In that same piece I touched on what brought me to Unbound in the first place: media responsibilities for the Mach1 Devo team. I have now mentioned the team across multiple articles, and it is time to truly dive in. What does it take to manage a U23 squad? What makes this team special? And what can they teach us about developmental pipelines in the United States?

I have covered developmental teams before with stories on SpeedBlock-Terún, Fort Lewis College, and with Natascha den Ouden, but this will be my first article written after witnessing a team’s inner workings firsthand. The goal is to give readers the deepest look inside a domestic off-road development team that I have been able to put together, covering everything from the riders and management to sponsorships and the less tangible factors that have allowed Mach1 to prosper.

To get that level of insight I sat down with Nina Machnowski, Founder and Manager of Mach1 Devo. We covered a wide range of topics including the challenges of managing a seven-rider team, her learnings from the experience, and the logistics that go into running an operation like this.

I hope that shining a light on this team not only brings more opportunities to its riders, but also helps more brands and organizations recognize the importance of supporting development programs in the United States. The truth is that with a little creativity, sponsoring a U23 program carries more storytelling potential than almost any professional team could offer.

Mach1 Founder, Nina Machnowski

While some may know her better as Nina Machina, Nina is an endurance mountain bike athlete turned coach and now development team manager. It feels like I have known Nina for a long time, but the truth is we have only known each other for a few months. I had not yet heard her full story, so I was excited to learn how she got into cycling and eventually arrived at the idea of starting a development team.

Hailing from New Jersey, Nina grew up in a family with a deep affinity for the outdoors, which eventually made mountain biking a family sport. Her father began racing a local XC series called Hudson to Highlands, or H2H, which served as the direct catalyst for her own entry into the sport.

“My dad started mountain bike racing in the local XC series called H2H. I was like, I want to do that too. So I started racing on his old Specialized Stumpjumper hardtail that was way too big for me.”

While she started on hand-me-down gear, Nina quickly entered the development pipeline by joining her local NICA team during her sophomore year of high school. It was there that she discovered a love for ultra-endurance mountain biking, competing at events like the Shenandoah 100. The more she raced, the more she found herself helping out and getting involved in the NICA organization beyond just competing.

The NICA team in her county grew rapidly, from five riders her first season to over 100 by the time she graduated. That early exposure to explosive grassroots growth gave her a formative understanding of what development can look like at scale. After graduating, Nina chose to attend Brevard College, home to one of the top varsity cycling programs in the country. The combination of a cycling program, a partial scholarship, and an exercise science degree made the decision, as she put it, easy.

While at Brevard, Nina continued pursuing her own racing outside of the team, gravitating toward gravel as the discipline began to explode during her college years in 2021 and 2022. It was during her senior year that she discovered something she had not anticipated: a genuine love for coaching.

“I was doing my internship with a local coaching company because it was a really easy way to do my internship credits for college. My senior year I didn’t anticipate falling in love with coaching per se, but then I was just like, wait, I really love this. It just kind of clicked. I feel like I’m constantly learning every day, which is super cool.”

While at Brevard College, Nina began working at Flow Formulas, an endurance nutrition brand that still sponsors her and her team to this day. It was there that she started connecting the dots and saw how simple, well-placed support could have a meaningful impact on a rider’s trajectory.

“I was doing a bunch of backend work like managing their ambassador program and running their social media. I really enjoyed the personal aspect of interacting with the ambassadors and learning everybody’s stories. It wasn’t my product or my money to be giving out, but it was really cool to feel like I could provide support to riders. I saw how a little could go such a long way.”

With those pieces in place, the idea of starting a development team began to take shape. While also working on a master’s degree, Nina launched her coaching company, Mach1 Performance in 2024 and officially launched Mach1 Devo in 2025 with two riders.

The realities of running a U23 program

As we continue, I want to split my focus between two dimensions: the realities and logistics of managing a U23 program, and the team dynamics, riders, and attributes that make Mach1 a best-in-class program. After wrestling with how best to present the team, I feel this balance captures what makes them special and gives other development programs something to learn from.

Starting with what makes the team possible, I want to look at the realities Nina faces as the solo manager of an independent development team. The best thing a team manager can do is ensure riders only need to worry about racing. With the help of sponsors, Nina has been able to meaningfully reduce the burden of travel expenses, equipment, and race week logistics.

