154. Harry Tanfield: Baptisms of fire, keeping the faith, and the Ribble Outliers

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1:23You could have bought two brand new Maserati Gricalis for that. Now you can find out more and also find out where your local Maserati dealer is at maserati.com where else. So that's maserati.com and check out the Maserati Gricali. I reckon a while ago the bike computer market looked all sewn up. There were two big players, end of. Kind of like how once upon a time group sets meant either Shimano or Campagnolo. So there's a wonderful synergy in the fact SRAM busted open the group set market back in 2006. And now SRAM's computer arm, Hammerhead, is blowing the doors off in the same way with the Hammerhead Karoo.

2:00My favorite thing about the Karoo is how much it's like a smartphone. So the touchscreen is really crisp and punchy, so data and mapping, which is way more like a phone's mapping than a classic bike GPS, by the way. Those things are super clear. But unlike a phone, battery life is a huge 35 hours with GPS on and your ride recording, plus it's also way smaller. It's up there with the smallest head units given what it does and it does loads from predicting gradients in real time to making routes on the fly to running apps like Spotify and it will even tell you how fast you're going. There's a whole lot more that we'll get into in other episodes but for anyone who just needs things now now now head over to cyclist.co.uk and search Hammerhead Crew 3 to read our in-depth review and find out why we gave it our cyclist recommended badge of honour.

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3:12Hello and welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. I'm your host James Spender and it It's just me for now, although Will will be along for our interview today with Harry Tanfield. But right now, Will is in New York. New York! So he's probably just got out of a yellow cab that cost him a small fortune as it sat there in traffic with the meter running. He has eaten a large slice of pizza pie, and he's maybe gone for coffee at all hours of the day, and he hasn't slept because, hey, it's the city that never sleeps. And that's right now somebody's shouting at him, hey I'm working here as he bashes into them on their morning commute and then jaywalks promptly across the street because in America you have to wait to be told when to cross the street whereas in Britain you can cross the street whenever you want.

3:56I don't know what that says about us or them but I'm assuming that probably there are fewer accidents in New York I just don't know but anyway this week or for this episode I should say Will and I will be joined by Harry Turnfield. Now, Harry was raised in Yorkshire and started racing bikes just aged 10. But by his mid-teens, he caught the attention of big teams with strong performances at races like Junior Paris-Roubaix. And by 20, he'd been handed his first professional contract with Team JRT Condor. Hands up, who remembers them? Pro Conti Racing soon turned to the World Tour after a landmark season in 2018 that saw Harry take a silver at the Commonwealth Games time trial.

4:36had success, British national track titles and World Cup wins on the track, plus an all-important stage win at the Tour de Yorkshire, making him the first Yorkshire man to win a stage of that race. The following year, he joined World Tour team Katusha Alpersen on a two-year contract. But by the end of that season, things had gone bad, basically, as lots of you will remember. The team folded, and that prompted a move to AG2R for the 2020 season. another move to quebeca um which i think was quebeca next hash at that point came in 2021 but by 2022 that world tour dream was kind of over and harry was back rating pro conti with ribble well tight a few little stints followed at tdt and then saint piren but by 2025 he had reacquainted himself with ribble as part of the ribble outliers gravel team uh for whom he still rides so this chat is obviously gonna have some talk about gravel i'm sorry if you're not into gravel, but you should be.

5:34It's great. But we also talk about the good old days of elbows out crit racing. We mull over the British race calendar's seeming collapse that's in the midst of today. And Harry gives us a few insights as to why that's happened and where we might go from here. Plus, he speaks candidly about his tumultuous time at the World Tour and how he handled things that were out of his control, such as sponsorship collapse and also personal tragedy. And then, And of course, there's what gravel racing means to ex-road pros like Harry, what it offers, what the attraction is, and ultimately why it's more fun, I think it sounds like, than racing on the road.

6:15So without further ado, welcome to the show, Harry Tanfield.

6:23I figure that's probably a really good place to start is, you know, kind of explain your racing situation for 2026. So you're currently riding for Ribble Outliers. That's a gravel program. How does that work compared to life on road teams? Is it just, it's the same thing, but it's gravel? Or is it much more kind of DIY? I mean, you're all full-time professionals, but is it the same level of kind of care and organization and logistics from the team? Or are you kind of given a bike, here's a credit card, put some expenses through and off you go to you know the rift or whatever or the track or wherever it is you're racing yeah i guess it's it is quite a lot different to the road i think in a road environment when you're in a pro team or you're in a relatively high level team that there's there's there's people employed there to kind of look after you at the races and especially with you know water bottles and feeding and drinks and stuff like that in races that have someone generally from the team who's helping out with that but in gravel a lot of these races i mean some of them they do have feeds on some it depends on the races to be honest because in the uci ones you can have like multiple feeds um to pick up water if you want but in some of the gravel earth series races you have like a designated area which is either at one point in the race potentially two but some of these races can be anything from four to twelve hours so it really depends on the gravel earth series how long the race is really and um the levels of support are different so But each race has its own individualities about how team members can even help.

8:04Some races, they can't even do anything. It's really just your staff up and you're self-supported. And if you have a puncture or anything like that, you have to fix it. There's not someone driving a team car behind or anything like that. And from the start of the year, to be honest, because I was brand new to gravel anyway and only coming from road, I didn't really have a clue how it was, to be honest, I really got to function. and I think that we kind of took it upon ourselves within the team to make a bit of a make a bit more of a team culture of it because gravel is traditionally quite individual and a lot of individual riders obviously are part of gravel and they have their own personal sponsors and that kind of thing but for us as a team like last year there really was not that many teams there's quite a few more teams this year with Specialized and a few others and this year it's kind of made that switch a little bit to actually having a bit of an organized team in races.

9:00Might only be three or four guys or whatever, or girls, but it seems this year that it's becoming a little bit more organized in that way, which is quite nice to see. And I think that we really made the most of it ourselves to create a team environment ourselves, the riders in the group, you know, cooking together and organizing how we were going to do things in the team house, because we never stay in hotels. We just always just rent an Airbnb somewhere cheap and try and get together as a group. and I think it's nice that we can spend our time together and share notes because some of us come from mountain bike backgrounds, some of us from road backgrounds, some people actually have only done gravel, have been done roads.

9:37So it's a real mix within the team of the different riders and we all have individual kind of skills in certain areas and whether that's technically or just knowledge of even just tyres and races and pressure to ride and tyre choice and how to look after yourself in these long races when you haven't got, you can't just put your hand up and call a team car, for example, and get a bottle or get some clothes or get whatever you want. So it is really different. And just learning to adapt to that, for me, it's quite a few months to actually just get used to the whole situation and even have to ride off-road properly on gravel when you're coming from a road background.

10:15So it's been a big learning curve, that's for sure. Do you actually get to work as a team? Does it feel like as a team when you're racing or is it more just kind of supporting each other off the bike and sort of being there? Yeah, it depends on the races, but generally certainly more off the bike really that you ride. You know, we work together as a team and we collectively share notes about the race and plans and to get ourselves on the start line, I think in the best positions possible, using each other in that way to obviously further our own chances. But it does depend on the courses really, how we can work together as a team.

