I’ve been very impressed by the professional organisation of the place. Some of the auction items are just unreal. You’re
going to find it very difficult to find some of those auction items, they’re just so rare, and very, very reasonably priced, actually, for some of the things that are selling.
“It’s a fantastic evening. It really is. I think the most important thing is that you’re seeing riders on stage who you may not have heard of today, but you definitely will be hearing of them in two or three years time because they are going to be riders in the WorldTour.”
Timothy John
“Absolutely no question about that. They all look horribly young!”
Phil Jones
“Compared to us, Tim, yeah!”
Timothy John
“It’s terrifying on the one hand but hugely inspiring on the other. The future of British road racing full stop is in a very, very healthy place, and that is thanks in very large part to The Rayner Foundation.
“Phil, thanks very much. It’s been great to catch up.”
Phil Jones
“Thanks, Tim. Let’s go to the bar!”
INTERLUDE