With Mach1 entering its second year with an impressive rider roster, and a list of notable brand partners supporting operations, how did it all come together? Starting with the most important piece, the riders, I was eager to learn more about Nina’s process for recruiting athletes to Mach1.

Attracting talent

Up until last year, when Life Time introduced a U23 version of the Grand Prix, there was practically no coverage of U23 fields, and even today, not enough to make talent scouting straightforward.

For Nina, scouting doesn’t always come down to race analysis or results. Given the races her team specializes in, she keeps an eye out for young riders willing to compete in the more grueling events on the American calendar. Choosing those races signals a determined mindset, motivation, and early specialization in off-road ultra endurance. Nina summed up her approach:

“I was looking at results pages, and not necessarily for people that have won races per se. I was looking at crazy races, like 24 Hours of the Old Pueblo and the Belgian Waffle Ride series. There are very few younger riders that compete in those races… That’s not something typically that 17, 18, 19 year olds do.”

It may seem trivial, but Nina scouting riders with very similar performance goals to her own likely allows her to connect with them on a much deeper level than a typical athlete-coach relationship.

After the inaugural 2025 season, riders began approaching her directly.

“I also had a few riders that reached out to me towards the end of the summer or around Big Sugar. It was kind of a mix of me scouting riders and riders coming to me. I’m so grateful that they reached out. I can now call them not just athletes of mine but people I consider really good friends.”

Nina’s comment about athlete friendships is worth revisiting later, but to close out recruitment: given the team’s early success in 2026, this trend feels like it will only grow.

Sponsorships are the lifeblood for U23 teams

Everyone reading this already knows cycling is an expensive sport. Bikes and gear alone can amount to over $10,000, and race entry fees, travel, lodging, and race day nutrition can balloon that number even further. Nina has assembled a strong list of brand partners that takes some of that financial stress off her athletes. The team’s sponsors include:

• Lauf Cycles for bikes and financial support

• Giordana for kits

• Kask for helmets

• KOO Eyewear for optics

• Flow Formulas for nutrition

• USWE for race hydration storage

• Bike Tires Direct for accessories

• Dawn to Dusk for bottle cages, top tube bags, and financial support

Beyond equipment, two sponsors also support the team financially, helping offset travel, race entry fees, and race week logistics. The harsh reality of U23 sponsorships is that they are often seen as a weaker return on investment compared to a pro team. Or at least, that is the stale perception that persists in the industry.

Nina has worked to dispel that concern through trust built over years of personal relationships. She is willing to start small and grow a partnership over time, and clearly understands the balance between asking for adequate support and asking for too much.

“I’ve been working with some brands for six, seven years. Brands saw my ability to work really hard and kind of make big dreams come true. I never want to ask for too much. That’s something you have to balance, asking for enough but then not asking for too much. So I was always coming from a place of, do you want to be involved in growing this thing with me?”

This approach is one I have written about before, and it is exactly how the industry should be thinking about convincing brands to invest more at the developmental level. Sponsoring U23 teams will still cost less than supporting a full pro team, and as Nina shows, that investment can produce an outsized impact while giving brands plenty of material for storytelling. Nina is already seeing the returns.

“Now that we have more talent on the team and looking to grow even more and support the team even more, that’s going to come with bigger asks. I think because the platform has been growing and we’ve been proving ourselves race to race, I see the sponsors recognizing that. Even just after Unbound, going to the expo and seeing our team all together in matching kits and the actual impact that we are having. It’s just giving us more credibility to bump up support in the coming years.”

Nina’s approach has clearly created genuine emotional investment from sponsors, resulting in stable relationships that deliver real outcomes for riders.

Solo management is a labor of love

I alluded to it while discussing sponsorships, but something that makes Mach1’s success even more impressive is that Nina manages every aspect of the team on her own. Coaching, sponsorships, logistics — it all falls on her, and Mach1 is not even her full-time job. Nina runs the team alongside her own racing career and training, purely out of love for the sport.

“Honestly, I don’t really find it hard because if you have such a drive, it’s almost like an impulse that you have to do it. From the outside I know it is a lot of work, but it doesn’t feel like a lot of work because it’s just something that I really enjoy doing.”

Most U23 team managers are not in it for the money. There are far more lucrative opportunities in the industry. What makes Nina’s situation stand out is not just that she is doing it solo on the side, but that she is doing it at 24. Most U23 teams I come across are managed by someone further along in their career, with more time and financial flexibility to take on the responsibility.