10:52In some of the races, like in Belgium or in Holland, where it's a bit flatter, then the team element really comes into it a lot more. But then you've got races like the Castellon, and that had nearly 3 ,000 meters of climbing in like 100k. And, you know, there's not really a lot you can do as a team, unless you've got two really strong climbing guys that it's really just hold the wheel and ride up and down the climbs, really. So I think it'd be a bit interesting for this year with the mix of races that we are doing and some of the longer ones. last year, like for example in Tracker, Moulsen did the 200, the Tracker 200 and one of the guys of the team, the Theven, who he was working for Ribble last year, full time and has now switched to like a little bit of part-time work with the team, with Ribble and riding his bike more.

11:42He's been given an opportunity to try to progress more in sport, which is nice, from Middleside to see where he can go with it and he obviously did the 360 last year on his own. And this year we've decided as a team, well, the guys in the team anyway, that we're all going to do the 360 together so that we can try and work together and hopefully further our chances of a better result from one of us in the race. Because obviously a lot can happen over a 360k race. It's a big team time trial, that one. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they normally put a lot of big climbs when you get the start of the race, which normally breaks the field quite a lot.

12:18So it'd be interesting to see how it pans out because obviously I don't particularly think that it really changes much in these races. It doesn't matter if the race is three hours or it's 12 hours. It seems to be that if there's a climb at the start, it's ridden as if the top of the climb is the finish. So it's always ridden absolutely full gas normally. But you just see how, yeah, certainly how that goes. Do you sort of miss the kind of the setup on the road? And dare I say, almost kind of like the glamour. I know that from the inside, road racing is desperately tough. It's one of the hardest sports on earth, but it's one of the hardest jobs as well.

12:52But obviously it has the status. And I know that as teammates, you've also got Sophie Wright and Abby Smith. So two women teammates who raced in the women's world tour for Decoynic, was it? And Picnic Post and VTC. And do you guys kind of when you get together, do you kind of go, whoa, this is different to how things used to be where's the where's the person that's bringing my shoes or giving me a massage or telling me like where to go i mean yeah that's um sometimes my girlfriend comes uh marilyn she's a pro with um with laparal team and sometimes when she can come on the races it's always nice if there's a spare room or you know if there's space in the house basically for her to come then um then she comes in and helps out and she's a she's a physio so so she can give a bit of physio treatment if anyone needs some um some stuff which is normally one or two races a year maximum um and she's always welcomed the team always really love it when she's when she's coming to the races because it's like a throwback to the those days within you know the world to a team where you have a swan year and you have a physio there and someone to give massage and if some people need some treatment or whatever i mean you know as a gravel team we don't expect anything like that and um i think i wouldn't say it takes that much adjusting to it because i mean for me I think generally I've been quite self-sufficient anyway in the past and I've never just kind of just laid there and just expected everyone to do everything for me and run around doing stuff I've kind of always done stuff myself I mean even this year every race we go to we have a mechanic that comes from Ribble which is really nice for the guys in HQ to take it in turns to come to the different races basically and for them to learn on the road with us with racing and see it's kind of like an embedded culture within Ribble that to be more actively part of the teams that they're partnered with, which is obviously, you know, an in-house team.

14:45But over the years before that, with road team partnerships that kind of, you know, supplied bikes and kind of being a bit more out of the team rather than this year, you know, the management of the team from within Ribble anyway. So it feels like you've got the people back home in HQ, you know, rooting for you as riders as well. And it's really nice that the whole, it's not only just us and Rich, who's the team manager and logistics manager of the team, who comes as well. It's not, you know, it's not only just Rachel, but everyone back at HQ that are always, you know, looking out for us and seeing what we're doing in the races and we have full support from back there and obviously all the mechanics really want to come away for the weekend and it's better than just assembling bikes in the warehouse.

15:28So they're all keen to come away and gain more experience on the road because it is just so different to just the regular day-to-day of building bikes for customers, you know, in the warehouse, which is what they're doing most days. With all the different backgrounds, plus your mechanic, who's making the informed choices about what tyres everyone's going to use for each race? Well, we normally kind of consult with Ben, you know, Ben Thomas, who's been multiple national mountain bike champion in the past. And he's done a few gravel races, obviously, before that. And he mainly did mountain bike before, but he really knows a lot about the different races and every race where the surfaces are different.

16:06You know, it's a lot of these races. it's, Horvitz is not about puncturing to be honest, I mean you could have the best course ever and it's 100k but you might have a downhill section that's 2k long with really rocky and sharp sections that would mean you wouldn't necessarily use the tyre that you would have used for the rest of the course but if you puncture and have to stop and fix it you're going to lose minutes and when you're talking about some tyres that are a little bit faster than other tyres it's just not worth the risk sometimes so I think we as riders do make individual choices and For me especially, it's been a bit of a trialing era and listening to riders with experience and my own experiences of how the bike feels from going to the first races with 45mm slick tyres and just sliding around everywhere on the road and then working out how the different tread patterns.

16:55Luckily, we were working with Schwalbe and we didn't really have much involvement with them directly last year. But this year, at our team launch in February, we sat down with people from the Schwalbe team, basically, and they talked us through the tires and the use cases with different tread patterns and stuff and how it really impacts. I kind of learned a little bit myself just on the fly with doing stuff like that. But yeah, I really had to get the most out of the equipment that we've got and we're lucky to have some great partners in the team. For me, being a big rider, 85, 86 kilo, you have a big risk of puncturing.

17:30The heavier you are, obviously, the bigger the risk because it doesn't matter if you're 50 kilo or 80 kilo, So your bike can only fit 50mm tyres, generally. You can maybe get a slightly bigger tyre in the front sometimes, or if we're using the suspension for, then there you can potentially fit a 2.2, or depending on the internal rim, or a 55mm as well, for example. And generally, the bigger the tyre, then the lower the pressure you can use, the bigger the tyre, the volume, less chance you have of nicking it on a rock and getting it flat. So for me, it's a bigger rider than I'm typically leaning more towards the bigger tires.

18:07Whereas I'm a bit of an outlier in the team and I know we are the Rebel Outliers, but the other riders, you know, the gills are pretty small and the guys are all, I think Ben's under 70 kilos, probably mid 60s and the other guys are all 70, 71 kilos. So for them, it's a lot different and they're all riding small or extra small bikes and stuff and I'm just there with my extra large and um yeah I'm a bit different so obviously for me different races suit me better as well so we have a bit of a mixed program as well with races wise that some races super hilly suit Ben generally and then we have some flatter races in Belgium Holland and Eastern Europe that I prefer to do and generally Jensen and Bethesda in the middle kind of can kind of turn the hand to anything really so yeah it's a bit real bit of a mix you're probably an outlier in another way in the team in as much as your experience i've been you know following your career for a number of years but still it's only when you kind of like start digging into like pcs like pro cycling stats and looking at race results and things like my goodness like you're only 31 are you 31 at the moment um 32 this year is that right oh yeah don't rub it in he's this nice i'm right i'm you're i've got i've got 10 years on you you're so but yeah i did it 31 in november actually yeah it's come to think of it i kind of tried to block it out of my mind but um yeah but you've got you've got an incredibly experienced head on your shoulders but also yeah your your your list your cv is incredible so you know you kicked off obviously like racing kind of club level but then moved into in 2015 jlt condor where you're you know you're racing with a clancy christian house and that's in the kind of the heyday which I like to come to in a bit actually of kind of the British cycling domestic scene I'd argue but then you moved into the world tour ranks and then you kind of came back into the domestic scene but not I kind of want you to unpack all this but I was just looking at thinking like you've really been around the block yeah yeah I would say that yeah definitely which is I mean as a compliment like I think it's it's it's incredible and I wondered where you thought you might be when you signed for jlt in 2015 where you thought that was going to go and then what was the next kind of pivotal moment for you that then was the next transition after that yeah or it doesn't matter i mean it was over 10 years ago now i just remember being at uni and trying to do everything i could to um to get onto a conti team at the time that was that was pro you know in the i mean it's less technically but um in the uk that was pro there was guys making good salaries and racing out in the UK, doing races abroad.

