What a Week

The challenge with professional cycling and sport in general, we never look up. We live in the moment - we go from race to race, rider contract to rider contract and in our case at Saint Piran, from shop to bike hire, to riders to race. But these last seven days have been one of those moments to take stock because it signalled a step change in the life of Saint Piran Pro Cycling. We raced in Japan, Greece and across the UK in only a few short days proving the global popularity of UK teams and recognising the effort we, as a team, are making to connect with communities across the World across all cycling disciplines.

Firstly and furthest away, literally, is the Tour of Japan. What an incredible race - truly inspirational in terms of set up, organisation, friendliness and countryside. Wow what a country. But as I am sure you know, we had something else to cheer about. Josh Ludman won Stage Three and Rhys Britton came fourth, building on his podium earlier in the week and we are only half way through the race.

These results exemplify the depth and focus of Saint Piran - these are our development riders, riders that until recently, rode for our U23 USKIS team. Outstanding riders but more importantly, outstanding people that have fought for each other during incredibly difficult stages - through illness, crashes and travelling difficulties. We are very proud of our team out there. And that includes Kento - our amazing and warm latest addition looking after our Japan-side social media. What a guy! Special mentions.

At Saint Piran our focus is to develop our people to be the best they can be on and off the bike. The team in Japan, including our Director of Cycling John Trott and our mechanic Adrian Ludman have a special bond that has kept them together as a unit. One that we hope will be the heartbeat of the team for years to come. The perfect example of that heartbeat is Finn Mason - a fantastic riding talent. Coming into the race injured, he invested heavily in the team which resulted in missing the cut in a stage and being eliminated. But from that point on, Finn’s view was about what else he could do. It is now safe to say, he has a new career as a Soigneur having fully committed to support the team in any way he can.

But that is only one part of the story - because we are a global presence. Our men’s and women’s road teams, not to mention our mountain bike teams, continued to make the grade in many races.

In the Tour of Hellas, in Greece, our team were pitched against five UCI Pro Tour teams and many others more experienced than ourselves. Our new Director Sportif Chris Lawless, himself learning the job, took a mix of experienced riders to take our first UCI win of the season - and win they did. Dylan Hicks crossing the line in an incredible sprint, but it took a team effort to do so.

Again, it is a fantastic race and we would love to participate again. It maybe wasn’t the weather we would expect but the organisation was fantastic and our riders and staff enjoyed every minute of it. And that is the point - it is all about enjoyment…and that is at the heart of the new structure at Saint Piran. New DSs, a new Director of Sport in John - who himself has won a number of races as a DS this season, building a solid but fun culture.

And that could be seen in the other races we competed in. Elizabeth McKinnon podiumed at the prestigious UCI Gralloch Gravel Race, we gave it our best shot at the Lincoln GP with Alex Richardson coming fifth and our WRT rider finishing strongly, and that is without mentioning our Aventor mountain bike team who continue to drive women’s off-road cycling.

Eilish raced in Scotland at The Gralloch, along with Elizabeth, podiumed at The Dirty Nocka in Cannock and then onto Wales with Charlotte winning and Charlie and Cat podiuming. And we haven’t even mentioned the 0503 men’s team racing at RAS in Ireland.

I am now comfortable calling Saint Piran a global brand - we have sponsors that support us across the World, I am contacted by race organisations to compete across all continents and we have riders from Africa, Australia and Europe. I hope we can go wider next season but for now, we will continue to grow and flourish with the amazing set of people we have here.