“It takes up like 99% of my mental capacity every day, but it’s all on the side. Hopefully opportunities keep coming out of that so I could keep pivoting for it to be a bit more of a sustainable thing for me career-wise. But it’s definitely not where I make my living or anything like that.”

Much like me, Nina is pursuing something she is passionate about without compensation and figuring things out as she goes. It is a theme I keep coming across in American cycling, and I think it is an X-factor for the sport’s development in this country and for Mach1 specifically.

Sure, there might not be decades of experience behind every decision, but that is probably a good thing. Young people intuitively understand what makes cycling appealing and what it takes to stay motivated competing in the US. A young manager who easily identifies with young riders is a marginal gain in itself. There is less communication overhead around the minutia of being a competitive cyclist. Everyone is largely on the same page, and things get done faster.

The following quote captures what Mach1 has meant to Nina and why she will continue to dedicate herself to the team.

“I didn’t realize how much love I could put into something. It’s almost like I’m way more passionate about it than even my own racing. It’s given me such a perspective on my own journey with racing, fitness, and sports and I enjoy it in a whole new light now. I care about my own racing and training, but it’s more like doing it to be a good role model. Ultimately it’s like I take all this positive energy that I have from my work with the team and put it towards my own racing. I feel like I’m a better athlete because of it.”

What has managing Mach1 Devo taught Nina?

Before taking a closer look at Mach1’s team dynamics, I was interested to hear what running the team over the last two years has taught Nina. Sharing knowledge at the U23 level is critical if we hope to expand this model and grow the sport. Mach1 is finding success quickly, and there are real lessons to be taken from that.

Community is everything in the U23 landscape

“I think that there’s such a need for a community for U23 riders. Obviously there are off-road development teams across the US already, but I think specifically for gravel, endurance, and ultra cycling, there hasn’t been as much of a focus on that. Leaning into that and creating that space for riders has been huge. Everyone on the team has told me that they perform their best when there’s just a good vibe around them. Seeing everybody learn from each other, empower each other, it’s an uplifting environment where everybody’s stoked and feeds off each other’s energy.”

Looking the part is more important than we think

“Being on a team makes riders feel more legit when they go and approach sponsors or show up to events. They’re in kits that match their teammates and we’re all geared up with the same equipment and it just feels very professional. I think looking the part, feeling the part helps you actually play the part.”

These two learnings may seem unrelated at first glance, but both connect Mach1’s riders to one another. When off-road racing has historically been an individual pursuit, community and confidence go a long way in rider performance, morale, and self-esteem.

What makes Mach1 special?

Nina brings a lot to the team, but what are the intangibles that contribute to Mach1’s success? We have already touched on community and coaching, but there is more beneath the surface. Some of it is obvious, some of it subtle. After spending the better part of five days with the team, I came away with a few observations worth sharing.

The Riders

This is the most obvious X-factor, and it starts with Nina’s scouting. While I have yet to meet two of Mach1’s athletes, the ones I met and lived with in Emporia were a fantastic group. They did make me feel geriatric at the ripe old age of 27, but I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know each of them. By the end of five days in Emporia, I felt like I could call all of them friends, and I am genuinely stoked to know them.

I want to highlight the Mach1 riders, their backgrounds, and a few anecdotes from the athletes I met in Kansas. I encourage you to follow their journeys — they will most definitely be racing in the pro fields in the years to come.

Oskar Stack-Michasiw

Age: 21

Home Base: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Socials: @oskarstack.mtb

Bio: Oskar is a gravel focused on developing into a top-level competitor while being a positive ambassador for bike riding. He brings a driven, results-oriented mindset to his racing, balanced with positivity and a genuine love for the process—no matter what race day brings. At Unbound, Oskar secured a second place finish and he is a serious contender to win the U23 Life Time Grand Prix.

My favorite moment from my time with Oskar was seeing him obsess about the quality of a Kansas diner’s syrup.

Lily Zakaras

Age: 18

Home Base: Bentonville, Arkansas

Socials: @lily_zakaras

Bio: Lily’s current focus is fully on gravel and mountain biking, where she’s earned top finishes at Unbound Gravel, Lauf Gravel Worlds, and Big Sugar Gravel. Lily is passionate about cooking and performance nutrition. She hopes to support Mach1 Devo by helping fuel the team—creating nourishing pre- and post-ride meals and ride fuel that help athletes perform at their best.