20:51Back then, there was five, six, at least, Conti teams that were racing. We had a lot of UCI races in the UK and two of series, and it was a busy program. Back then, it was a little bit different to what it is now, obviously, just to try and make that step. I got some really good results as riding on a pub team in 2014, and I could get the step up in 2015 to a Conti level, and it was certainly an experience. I think I learned a lot about myself, and I had great opportunities in the team as well and I really enjoyed racing in the UK. It suited me quite well, the Craterians and not all the National Series races but quite a few of them did anyway.

21:28Yeah, obviously I wanted to finish my university degree and not toss it off halfway through and end up with a year or two of wasted time just to try and see it out basically. So I did go part-time on that in the final year so I could focus more on the cycling and try and make that step up when the Commonwealth Games were coming in 2018 and I wanted to try and get a slot on there and it worked well and I had a really good season in 2018 and I could get the opportunity for stepping up into a World Tour team in 2019 which was great and you need a lot of luck with these things and that stars aligned really in that way and I was just super fortunate for my opportunity, there was guys there that never got that chance which they should have done like Rory who raced with me in those years as well and he had injuries and bad luck and at the same time i think he was also going through like university as well and he um was just finishing off and stuff like that in the same way i was um just a bit younger than me you know and then you see finally now that he managed to step up i think in after 2020 or 2021 with a pro conti team and make his way to some other pro conti teams and yeah racing on the highest level now as well which is super nice to see so um The guys that I've raced with in my time as well, there or thereabouts, kind of made it in different ways and then gone back to the Conti racing scene or gone off into gravel racing or, yeah, kind of gone full circle with it, which is how it feels.

22:54I mean, I know I'm racing for a club team now, but for me, it doesn't particularly matter. I really enjoy the sport and making the transition to gravel. When the opportunity came around last year, I was very hesitant about it and I don't regret it in any way. and I really enjoy racing. And for me as a rider, like physically, I think that it's made me stronger as well. And for me, I wouldn't change anything in the last, you know, the last years. What was it like when you moved from the domestic racing scene into getting a contract with Katusha? So that was 2019 you signed up for that season and arguably the kind of thing that like really, you know, your breakthrough moment was that win stage one of the Tour de Yorkshire.

23:43Obviously, that was a really good season for you. But I think I remember, you know, I'm right in saying he kind of said afterwards, you know, the phone's almost ringing off the hook. People are suddenly just like, really? Your agent's telling you there's some stuff on the horizon. Yeah. And that manifests in the contract with Katusha, which was supposed to be two years. But then... Yeah, the team stopped. Yeah. How did your expectations kind of meet with the reality of Katusha? Did you get there and go, wow okay this is not what I thought it was and the writing was on the wall or did the wheels kind of fall off during the season so to speak or how did it kind of happen?

24:18I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well there was a lot of races that I watched but I hadn't really done much research on before and I got into it and kind of just got thrown in the deep end and straight into opening weekend I mean I remember having a good start to the year and racing in Valencia I won the white jersey in the Tour of Valencia in the stage race there, which was super nice. But I don't think I prepared myself in the right way coming from the domestic scene in the UK to what the demands were of these long stage races, especially that I would be doing in 2019. And I think from bare element, I don't know, maybe for me, that didn't really particularly work doing like low-carb training, which I suppose at the time was quite a thing then.

25:02You know, quite now, I'm just doing four hours on some green yogurt and some nuts. Didn't flow my vote. but I guess that was the time, wasn't it? But yeah, I suppose like, you know, I maybe should have looked at things differently myself and just doing what I was doing before, essentially, because I think that I had a power profile, you know, in 2017, 2018 than what I did in 2019, really. There was a few times where I thought I was going pretty well. You know, it was kind of a hard start to the year and I remember in the back end of the season that I really did a, I did some decent training in altitude, I think, in the middle of the year.

25:39The back half of the year was really hard because my mum died. We had the World Championships in Yorkshire and stuff like that. So that was a big target. That all happened about a month after she died. I've done a lot of training before that and stuff and just tried to keep focused on that. I was really happy to get a place in the team for the mixed relay when it was the first time that they were bringing it in. I just come away with a medal from there. and I think in the Bink Bank Tour, that was a World Tour stage race and we were just kind of working for the sprinter, the team in that race anyway.

26:10So for me as a first year, all of my roles were kind of just a revolt around that. Some days I had a bit of a free roll and I could go into breakaway, which was nice. And they had a TT in that race, which was a big target and I could get a top 10 in the TT, which is World Tour. And for me, that was some good confidence really going forward for that, especially with the World Champs kind of two to three weeks after that that I had the gas there and it was just that yeah I probably just needed to looking back right now maybe just to fuel up more in in the races or something I'm not sure but yeah you're not really held with that in that way it was I wouldn't say it was like going back in time but it was kind of like going back in time making that step up yeah like I remember in the classics having to ride like 25 mil tubs and not being able to I had some some really nice uh training you know I think back then I think maybe Conti had just launched their first tubeless tires I've been riding tubeless tires from 2017 anyway so on the road and yeah getting up to the world tour in 2019 and then finding everyone still racing 25 mil tubs with 7 bar was a bit of a bit of a mind boggle to be honest but yeah it was what it was you know I ain't Neil's Pollitt and I ain't doing a top 10 in opening weekend so you just gotta show up and ride it haven't you and I guess that yeah I lost a lot of confidence on the bike I think because I was training at home with 28mm GP5000 tubeless that at the time they'd just been released and that's just what I was riding was what we were trained to ride on and then suddenly you go to the race and I have to ride this skinny little tub that I thought I'd got rid of these in 2015 but then I found myself back on them again and I remember falling off in like Mallorca and some other race and I just like lost a lot of confidence on the body because I think you had half the you know you had a couple of guys a couple of teams with the pedals on that were using these tyres and other teams that were using the tubs and they were very resistant to change and all this.

28:03It's not like, oh, I didn't get any decent road racing results because of some tyres, but it was just one of those things where it's just like a little chip against you in a way that it disrupts your confidence that bit more and it's just something that you're not expecting, I suppose. And it does make a lot of sense. I know we end up, you guys already talked about it, you and Will, tyre choices and gravel. anyone that doesn't cycle seriously would listen to any conversations around tires with cyclists and be like you guys are mental what are you talking about you're talking about a difference of three mil yeah 25 to 28 and that affecting confidence and but i mean if a marathon runner was suddenly said you know handed a completely different pair of shoes that they didn't sort of trust to not give them blisters it's not just like a little dink against your confidence it's like hey if you're a cyclist the parallel of that is i'm about to descend at like 90k an hour down on a road that I may never have ridden before.

