Seven years ago, I first brought a group of junior riders out to Belgium. My aim was not just get them to race but also to inspire them. They got to wear leaders & QOM jerseys at the stage race they raced but we also rode all the famous cobbled climbs & went to the Flanders Cycling Museum. As we walked round the museum & watched videos of famous riders making the break up the Paterberg I never for one second imagined that could be me.

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On Saturday as we turned into the Paterberg I was fifth wheel; I gave a kick to get around two riders & dived into the gutter. I turned around and there were just three of us left. Riding up at 450w all I thought was ‘wow this is amazing!’.

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Ok it wasn’t Flanders, but it was a UCI race, Leiedel Koerse which is effectively the Women’s version of E3.

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I finished 4th. I was gutted to be honest. Which is ridiculous. It was a fantastic ride against World Tour opposition but its always tough when you are millimetres away from the podium. I have spent over a decade working in a sporting system where 4th is a disaster. It could literally cost you millions of pounds. But I think back to how annoyed I would get when a junior rider placed 4th at their first major championship with a PB and the staff were downbeat. I was always insistent we had to celebrate a PB performance and for me Saturday was that.

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Now from that group of riders I brought over one is racing for a World Tour team, a couple at Continental teams but at least half are in other jobs or walks of life now. I’m proud of the young people they have turned into but the irony of me being the one racing now did get me thinking.

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Often cycling teams are desperate to sign the next big thing. But as a coach sometimes you see that fear of missing out means they overlook weaknesses and then develop unrealistic expectations of a rider.

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The older rider is an undervalued commodity these days. 

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 I first spoke to Simon Howes our DS at DAS-Handsling about joining the team in 2020. We had been in lockdown with only time trials up and running in the UK. I knew my numbers were getting good and I solidified this with third at the National Hill Climb Championships. But I could see he wasn’t interested in signing me for the UCI team. The potential of younger riders was more exciting...the next Remco or at least the female equivalent. I must add that he did offer me a spot on his development team but I had some conflicts of interest that meant that didn't work at the time. Now I joke to him…” imagine if we’d started back then”. I wouldn’t change it as I got to coach at the Olympics instead which was amazing, but I still like to wind him up!

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To me the Bernal, Pogacar, Remco stories of the youngster coming in and winning straight away have been done. When we go to the cinema, we also love to watch films where the old ‘has been’ returns with success like Top Gun Maverick. Indeed, the highest grossing Rocky film wasn’t Rocky it was Rocky IV. What makes these films good is that success feels more unlikely so when it comes it feels even better.

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I’ve recently found that listening to rap musical works for me pre-race. I have one track which is an American Football motivational track and one of the phrases is ‘I’m like a fine wine, I get better with age’. When I look back many of my sporting influences were older athletes who achieved their peaks later in the sport.

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My brother & I followed Manchester United passionately as children through the golden Triple era where they won the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League in the ’99 season. I idolised Teddy Sheringham. He was 32 at the time but I thought he was amazing. He wasn’t the fastest striker and he was certainly a player who peaked later in his career. He was super smart and he could come on as a substitute and change a game in seconds. When it came to England duty I wasn’t half as excited watching the young speed of Michael Owen. I was just sat waiting for Teddy to get on the pitch and surprise everyone. Teddy holds the record for the oldest goal scorer in the premier league as it turns out aged 40 years 8 months and 24 days while Michael Owen retired at 34.

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Maybe it’s not just these type of influences that have inspired me to race as an older rider. Maybe its genetic. My brother was recently called up for the North of England Over 35s Hockey team so perhaps we are like Teddy, we peak a little later. My brother was a massive sporting inspiration to me as a youngster mainly because he beat me at everything! But its interesting to see is it nature or is it nurture and are we just bouncing off each other again as we did as kids.

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As an older rider, let’s say over 30 if you are racing, you know your why as I referenced in my first blog The Last Chance Saloon. You are potentially making big life changes or holding off having a family, so you are going to commit 100%. Cycling isn’t football, it’s not like you can sell a rider on for millions of pounds. Most teams get a couple of years out of a rider so why does age matter? Surely it should be on merit not just potential.

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In the last few years British Cycling developed something called Elite Development Status for British teams. This I think was intended to recognise the best teams to develop with as a rider. Last year I was within a team who had more riders over 30 and I was disappointed to see part of the criteria was that 50% of the team had to be under 28 to have this status. Encouraging teams to have U23 riders is vital, we need young riders being developed well in good teams but 28 cannot be regarded as a young rider. It simply penalises older riders and seems to me an arbitrary age plucked out of thin air. It is hard enough to find a team as an older rider, never mind with rules like this in place. We should be welcoming those who have come to the sport later, having had a break or from other sports or platforms like Zwift.

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As I was in the break on Saturday there were four riders from the same World Tour team in our group of nine. As one of them tried to tell me I needed to do more work she said “we all started out like you, we know what its like”. I just smiled to myself, if only she knew! By comparison another girl in the break said “hey, I know you from the track!”…I just responded with “that was much easier than this!”. And in reality, I may be older but I’m in good working order, using a stopwatch doesn’t take that much toll on the body!

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One of our Soigneurs with GB (My favourite 😉) always said you need hunger. The motivational speech “are you hungry?…do you want it?!” often heard as he joked but I don’t think was always joking! You can have no hunger at 21 and you can have lots of hunger at 41. Being young doesn’t mean you have more drive, from what I have seen some of my oldest teammates in the past have had the most drive.

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Last week I spent four days coaching World Master’s riders out in Portugal and it was so motivating to see their desire and drive but also made me realise age really is no barrier. One guy had come back to cycling aiming to target the 75-80 category and learning to ride the track for the first time at 78. I mean by comparison early thirties is a whipper snapper!

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I recently gave a talk to a group of athletes from Cambridge University and one woman asked what advice I would give to someone over 30 starting to race properly against all these younger riders. My response was that she would have more strength than she knew. You may not have youth, but you know your why and can pull from life experience, you get SO much mentally stronger. I am so much stronger as a person than I was in my early twenties. I wouldn’t want that angst & self-doubt again.

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My pitch with this blog is that teams look at the potential bonuses of having older riders on the team just as I’m glad Simon did when we spoke again. Age is a number which makes it easy to compare rider to rider but what we should be doing is comparing the power numbers, the bunch positioning, the bike handling and what riders bring to the team. Momentum is what your looking for and that can come at any age. In a sport where there are no multi-million-pound transfers and where the danger is high from crashes no career is guaranteed to last years or be with the same team. Let’s not penalise riders for age. Let’s value that mental strength and that life experience because I have a sneaking suspicion Simon had as much fun behind the break on Saturday as he would have done if it was a young rider, in fact maybe more because neither him nor me expected to be there.