My favorite moment with Lily was watching her perform her “Walmart version” of Trek Driftless Unbound bike check.

Zane Koogler

Age: 19

Home Base: Phoenix, Arizona

Socials: @zanekoogler

Bio: Zane calls Arizona home, and where he grew up racing bikes before discovering his passion for long-distance endurance racing two years ago. Since then, he’s leaned fully into the longer efforts, lining up at events like Unbound 200 and continuing to chase the kind of races that demand grit, patience, and smart strategy. Zane also brings years of technical experience from working at his local bike shop and acts as the team’s de facto mechanic.

Zane has a knack for telling stories. Whether it’s selling bikes or talking about the TSA confiscating his nutrition, you’ll be left laughing.

Brooke Darby

Age: 21

Home Base: Durango, Colorado

Socials: @brookeleannd

Bio: Brooke is an Asheville, North Carolina native who is now based in Durango, Colorado. After completing her prerequisites and lab coursework at Fort Lewis College, she is pursuing a degree in Nutrition. Brooke secured an outstanding top ten at Unbound and punched her ticket to the U23 Life Time Grand Prix.

Brooke has a contagious energy, even when she is scooping mud off her bike on a minimum maintenance road. She is a relative newcomer to cycling, only starting a few years ago once she started attending Fort Lewis College! Does that awesome story sound familiar?

Roston Nordell

Age: 20

Home Base: Manti, Utah

Socials: @rostonnordell

Bio: Roston discovered his passion for cycling in 8th grade through NICA and has been fully committed ever since. Over the years, he’s transitioned into longer, more competitive events, steadily pushing his limits and chasing bigger challenges like the U23 Lifetime Grand Prix. Roston is a talented ultra endurance athlete and has his sights set on winning 24 Hours of the Old Pueblo solo and attempting seven Everests in seven days.

Roston is a true teammate. The entire time I was with Mach1, Roston was always discussing strategies, equipment, nutrition, etc. with his teammates. He’s a smart racer and will be a rider to watch.

Julia Allred

Age: 20

Home Base: Salt Lake City, Utah

Socials: @juliaallredbikes

Bio: Julia Allred has been mountain biking since age eight, inspired by her mom and older sister and a lifelong love for the outdoors. After discovering a passion for long-distance racing, Julia podiumed at her first 50-mile MTB race in 2022 and placed 10th at the NICA Utah State Varsity Girls race in 2023. She has since continued racing marathon MTB events and fallen in love with gravel racing.

I haven’t had a chance to meet Julia yet, but I can’t wait to catch her the next time I’m with the Mach1 crew.

Miles Baker

Age: 19

Home Base: Salt Lake City, Utah

Socials: @miles_baker_bikes

Bio: Miles began riding at age six thanks to his dad and found his passion for racing after joining his high school team at thirteen. Coming from a mountain bike background, Miles is drawn to long, technical gravel and MTB races with plenty of climbing, but he’s also grown to love the strategy and group dynamics of faster gravel events.

I also have not had the opportunity to meet Miles yet, but have heard so many great things!

Revisiting the team vibes

I have already made a point of this, but it is truly my biggest takeaway from time spent with the team. While in Emporia, I observed various living setups across teams, pro and U23 alike. A lot of teams do not lodge together, and even among the pro teams that do, it can feel like riders are more acquaintances than teammates.

Mach1 was different. While riders had time to themselves, everyone legitimately enjoyed each other’s company, so there was always a good hang somewhere in the house. From cooking dinner and breakfast together to pre-riding the course as a group, Nina has fostered real friendships among her athletes. Even with a mudpocalypse looming on race day, there was no sense of nerves in the house. The athletes are undeniably professional, but I think the constant camaraderie leading into the race helped keep things loose.

This is the culture American cycling needs at the developmental level. You hear stories about how European teams operate like family, but you also hear plenty about those same teams harboring an unhealthy internal competition. Every Mach1 athlete is fiercely competitive, but not at the expense of their relationships with teammates. If this becomes the norm in American cycling, I think we will eventually have a strong developmental pipeline feeding the pro peloton. Who knows, maybe in twenty or thirty years Europeans will be coming to the US to develop.

Scrappy is how we win

Those of you who have followed my writing for a while know that I repeatedly come back to one idea: furthering cycling in America by embracing a scrappy, entrepreneurial spirit. We do not have to be restricted by tradition the way European programs are. We can pave our own way by bringing people together from inside and outside the sport.