28:56I need to bloody test, like trust the tyres. Yeah, I think it's just that I got more into it. You got used to it after a while, but it was always that feeling of getting on the bike for the first time after you'd come from your home bike. You'd ride it on the pre-race ride and try and get used to it a little bit. But in the races, you're always a bit like, where's the limit, where's the grip here? You just have less room for error, I suppose. The other thing is when half the teams have already made that transition to a lower rolling resistance tyre that's also got more grip, that you're trying to follow them as well.

29:25And just like, yeah, I've just lost confidence. And when you lose confidence, you want to have confidence. And I suppose that anything on a bike that it doesn't really make that much bigger difference. You know, you can change the wheels out for a different brand. You're probably not really going to notice much. Everything's quite good at the top end. But tires, you really feel it, especially. Yeah, for me, it just knocked that confidence bit, which, you know, when you're already just like dropped in at the World Tour, were like doing you know these big big races these these classics that especially with the cobbles and and everything like that like you know my my before my strength was holding speed and technically being good but i kind of lost that as well which you know you go from being a strong rider before a big fish in a small pond to a to a small fish in a in a big pond and um yeah when when that that's going against you as well it it certainly doesn't help the situation um but i could still do some some good rides in my time and yeah there's obviously things i would change probably going back looking at it but i think i think every rider would kind of say that and i think yeah i had great opportunities to race with the team room i would change maybe how i prepare myself but that's just how it was back then you know you it's um yeah that's just yeah that was the situation then that was the first year obviously going with disc brakes as well and there was a lot of a lot of hesitation in the team about changing to that and um we had to be on disc brake because this brake was you know being pushed by the manufacturers and it was coming anyway so we had to get on it we couldn't just uh sack it off for another year and yeah the bikes were the same but the brakes worked maybe a bit better than before well they certainly were stronger than before whether the bikes were actually better for it i don't know but from what i could gather the most people knew that the brakes the way they were rim brake weren't great anyway with the stram rim brake calibers that they weren't particularly good in the wet but like then the bike was now going to be nearly a kilo heavier so then do you want better brakes or do you want the bike to be a kilo lighter that's your option you know um so there was a lot of hesitation around that i think that it's obviously taking some time now for yeah for the industry to really get on top of it and you know fundamentally design bikes around disc brake because back then it was really just like oh shit let's get a bike on the market and let's just retrofit some disc brakes to a rim brake bike but I think things obviously changed post 2020 when bikes were designed from the ground up to be disc brakes and that was obviously some things that changed too.

31:50I think it's fair to say that in more recent years last couple of years kind of rider welfare is much better talked about it's part of the kind of conversation and you've got someone like Adam Hansen at the CPA who's really kind of pushing that so yeah, the kind of riders association and there's a recent initiative for example they've kind of paled up with somebody where they're introducing ex-pros and pros that are looking nearly close to retirement to people who have businesses to try and set them up. So the CPA trying to set up riders into a new life post-riding, the implication being that teams don't really think about that because a rider to a team is a commodity.

32:33And you ring them dry of the results they can achieve for you and then you don't renew the contract and then see you later. so did you feel yeah looking back on your world to part of your career particularly did you feel kind of cared for and you mentioned you know horrendous tragedy of your mum passing in the middle of your 2019 season were you helped with your with getting over that were people like you helped with their struggles or was it just like guys just show up and race please we don't want to know about your personal lives yeah I think there was quite a lot of sport with the team and I spoke to my DS quite a lot and Rick Zappel Eric Zappel as well you know about the situation and like the sport was there and you know I had a strong family around me at the time and stuff like that so I kind of they were they were okay with me to give me some space and I would come back to racing on my terms when I wanted to come back on the moment and I knew that you know it was the end of the year anyway and I could have just stopped the season at that point you know but I chose not to because I don't think my mum would have wanted that.

33:39And there was the chance of, you know, with the home world in Yorkshire and stuff, it was such a big event that built the year around and everyone knew that as well. So I think that it was, yeah, it was fitting to do that. And in the end of the year that I didn't do some of the other races, but I think I was just a bit mentally burnt by then. And the team were completely fair enough with me and they were happy to even see me come back to do these other races. You know, because it wasn't something that was expected at all. I think at the end of the season that came around and obviously with the team stopping there was quite a lot of rumours with that anyway in the later part of the season and what was actually going to happen because we as riders all didn't know and it wasn't really this thing about the CPA and the initiative I remember speaking with a few friends last year about it and hearing about the initiative which is really good that you give riders experience in different ways and sometimes riders can go into teams but generally the riders that have been very pro for 10, 15, 20 years like you see it with Garan Thomas and Setman Marker and these other guys that go off and join into a DS role within the team and stuff like that because obviously there's not going to be that many opportunities for all of the riders to do things like that and not all riders actually want to stay within the peloton some guys want to just completely stop and cut themselves off from cycling after being in it and some people really like yeah completely completely lit for cycling and want to still be a part of that world I suppose, which is a bubble certainly, you know that world tour peloton it is a bit of a bubble it's interesting to see how certain riders progress on and go on to different things but I think the initiative with the CPA that they've just set up now is really useful and having these kind of workshops and introductions and I think there's like little trade shows and bike trade shows and stuff like that where riders can go because it's not something that the team's particularly it's not really in their needs to kind of do it as a rider it depends maybe if you're employed it can be different but if you're self-employed contracted to a team then you are just kind of like a number in the team although you know when i was riding with quebec here in 2021 they were super supportive for us for the guys that you know when the team stopped at the end of the year and if we did have any issues in the season which um we needed any help from a doctor or psychologist or anything like that they were really helpful there's always people to speak to i think that things certainly changed maybe that was post pandemic anyway so i think maybe there was a greater emphasis on mental health for riders which has slowly been increased more and more i suppose over the last few years you did what you're on three world tour teams in three years yeah what was that like for you did you ever manage to feel settled or was it just a bit all over the place obviously you mentioned it was covid i think we're probably right in the middle of that which obviously not No, it was a bit obviously with Katusha stopping and I got the opportunity quite late to join Agitizare because my agent was French and I'd originally had a lot of talks with Agitua prior to the in 2018 and yeah it was really a toss-up between the two which to go to and in the end my team at the time was Canyon based and really supportive of that and they kind of supported me over the years especially Canyon UK at that time and we could make a deal work out with Katusha in that way which would give me more opportunities in more of the races that I've responded to Target and stuff but there was always that discussion and we didn't leave on any sort of bad terms without you to say it was just that it was a more international team and I knew people there already and it was a better fit for me but then when the team stopped and the opportunity was still there they were still looking for a rider like me to help within the teams and I could go to to Aisleser, which for me was a very French team, obviously.

37:26And the language of the team was French. I mean, it's changed now. It's decathlon. There's not, you know, some of the French teams are very French. But at the time, it was, you know, back on rim brakes. And yeah, and learning my French again from GCSE to try to get that to a decent level because obviously the radio and all of the meetings are in French too. So the riders all spoke English, but some of the staff didn't speak any English. and most of the staff did speak some English. Obviously, COVID hit that year and I did, I think, one or two races, one-day races at the start of the year and then I had to have some heart checks because the screening that I had done in February was the doctor had some concerns that wanted checking.

