Junior teams to get Rayner Foundation help for first time
Team boss says rider market needs junior support, writes James Shrubsall
For the first time junior men’s teams and under-23 women’s squads will be eligible for help to race abroad from the Rayner Foundation under a new scheme. Previously only individual riders over 18 were able to claim funding.
The new Gateway Scheme aims to make it easier for teams to take young riders abroad and gain racing experience with a view to one day turning pro. The individual U23 funding, which has already helped over 400 riders – including the likes of current and former pros James Knox, Adam Yates and Adam Blythe – as they attempt to forge a career abroad, will now be called the Springboard Scheme. It will continue to run alongside the new Gateway initiative. Rayner Foundation trustee and former pro Keith Lambert said: “We wanted to provide further support for younger riders so that they can experience what it is like to race the big European races for juniors and under-23 riders.
“The Gateway Scheme from the Rayner Foundation will contribute to the costs associated with the travel and racing outside the UK, to make it that bit easier for British teams to compete.”
The Foundation ran a pilot last year for the Gateway plan, taking teams to races including Paris-roubaix Juniors and the Philippe Gilbert Juniors. Yorkshire’s Fensham Howes Juniors, run by Giles Pidcock, is one of the teams that has already benefited.
He told that with pro teams signing younger and younger riders, having seen what the likes of Egan Bernal and Tadej Pogačar have achieved, now is the right
“It’s a brilliant move on the part of the Rayner Foundation”
time to start offering more help for the junior ranks.
“The game has moved on, you need to be thinking about this [gaining international experience] with juniors rather than from under-23,” Pidcock said. “It’s a brilliant move on the part of the Rayner Foundation to step up to that change and that movement of the market, to help riders from a younger age. I think it’s a really positive innovation.
“The money on its own isn’t a silver bullet – there needs to be other things going on alongside,” he added. “But absolutely, it helps all those teams that are going abroad. It’s really expensive. And any financial help is going to help.”