Nina and Mach1 are a living example of what that spirit produces. Someone with no formal team management experience built a U23 program from scratch, and two years in, has multiple riders competing for wins in America’s premier off-road series. The scrappiness makes for great sponsorship storytelling and genuine fan investment. It is anything but easy, but as my friend Andrew Vontz says, “hard things build stronger people who have more fun.”

Mach1 is taking the hard, scrappy road and having a hell of a lot of fun doing it. Let’s learn from them and build something together.

In other news

Zwift unveils new talent identification program

Yesterday, Zwift announced a youth talent identification program aimed at scouting the next generation of American riders. Their goal is to identify the next American winner of the Tour de France, male or female. I wrote an entire article about Zwift’s opportunity to change collegiate cycling, and while this is not that, I am beyond excited to see a company invest real effort into American development. I am also glad to know I am not just talking out of the side of my neck when I pitch these ideas.

Sarah Sturm’s Reroute project is valuable

Previous guest Sarah Sturm is releasing Reroute, a video series documenting her pregnancy journey as a professional athlete. Pregnancy among pro riders is a subject that deserves more attention, and Sarah has led the charge this year. She helped Life Time implement a maternity policy for the Grand Prix, and now she is creating a space for riders to either see what pregnancy could look like for them or find solidarity while navigating their own. Long story short, Sarah is a rockstar.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

I know you are probably ready for the media cycle to move on, but I have one more piece before we get to the rest of the gravel season. This year I attended the legendary event for the first time and all I can say is that it exceeded every expectation. In what genuinely felt like a pilgrimage, I left San Francisco, made my way to the Flint Hills of Kansas, and continued my streak of attending Life Time events as media while exploring the development of cycling in the United States from the frontlines.

The only reason I was able to attend was because of some chance connections I made at the Sea Otter Classic last month. I wrote a debrief of that event and many of you seemed to enjoy it, so it felt right to do something similar for Unbound. Rather than covering the obvious storylines that have already been thoroughly documented by major cycling media, I will, as always, be looking at this event through the lens of developing cycling in the United States.

I have followed this race so closely over the last four years that I was honestly unsure whether being there in person would give me enough new perspective to write about. It absolutely did. Interacting with brands on the ground, meeting athletes, and working directly with a team for five days in Kansas gave me a view of the broader cycling ecosystem that simply would not have been possible from behind a screen. With that said, it makes sense to start by explaining why I was there, because my primary role at the race informs a lot of what follows.

Working with a development team

I touched on why I was at Unbound in last week’s piece and gave some background on the opportunity in my Sea Otter recap, but now that the race is over I think a bit more context will help frame the takeaways in this piece. At Unbound I was fortunate to take on the role of team photographer for the Mach1 Devo team, whose athletes were tackling the 100 mile course in the U23 field.

I will be writing a dedicated story on this team covering its riders, its founder, and its origins, so I will not go deep here. The short version is that I met the team’s founder Nina at Sea Otter last month and we struck a deal: I would photograph the team at Unbound and in exchange I would have a place to stay in Emporia with the team and their incredible host Lynne. We shook hands and that was that, sending me to Kansas for my first Unbound experience.

Unbound is essentially a week-long event encompassing the race itself, an industry expo, countless brand activations, and various community events, so it made sense to also attend in a media capacity and make the most of my time there. In reality my schedule only allowed for some quick networking at the expo and photography access to the start of the pro races, but it was productive time well spent.

In the lead-up to the event I also found out that longtime Built on Bikes collaborator Leni of Holy Spirit of Gravel would be in attendance, so we made plans to create some content together between our packed schedules.

The week was complete madness in the best possible way. Scattered storms, daily photo sessions with the Mach1 team, expo networking, photo editing, and a rain-soaked mud-coated race day that will go down as one for the Unbound history books. I spent the majority of my time getting to know the Mach1 riders and capturing media that I hope gives people a better window into the U23 gravel landscape. That is actually where I want to start with my first takeaway.

U23 racing shouldn’t fly under the radar

I am completely biased here, but spending the week at Unbound with a U23 squad convinced me without a doubt that the U23 fields in the Life Time Grand Prix deserve significantly more attention. Better coverage of these athletes is not only viable, it would set a crucial precedent for American racing.