38:08So I had to have three weeks off, not off the bike, but not allowed to race for three weeks while I had these investigations done. And I got the green light, you know, the start of March or I think something like that. and then obviously the world ended. And there was no... Yeah, so I'd missed the first... I mean, obviously the season kind of starts in February with World Tour. And yeah, I couldn't go to any of those races because of this screening check that needed to be done. And then when I could race, then I couldn't because it was COVID. And yeah, I don't think the races started that year until August, maybe?

38:46End of July, August. There was a lot of Zwifting. a lot of a lot of Zwifting online a lot of the Tour de France was on Zwift that year I think yeah it was pretty crazy I mean I was having a great time at home training but like yeah there was there wasn't any races you know and what you focus on at that moment and I think that for some guys they really lost their heads we had it really lucky in the UK that we could just train and ride outside and stuff but guys in France and other places in Spain where you weren't allowing out your apartment and there was guys obviously in the different parts of the world you know that were locked down in different places and uh yeah we had it really good in the uk so we were we were really lucky and i could do some good training and i came back in a really good shape in august to race and um i think tour of poland or something was that was one of my first races after a small training camp that we had together in in the summer and um by then the calendar was really condensed and uh yeah it was really like oh oh shit, the season's finished in two months.

39:46And I've literally done two race days at the start of the year. And that was it. And, you know, if I don't get some good results here, then I'm not going to get kept on. And I had some good days in some, you know, I got some top 10s and some 2.1s in the back end of the season and some time trials and working well for the team and representing them, you know, in the breakaway that went quite deep into a few of the races on, you know, getting the break that we need to be in these French races and stuff like that. So in the end of the year and I had the opportunity to try and go for Roubaix which was rescheduled for like October or something or to ride the Vuelta and that was obviously really late in the year.

40:26I think it was October into November or something like that. So I took my chance at the time it was the last races of the year. Most guys had completely checked out at that point because they'd been training and they'd been mentally just caned, I would say, sat on a turbo for two months in France and stuff. so a lot of those guys fully checked out by like September end of September they were just burnt I mean when I got that to the UK I think in April or March time I just had a week off the bike because I was like well nothing's going to happen for a bit anyway so have a rest and then retrain and it worked quite well and I was really going in my best shape in the very end of September like into September October and I did the Vuelta and did the best numbers that I'd done for a long long time and I just knew that I was probably going to be the last race either as a pro or the chance to ride a Grand Tour was really nice and I was just going to, came down with some horrendous norovirus stomach bug thing that midway through or I don't know, stage 15 or stage 16 or something.

41:29I mean, the race was a bit shorter than normal anyway, but she's got this horrendous stomach bug and I couldn't sleep and I couldn't digest food anymore. So if you can't digest food, then you can't do a bike race. and yeah unfortunately I had to pull out the race like two or three days before Madrid or something so I was pretty good about that and I wanted to go all in in that race for the sprint stages and I mean at that time I think there was only two in the whole race anyway or three obviously it was in Basque country so it was just climbs just steep climbs and some TCs that I wanted to do well in and yeah I was pretty good I wanted to try and get a top 10 in the TT obviously like in a Grand Tour would have been a super nice little thing for the Palmares.

42:14And I think, I don't know if I ended up about 18th or 22nd or something like that. I don't know where I ended up, but I wasn't top 10. I remember being top 10 into the bottom of the climb, but then because Spanish, obviously it finished up a nine minute really steep berg that you needed to do a bike change for. So yeah, it was going fantastic into the bottom of the berg and then obviously have to do 11 % for eight or nine minutes. and I did big watts but obviously I'm a big unit so I didn't really I went from 8th to 18th or 20th by the top so I was a bit upset about it 21st 21st oh I just missed top 20 yeah I was really I was still happy with the race how it went because we were a very small group in the race it was really a case of there wasn't many riders that could race it because a lot of guys had done a lot of race days already and they were just burnt out and I think after the first week I think we all only had four riders left actually guys got sick guys got COVID one guy just couldn't be arsed he was retiring and just got off after got off after a few days so yeah it was like don't forget it you know it was the end of October into November might have even been the middle of November or something like that it was a really late time I mean I wouldn't change it though it was a great experience obviously to do a Grand Tour and yeah for me to get the opportunity to race in there and I think I was maybe top 20 on one of the sprint stages but I wouldn't say I was like just have the opportunity to do a race like that for me was really nice because at the time I wasn't sure what was going to happen for the following year I had a place in a Conti team to race and physically I was in a pretty good shape from the season and I knew that if I went back to the lower level that I could still, I still enjoyed racing my bike and I'd still do some good results but then yeah late on in the winter of that year that Quebec was spawning Quebec Arsos and changing from NTT and it was pretty late in the season and an opportunity came up there to race in the team and yeah I cancelled my contract at the time with a ribble in the UK and yeah and I had that which was fine with them you know they completely understood it all and you know I had the chance to race on the world tour again with Quebec Arsos which I think of all of the years Brovin, that was my favourite year of racing within that team.

44:44It was a really nice environment and I guess probably the most supportive. From the previous year, 2020 was a bit of a weird year because obviously with Brovin and stuff.

44:57I reckon a while ago the bike computer market looked all sewn up. There were two big players end of. Kind of like how once upon a time group sets meant either Shimano or Campagnolo. So there's a wonderful synergy in the fact SRAM busted open the groupset market back in 2006, and now SRAM's computer arm, Hammerhead, is blowing the doors off in the same way with the Hammerhead Karoo. My favourite thing about the Karoo is how much it's like a smartphone. So the touchscreen is really crisp and punchy, so data and mapping, which is way more like a phone's mapping than a classic by GPS, by the way. Those things are super clear.

45:33But unlike a phone, battery life is a huge 35 hours with GPS on and your ride recording. Plus, it's also way smaller. It's up there with the smallest head units, given what it does. And it does loads, from predicting gradients in real time, to making routes on the fly, to running apps like Spotify, and it will even tell you how fast you're going. There's a whole lot more that we'll get into in other episodes, but for anyone who just needs things now, now, now, head over to cyclist.co.uk and search hammerheadcarou3 to read our in-depth review and find out why we gave it our cyclist recommended badge of honour.

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46:29It kind of pains me to admit this as a cyclist, but I rather like cars. And I think I've just been driving around in the nicest car I will ever, ever drive. And that's the Maserati Gricali, which it turns out is what happens if an Italian supercar company designed an SUV for people like me, for cyclists. Now, the Gricali is fast, like 0-60 in 4.1 seconds fast, but it is also, it's just delightful to sit in. It has the legroom of a first-class flight to Singapore. It's arguably more luxurious inside than my own house. And yet, I kind of can't believe I'm saying it because of what it is. It's a genuinely practical car.

47:05I could happily chuck a dirty bike in the back of it, then do the shopping, and then go and pick up the rest of the family. Now, I've been driving the electric Fulgori version, which has the equivalent of a 557 brake horsepower dual electric motor with a 360 mile range, which sounds incredibly impressive, I know, but let's just put that in cycling terms, which we actually understand. That is the same power output as a thousand Tadej Pogacchas, all racing Milan San Remo at once and then racing back again. Now, as well as the electric version, there are multiple engine options too, and prices start from£59 ,990, which when you think about it, is something of a bargain given Pogaccha's Tour de France winning Colnago from last year sold at auction for£143 ,000.