For expanded coverage to be viable, it would need to draw a meaningful audience that creates revenue potential without diluting coverage of the pro fields. There is a clear path to that reality and it starts with moderation. If there is one thing Life Time does consistently well with the Grand Prix, it is making incremental changes that gradually elevate the racing, the coverage, and the storytelling around it.

Having spent most of race day on the ground covering the U23 field, I can say with confidence that top tier race dynamics and genuine competition already exist. The men’s U23 race came down to a sprint finish. In just its second season, the U23 Life Time Grand Prix already has strong competitive parity and dynamic racing worth watching. The problem is that the stories of these athletes are not being told widely and there is no way to watch the U23 races live. A reasonable starting point is to prioritize the storytelling first and build toward live coverage from there.

Having spent real time with a U23 squad, I can say with conviction that the stories of these athletes are every bit as interesting, important, and compelling as anything being told in the pro fields. Gravel professionals, for the most part, are now able to focus entirely on performance. They are paid athletes and their lives outside of racing have become somewhat routine to outside audiences. That is actually a good sign. It means the sport is professionalizing in the way other major leagues have, where athletes only need to worry about competing.

For U23 riders that picture looks completely different. These are young athletes juggling school, sponsorships, part time jobs, and the demands of growing up alongside a grueling training and race schedule. It is the privateer struggle of five years ago, amplified. The storytelling potential behind these riders and their support systems is enormous, and capturing it could not be simpler. Spend ten minutes talking to one of these athletes and you will hear their cycling journey, discover their challenges, encounter their unique personalities, and form a connection that makes you genuinely invested in their success.

Live broadcasting is not on the table right now. Hiring an additional film and production crew to cover two more race fields is not practical for Life Time at this stage. But if we look back at Life Time’s original Call of a Life Time YouTube series, there is already a blueprint for how this evolves. Before there was live race coverage, there was a small YouTube series that showcased Grand Prix athletes inside and outside of competition. It generated enough engagement to help make live broadcasting possible and built fan connections that still exist today. The same progression can and should happen with the U23 field.

If we can make this leap forward in U23 coverage, it will set a valuable precedent in our broader effort to grow cycling in the United States. Life Time is currently front and center in American cycling, and if they can demonstrate that interest in U23 racing is real and sustainable, that proof of concept can carry over to other disciplines and other organizations. Unlike Europe, the United States already has a deeply established appetite for college sports and developmental leagues, as we see with Minor League Baseball. If we can tap into that willingness and get American fans watching U23 cycling alongside professional racing, we will have built something European cycling culture does not have: a fan base that grows with its athletes from the very beginning.

Unbound by the numbers

Life Time media credentials also come with access to statistics that are not widely circulated but absolutely should be. These numbers paint a clear picture of growth and economic impact that could prove crucial in convincing investors, brands, and governing bodies to take cycling in the United States more seriously.

Here is the quick rundown:

• 5,000+ riders in attendance

• Participants from all 50 states and 52 countries

• 23% of participants were female

• $21,770,000 in economic impact for Lyon County (2024 figure, likely higher in 2025)

• 11 hours of live broadcasting

• 496,931 live views of the race

• 20,637 average concurrent viewership

• 52 minutes average viewing time

• 18,000+ comments on the live stream

For me, there are four big takeaways from these numbers.

Real viewership domestically and abroad

Ryan Cross, Director of Partnership Marketing at Life Time, put the concurrent viewership number into sharp context by pointing out that the average NBA arena capacity is 18,900. The average number of people watching Unbound at any given moment was 20,637. NBA viewership overall dwarfs those numbers without breaking a sweat, but we are talking about live coverage of off-road cycling in America. That is a genuinely promising baseline.

I would be curious to see a demographic breakdown of the audience, but it is reasonable to assume domestic viewers drove the majority of viewership while a meaningful international audience tuned in as well. That combination demonstrates real advertising potential and gives streaming platforms a concrete data point for what Unbound could deliver on a larger provider like Netflix or Max.

Earlier this year a UCI Gravel World Series race featuring Wout van Aert was live streamed on HBO Max, but I would be willing to bet Unbound would draw an even larger audience on that platform even without WorldTour start power behind it. These numbers present a genuinely exciting case for the future of gravel broadcasting in the United States. We just need to continue to secure investment and tell compelling stories that add an extra dimension to the fan experience.

Economic impact is a true selling point

Whether it is pushback on street closures for road races or permitting hurdles for the use of public and private land, organizing cycling events in the United States rarely comes without opposition. But if a race held in a town of 24,100 people can generate economic impact equivalent to $903 per capita, there is a real and compelling case to pitch races to more communities across the country. A new race will not reach Unbound’s scale overnight, but the model exists and the proof of concept is there.

Mass participation is the next selling point

Nothing new here. Mass participation is the formula for success in the American market, and at Unbound it is also the mechanism that attracts world class talent to race on US soil. I think Unbound could serve as a genuine case study for bringing road racing, and eventually WorldTour racing, back to the United States. We have seen some early traction with Levi’s Gran Fondo, but there is room to improve on that model for road racing specifically. Levi’s is a demanding event, but it is not operating anywhere near the scale or cultural weight of Unbound.

I will leave it there because a full article on this topic is coming. Stay tuned.

Unbound is not even close to its ceiling

The 23% female participation figure is the most underappreciated number in this dataset. The percentage has been rising year over year, but it also shows how much runway remains for this event to grow. I have written about women’s cycling being one of the most important keys to growing the sport in the United States, and I think Unbound is uniquely positioned to continue telling the stories of female athletes in a way that drives meaningful growth for women’s cycling broadly.

Media is an all hands on deck approach

These last two takeaways were inspired by a conversation I had with Leni from Holy Spirit of Gravel after the race wrapped up. We were reflecting on the week and thanking each other for the ways we had helped with each other’s content. The collaboration looked different on each side. I drove Leni to and from the airport and helped her film some athlete content while she introduced me to people I had genuinely been hoping to meet for a while.

Leni made a point that stuck with me. She described the process of making content that moves gravel forward as an all hands in the pot situation. Outside of major cycling media networks, the creators who distribute content to audiences beyond the diehard cycling fan tend to genuinely support each other. I could not agree more, and the truth is I would not have been at Unbound at all if Nina had not offered to help a stranger she met in a feed zone.

There is a remarkable amount of independent media at gravel events, and from everything I experienced, the people behind it are genuinely happy to help each other out. It comes from a shared love of this strange and wonderful sport and it has been a consistent asset for gravel’s growth in the US and globally.

Part of me wonders whether there is room for more of this kind of independent media collaboration in the WorldTour, but that is a conversation for another day.

We’re seeing a subtle culture shift in pro gravel

In a recent episode of the Holy Spirit of Gravel podcast, Leni made an observation that rang immediately true for me. She acknowledged that there is still meaningful work to be done to make the pro side of gravel easily approachable for the general public, but fans of the sport now intuitively understand the language, the storylines, and the trends surrounding the pro fields.

Look at Unbound five years ago. The pro race was not nearly as deep with talent and was not even the primary focus for most gravel fans at the time. Unbound was still known primarily as the great mass participation event and the spiritual home of gravel riding. If you had walked the expo back then and asked people about the pro race, you would have found plenty who knew very little about the professional field.

Fast forward to today and the pro race is unambiguously the main attraction and the cultural epicenter of the event. The average gravel fan at Unbound will have heard about the new Specialized Crux, the dominant Specialized super team, and details from athletes’ personal lives like Sarah Sturm joining the commentary crew while navigating pregnancy. Knowledge that used to live exclusively with the most devoted gravel followers is now common currency among casual fans.

Someone brand new to the sport will still need to do some research to get fully up to speed, but even for casual observers the lore is established and accessible. That cultural literacy is the product of two things working together: the independent media ecosystem I mentioned earlier and the excellent branding work Life Time has done with the Grand Prix. The sport may still feel niche to outsiders, but the progress over the last five years is genuinely impressive and the next five years are exciting to think about.

In other news

Specialized won the marketing battle

Going into Unbound, all eyes were on Scott, who were equipping their riders with prototype gravel bikes featuring 32-inch wheels. The new wheel format has been one of the biggest talking points in the industry this year, but Specialized also arrived with significant media momentum behind the full release of the new Crux gravel bike. The Crux went 1, 2, 3, and 5 in the men’s field and 1 and 2 in the women’s. That result provided immediate proof of concept and ensured that the bike everyone is talking about coming out of Unbound is Specialized’s new speed machine. I may or may not want one for myself now, badly.