47:53You could have bought two brand new Maserati Gricalis for that. Now you can find out more and also find out where your local Maserati dealer is at maserati.com. Where else? So that's maserati.com and check out the Maserati Gricali.

48:12Did you feel that when that moment, so you nearly signed, is River Welter I think you're going to sign for? Well, you basically had pretty much signed up. And then you say, and then last minute, Quebec comes kind of out of nowhere and says, do you want to join? You say yes. Did you feel like this is kind of last chance saloon? Or did you think, finally, the stars are aligning. I've had this strange year in 2020. I've had a difficult year in 2019. But this is a team that I think I can fit into. Because it's a real multinational team as well. didn't have those expectations of like, you know, AG2 are kind of France's national team along with FDJ.

48:50So there's a weight of a nation on those shoulders. Yeah, Alpsen had, or Katusha had its own difficulties. Yeah, did you feel like, okay, now I'm going to get settled. Now I'm going to get my chance at like a good run at this couple of seasons in the team. Well, I knew, obviously I had a one year deal with them and it was a case of just showing what I could do in that year and just give them my best shot. and train the best I could and do the role in the team that I was given to race with. I didn't particularly get off on a great start, but I got crashed in one of the Belgian classics and tore a lot of ligaments in my ankle and it wasn't great, which meant that I missed quite a lot of the classics.

49:32I think that I never really got going. It was just one thing. It seemed to be one thing after another. I missed one of the races. I think it was two of... I think I started in Romandia I got sick in Romandie and I couldn't I did day one and then I couldn't do any more I was I just couldn't ride the bike basically I was just I just had some some virus and some description and just felt terrible and then yeah there was no races then until didn't race in July I raced in the UK I think at the time and I'd done quite a lot of training in April and May and I guess that I had shape I'd done a training camp and I just got you know it's a shame because I'd go and I'd just be at home like I'd do on training camp and then I could go to, I'd just do like the odd race in the UK maybe and just have a bit of fun and go to like a local crit and, you know, I'd do like my best 20 minute power that I've done for a long, long time in a race and lap the field and stuff.

50:28But like, you know, it's for nothing because there's no races for me on the pro calendar. But I knew the shape was there and I knew that if I, you know, keep working with it, that it will be okay and I'll have the opportunities. And I went back to training in August and altitude ready for the last part of the season uh and i started again with being bang to her and i was a bit disappointed because i'd gone to altitude and crashed um in training so i guess you know you live and learn and um it was like literally day four or day five so i just declimatized and i was ready to start training and then basically just couldn't train for seven days i crashed at 60k an hour and skinned myself and it was horrendous so i could only really train in the last week there so although i was up there the whole time i couldn't particularly train and I kind of went to Bing Bang tour, very fresh or the Renui tour, I think it's called now and yeah I had some really good it was a really big race for the team with Victor Campenart and he was targeting that for the win and we were going there in full support and he came away with like second or third overall but we rode really really well as a team there and I had a strong job within the team and to look after Victor and the other guys as late as possible into the race which generally was down to the last couple of Ks and it was riding for someone else in that way but it was just as fulfilling as racing for myself and to see if they finished off, you know, obviously it was great to get on the podium and stuff.

51:52And I rode myself into the race as well because of the train crash before and I knew the shape was good and I stayed out in Belgium actually that September just to go and race some pro KMSs and stuff like that because I think I'd lost that feeling of racing for myself over those three years, typically just been doing jobs for others and i went and did a lot of pro kms's in belgium just because i enjoyed racing and the shape was good and i just thought well at least i'll get some results for myself on the palmares even if it's just pro kms but you know they're not easy races to win particularly they are like a game of poker i guess and you need the race craft and a lot of world tour guys also ride them too that equally want to win you've not got the control of teams but still hard races and I came away with a couple of seconds and a third I didn't win one but I was on the podium in quite a few so it gave me good confidence especially with the national champs at the back end of the year which was in October like middle of October so it was really late and I knew I had to try and keep my shape and to keep going well because that was my last opportunity to get a result to stay within the team and also well that's if the team was continuing which at the time it wasn't so I had to find another team so yeah so I just went all in for nationals and um yeah nationals like I got second I think in the yeah I screwed up the finish in the national crit probably could have put Hayter in the barrier but didn't put didn't put him in the barrier and yeah I got second and then in the road race uh I was probably just a bit too keen a lot of guys were getting dropped and I was like just up there at the end with um Fred Wright and Ben Swift and I didn't know Hayter was coming from behind I was kind of just a bit bit too hard at the time so obviously just wanted to keep the gaps i knew that we were guaranteed the podium you know if we stayed away and stuff like that but probably should have yeah liked it a little bit more or something but at the end of the day like i knew that if i get second or third it doesn't really change anything i need to win this bike race if i want to stay pro i need to win this bike race so how did it feel then must have been quite frustrating to have you know a second team in three years folding yeah um yeah i just needed to you know it was what it was and i just needed to get the best result i could for myself to give myself a best chance to go somewhere else basically or to stay if I want to try and stay pro essentially then you know I need to win this bike race otherwise it's yeah ciao ciao so went all out to win the race and I don't really regret anything because if I come third in the bike race then I wasn't going to get a pro contract so I was like well I'm going to try and drop these guys and because I ain't going to win up the Berg on my own against Swifty and Fred Wright so I need to arrived there with a good 10-15 second buffer to get up so I just attacked them non-stop on the last lap which obviously we'd probably made for good tv viewing but um yeah it finished me off and I remember going through the feed the last time and like I could see the car and hate it coming from behind and I just absolutely rinsed myself before the last climb and um I could see him coming from behind and I was already getting dropped up the feed climb at Lincoln you know before we dropped down to do the final climb and I was yeah I was sliding off the back of the group I was already completely cooked from from launching all the attacks and um yeah I think Fred kept bringing me back and it was just a bit of uh yeah I wish Swiftie would have maybe done more work and he would have been a lot tired but yeah at the time it was what it was and um that climb was brutal So anyway, be lucky to get that.

55:22I went into it. Yeah, and I remember the two guys, Fred and Ben, were both looking at each other a bit at the bottom of the climb and I'd been dropped and I was coming from behind with speed anyway. So I just went straight past them and just led it into the bottom of the climb knowing full well that they were going to go full send and sprint it out for the, you know, at that moment, then I was only good. The best situation was third. I think you helped the race. I think that was a really entertaining finish that you set up for them to have on the climb. I suppose, yeah. Yeah, because I gave them the bit of the gap, obviously.

55:52I mean, I wanted to just keep my speed going into the bottom of it. If I free-wheeled into the bottom of it and just going slower, then it wasn't really going to do much for me anyway. So I just rolled past the bottom of the hill and just let it in, just to try and keep the gap from Hayter. And I think I probably had a 10-second gap or 8 seconds or something like that before the climb. But unfortunately, cramped on the climb, and Hayter came past me like a steam train. So to be honest, I couldn't really change much. and the speed he came past it I was like fair play mate like fair play you deserve that third place and yeah I got fourth got nothing for the day out so felt a bit robbed but I tried and yeah I made a good Lantern Rouge video so I mean yeah what's not to love and I think that yeah it was a good race to watch yeah yeah I think it was fourth's good it was and a lot of my teammates and the guys the staff in the team everyone you know So everyone was done.

56:49Everyone had finished racing already like the first week of October. China, I don't think China was even on that year. So everything was done in Europe from like the first week of October. So this race was like the middle or the end of October. So there was nothing on. Everyone was just sat at home doing nothing off season. So they were just watching YouTube live stream for the British nationals. It was probably the most watched nationals from most years because obviously it was at a random time when there was nothing else on. Yeah, and guys across Europe were all watching and I think the view was really high so yeah and even Lantern Rouge covered it as well so yeah it was nice to watch the highlights video later on to see it back from there and watching where the errors that I made and where I could have maybe changed things but again no regrets How do you look back on a few years removed from being a World Tour rider when you look back and see the people that were on your teams in those three years it's a pretty stacked lineups and you see them winning races now you see Victor won the Tour de France stage you get like Dorian Godard I don't know how much you actually raced with him I think he was at that Vuelta obviously just signed for Ineos and you also got teammates who you're also now probably racing against in the gravel races yeah it's true I guess you reminisce with them how do you look back on that?

58:07yeah it's interesting because there's quite a mix really around that time I think there's a lot of riders that were in the team that were you know I knew these guys like Kittel and these older riders that were in teams that had been pro since 2010 and stuff. They'd been around the block and they were kind of at the end of their careers that were stopping. Then there was younger guys. There was a bit of a mix, really. I remember rooming with Dorian a few times in races and we did a lot of the smaller French races together and obviously the Vuelta as well. Yeah, a super talented guy and really nice.

58:40Yeah, I think that we had similar powers. was just I was just naturally just heavier and I guess that I can kind of worked out at the like the end of my world tour and I was like well you know like my power isn't that bad like it's not it's good but it's not like it's not a ganner but like I'm just carrying like six kilo more than what all these other guys are so which world tour is like hilly races pretty much so it's pretty much just lots per kilo and I was like well yeah this is what it is to be honest I should probably just stick to Belgium and races like Lincoln which suit me and you know yeah it is what it is and I've had a great three years don't regret it but to be quite honest yeah I'm not done with riding for others but like I enjoyed racing for myself in those moments at the end of 2021 and I wanted to go back in you know to race on the lower level and to have fun and yeah just see where I can go with it and just rife myself for a bit, you know, because I've not had that in three years.

59:40And it gave me confidence, obviously, at the Nationals that I was close to being on the podium and the gas was there. So I can still do well in these races. It's just a case of getting a bit of luck and do the races which suit me better. You had another three teams in three years when you then were on Conte level. Yeah. But Rebel World tight. I finished with St. Prim. but I just want to pick up in the middle you were at the Bass Tietema TDT team how was that did you I guess you must have felt sort of the ambition they had on that project obviously they're doing their first Grand Tour this year they're trying to push to basically be a World Tour team what was it like being inside that being part of that?

1:00:21Yeah it was really nice I remember Bass messaged me like when he was thinking of setting the team up at the end of 22 and with the Ribble team was folding and I was speaking to a few foreign teams at the time I was dating in my Beyonce about six months then so I was thinking oh well I'll maybe try and race in Holland the races suit me and there was quite a few teams and I had a few options there and Bas was setting up this new team and I was very interested by it and it was going to be completely new and I really enjoyed my time in the team and it was great we worked super well as a team we rode as a pro team obviously I'd come from a pro team from before that so I knew how it all worked and I was just riding you know I was kind of regretting ways that I I just rode for others like on days where I had good legs I just rode for others and okay yeah they maybe did the podium or did a good result and I got nothing but in the moment you ride you follow the team orders and you in some races I remember culling on the front for like two hours in the end of the race to pull a brake back and in the end we got on the podium in the race but no one remembers that you know you sat on the front for two hours and pulled a five-minute break back from six guys.

1:01:35Down to four or five K to go, just pulling on the front of the pelotons, 25 guys left. I'd certainly had good legs in certain times and not so in other times, but I was riding for others all the time. I probably should have took some more opportunities for myself to show what I could actually do in the team. I maybe would have been kept on otherwise at the time. but again you're just kind of following the team orders and as a group we had a lot of fun with the guys and it was a great team environment to be in I don't regret things but I probably should have taken some more chances for myself in that period and yeah I had good opportunities that I didn't make use of so yeah I only really myself to learn for that one to be honest and then in the end of the year I got Granger the Fever and then I don't know when that kind of started but I found I had it in the end of that year so whether that had an impact on something I don't know but yeah that pretty much wrote off my winter by 2023-2024 and into the 2024 season too which yeah with St.

1:02:38Perry obviously that was in a few races but didn't really get healthy again probably until about the middle of the year and it took a while to build a cup from such a long time off to get a fully out of the system but it felt that by the back end of that year that I was getting somewhere and then obviously with the gravel that came around I was like I'd kind of had half a year out anyway then at that point and by then the road scene in the UK was cooked so I did try to set up a team after St. Perrin's docked like development team with U23s but we could have had a small team in a way but the hurdles to get over for BC to be a Conti team was just so high it was like yeah if it was a different federation it was a bit more lenient maybe we could get away with it but we just couldn't secure the budget on paper that we needed to get it over the line.

1:03:28So I didn't pursue it more than that. And you mentioned St. Pyrin there. That was a kind of strange outfit in a way or the end of that team's life was because we talked to Richard Pascoe who set St. Pyrin up probably, I don't know, maybe like mid-20, early 23 or something. So 2023. So at that point, you know, seems incredibly enthusiastic and motivated by this project, which is basically having a team that doesn't really need sponsors because it's a kind of business and it's got these other arms that can generate money for it. And it's going to be developing, nurturing talent and who knows where it might go, but it's a kind of solid, it's a kind of team that's a club, I guess, was maybe a way of kind of summing it up.

1:04:13And also in a way, trying to put on some races and prop up that ailing British calendar of you know the cycling scene in Britain's massively different from when you were you know in that boom years post-olympics when you were racing for JLT and pedal heaven and people then it kind of comes to this mad end where you know it's a really unfortunate headline but you've got teams I'm not sure if you ended up actually being one of those riders but racing on bikes that were unbranded with UCI stickers stuck onto them saying they were were like race legal because the wheels had really fallen off there wasn't you know the funding had just wasn't there to get kit and bikes that must have been a really difficult time you're coming back from glandular fever you're trying to refine your feet you've had some yeah and and then completely out of your control you're in amongst a bit of a yeah a situation how do you yeah how are you kind of feeling around that and and what was uh i don't know what what your turn of looking back on it, what do you make of it now?

1:05:14Yeah, I remember that whole UCI thing about the bikes. That was in 23, that was the year before I joined actually. That's 23, sorry. I think it all got kicked off in 24 maybe about that. But yeah, I mean I think they had the right intentions that the bikes were certified and they basically got done over I think behind them essentially. They were building up these bikes and they believed that they were certified but they weren't or they didn't have the sticker on them or something like that. but they had been tested to the correct standards of what, but they hadn't, yeah, they hadn't actually had the UCI certification or something like that.

1:05:48I'm not too sure about what it was, but maybe that's what led to everyone using their own bikes. I think that these were like literally just as spare bikes anyway. I don't think they were, most people were riding their own bikes. So yeah, I don't know if it's something that the team was like planning to sell in the, in the bike shop, but yeah, I don't know what, again, it was before my time, so I don't particularly know what the ins and outs were of it. But yeah, coming into it all, it was, um, They wanted to obviously be a development team. And Jack Rook and Gray had a really good racing with them throughout the year.

1:06:17And he turned pro with the F with some really good results from the team. And they wanted to do well in, you know, the Tour of Britain and all these UK races and stuff, which was nice. And it gave a lot of opportunities to younger riders too that were coming through. And it's just a shame that, yeah, it came to an end. And I think a lot of the riders within the team, they, everyone was like, the team's, Ricky was completely keen for the team to move forward. and I was looking forward to racing again with them in the following year and then suddenly the rug got pulled when the license got declined and yeah, I guess that was the end of it and I think that probably stemmed a lot from the whole incident with the bikes and all that shit kicking off.

1:06:57So I'll be looking back on it now, I guess that British Cycling do to protect their reputation too, that if they approved it and with all the investigation that was pending and everything like that from the UCI into the whole situation that they couldn't approve it. Like, that's just, that's what it was. Their hands are tied. And if that means the death of the last UK Conti team, then that's the death of it, which is a shame. But I can see, obviously, the reasons behind it. And then, yeah, they wanted to obviously to be a, to link to be a feeder team, I think, to Ineos in a way, but couldn't get that off the ground.

1:07:29And now Ineos have their own Devo team, which is, which is good to see. So I think there is that pathway there, really just for the, for the younger guys. But it is a shame that you see it nowadays that, I mean I speak to a lot of young riders anyway that are coming through and if they can get a ticket out of the UK and go and race in France or Belgium then they just do it straight up and for the riders that aren't quite good enough to do that then they have to find their own way obviously the best of the best are always going to get picked up by Little Trek Development or Jumbo or Devo these quantity teams that are World Tour Devo teams which they did exist when I was riding when I was younger but they're certainly a lot more prevalent now I guess that that's probably the transition that we'll see over the coming years with riders turning pro at 18 anyway, not 21, 22, 23 like me.

1:08:16So yeah, and it's unfortunate because there'll be guys that might turn pro at 18 and suddenly they're 20 or 21 and they're on the scrappy. You know, they're not renewed and they're out of the sport. They've not done, you know, they're not got a degree. They skip uni, just being straight out of college. And it seems to be that that's kind of the way now. But I think teams do encourage riders to still try to study if they get a position and some riders do it and some don't. It's really up to them. But obviously it's really hard to combine and you need to agree with trying to race on the road in the full pro season, even with the development team.

1:08:48Because, you know, that's your... If you're on a development team, you've got one or two years there. If you don't step up, you ain't getting into the pro team. And then if you're off the Devo team, then you're back to the drawing board, really. So I can understand why riders, you know, give it their all, obviously, in those two years and want to just commit fully on that. So, yeah, the times have changed. definitely a lot since 10 years ago like that's that's crazy so obviously you're on the gravel team now you race with a lot of ex-road riders ex-pro riders but ones who maybe never necessarily haven't didn't ride in the world tour and obviously a lot of retired road riders as well like your barde and that kind of nathan has but you're obviously on team with both of those guys which kind of feeds into that conversation we talked about earlier about life after pro careers but do you think that the way that gravel has grown the way that is is a good thing for those young riders or riders who aren't necessarily getting those pro road contracts or because the scene's not there to be able to carry on racing and riding and making money from it or do you think it actually maybe takes away from racing in the UK in a way because so many of these riders now can just go race gravel they're not looking for that road ride yeah I think that brands only have a certain amount of marketing budget and now that's maybe getting split equally between rolling gravel i don't know but obviously five years ago it was 100 going to road so whether that's an impact but then it also gives more opportunity for riders too you see that with a couple of guys that have come out of club teams in europe and they're just riding on gravel they haven't gone onto a condi team on the road they're just doing some gravel racing and there is the opportunity there for riders that maybe they have to fund a year themselves and try and get some decent results and but then a lot of riders can equally go a different way and try to pick up brands and partnerships themselves in a way to become their own individual rider and i think that you see that more now with the importance of social media and riders that are not only just pro riders like also trying to kind of be a bit of a influensary kind of vibe as well with it you know it's not just about riding the bike that the whole package is important to teams and partners which obviously is super important your social media reach because at the end of the day the brands are partnering with you specifically or your team because they want to further their brand and their brand image or to get the name out there in front of races and to show that the bikes are competitive on the highest level which they are and for us with Ribble it is a big funding it takes a hell of a lot of Ribble's annual marketing budget to support the team in the way that it does but it's working well at the moment and the company are really happy with how things are going and we've had some fantastic results with the team.

1:11:29And it does get the name out there because it's a fantastic bike that we've worked on, that they've worked on at HQ for two years in development, this gravel bike that we're riding now, the Ultra Grit. And for what money can buy, it's great. I don't see a reason why you would pick another brand over it when the bike can do whatever it wants to do. But yeah, for the cost, it's what it is, isn't it really? And I think it just demonstrates that gets the brand more well-known, especially in Europe, because Rivel's obviously quite big in the UK and a lot of people have heard of it, but in Europe, it's a little bit less well-known.

1:12:03So I think that the reach with us racing across Europe, and we've seen that in the market, in sales from last year, that we've had a really good reach with the team. So hopefully things will continue in that way and we keep growing the brand as we're doing and the partners that are involved with the team as well. So having successfully sort of dragged you through the highs and lows of the last 10 years or more of your life up until the present day racing on a Ribble Ultra gravel bike. Where are you going next? What's your next calendar race and how are you hoping to do? Yeah, my next race is in Belgium.

1:12:41It's pretty well-toothed to me. It was actually my first gravel race that I ever did last year and I think I was just outside the top 20 last year. I had a slow puncher in the end so yeah, it's a race that I did last year so I know the kind of I think it's a similar course I kind of know how it works so I'll be in top shape for that which is in a little under probably about three weeks time something like that maybe just under three weeks actually yeah it's not too long and then the week after that we're racing in Portugal which is another race which is pretty well suited to me as well so I want to be in the best shape possible for those two races and yeah enjoying some training time now here in Spain and getting some good work done to prepare myself best for those races and yeah then the season's really on then because March comes into the end of March and April and May are pretty much a race not every weekend but it's pretty full on so yeah it's a really busy period coming out of following that as well Fantastic, well Harry best of luck with the coming race year sounds like you're going to be probably busier than ever and yeah if any of the gravel racing I've ever seen, there's anything to go by it's probably, I'd say it's more brutal or rides I've done it's more brutal than racing road stuff and you have to look after yourself yeah I was thinking earlier when you talk about a massage I think it would be way more useful for a gravel racer than a road racer you feel battered you do feel really battered after some of these races it's incredible just on the pedals for all the time and obviously with the bumps and stuff it gets you back quite badly it's my rest day today especially when you do 360 kilometres with a tracker oh god yeah I think well yeah the new suspension fork the SRAM was it the Rooney fork it's like 30 mil of travel I did use that last year in one or two races and I really liked it so I think that it's probably something that I'm going to use for this year's race just because yeah it's going to just after four hours when you're four hours deep you'll just be like oh thank god I've got this suspension fork it's just moved out everything fantastic well Harry thanks so much for joining us and yeah best of luck and we'll keep keen on your results in the coming season.

1:14:52Thank you. No worries, guys. Nice to speak to you.

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