Blink and you’ll miss it: Kate Courtney is on the road

I keep secrets well, so I have known about some rumblings of this news for a while, but I will not share anything beyond what is already public speculation. Recently American mountain biker Kate Courtney competed in the Tour de Féminin road race for Team USA and won the final stage in a sprint finish. Why is she racing on the road? It would appear Kate has her sights set on making the American road team for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

I have already heard the predictable narrative that the team spot should go to a dedicated road racer. It is the same argument that followed Lindsey Vonn at this year’s Olympic Games, with critics suggesting she was taking a coveted spot from a younger rider. Vonn earned that spot outright, and if Kate earns this one, the same will be true. As I have written previously, USA Cycling uses every tool available to build the strongest possible teams, so nobody makes that roster without deserving to be there.

Having a Red Bull athlete competing at the LA Olympics would also be a significant marketing moment for American cycling, but I can assure you that marketing upside is not the driving force behind this potential career pivot. Let’s go Kate.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

When thinking about a topic for this week, I found myself reflecting on how often people have been asking me about Built on Bikes lately, specifically what I write about. My answer is usually that a lot of it focuses on the business and investment side of the sport, as well as the developmental landscape in the United States. At the core of it all, my biggest goal is to start conversations that help grow the sport here at home, and sometimes the most abstract ideas end up being the best catalysts for those conversations.

For me, that kind of abstract thinking usually looks like presenting an idea and then mapping out hypotheticals for how brands or organizations could execute on it to expand their business and grow the sport simultaneously. This week follows that same pattern.

When I talk about developing cycling in the United States, I typically approach it from the angle of making the sport more interesting, marketable, and accessible to a larger audience. That framing puts a lot of weight on competition and entertainment value, but there are other paths to growing the sport that do not rely on those things alone. One of them is cycling brands expanding their market footprint in a meaningful way.

Cycling remains a niche sport in the United States, but brands still want to be here because the US represents the largest consumer market in the world. Whether it is a bike manufacturer or an apparel brand, the American market is largely untapped and presents significant growth opportunities. We have seen some progress over the years, but it does not feel like any brand has had the kind of viral moment that truly puts cycling on the map for a mainstream American audience.

Marketing campaigns in the sport have largely landed with existing cycling fans rather than reaching the broader population. Brands have been focused on winning the cycling market rather than taking the risks necessary to engage the wider consumer base. Other sports have benefited enormously from guerrilla marketing campaigns and unexpected viral moments. So why hasn’t cycling? That is what I want to explore this week: what could actually create a mainstream breakthrough or viral moment for cycling in the United States from a brand perspective.

The “moment” for other sports

Cycling is not the only sport that has had to work hard to grow its presence in the United States. Sports like soccer, women’s basketball, and gymnastics have all had long roads to mainstream acceptance among American fans. Women’s leagues in particular face significant systemic challenges and structural inequity, but there are clear examples of how individual sports seized cultural moments to accelerate their growth.

For soccer it was David Beckham departing Real Madrid to join the LA Galaxy, and more recently Lionel Messi signing with Inter Miami CF. The MLS adjusted their salary structure to allow marquee European talent to join, which created a media buzz that has compounded over the years and transformed the league into an internationally recognized competition with legitimate quality on the field.

Women’s basketball saw an explosion in popularity when Caitlin Clark joined the WNBA following her historic college career. A media frenzy during the 2024 NCAA tournament put women’s basketball squarely in the national spotlight, and the league seized that moment by making her the face of the sport. And across several Olympic cycles we have seen breakout performances from athletes like Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, and Shaun White generate enormous mainstream interest in sports that most Americans only think about once every four years.

The common thread running through all of these moments is straightforward. Each was sparked by a singular athlete performing at such a dominant level that mainstream media had no choice but to pay attention.

Cycling won’t have the same moment

We have to accept that cycling will not grow in the US through the accomplishments of a single athlete. It seemed that could be the case when Lance Armstrong was dominating the WorldTour, but once doping scandals tarnished his legacy, and the sport, all hopes of viral growth from a single source evaporated. Today we simply don’t have any athletes that will reach his level of accomplishment in the sport, so we can’t afford to wait around.

It is important to say that women’s cycling is the exception here. Our female athletes consistently perform at the highest levels of competition. I’ve already written how the United States can become the dominant nation in Women’s cycling, and I believe we will see the viral growth moment sooner rather than later. While we have incredible, and frankly, viral worthy performances from athletes like Kristen Faulkner, we haven’t had an athlete that transcends the sport yet.

As I go on to explain how we can seize unique marketing opportunities, the opportunities apply to both men’s and women’s cycling, but women’s cycling is undoubtedly poised to have more marketable moments from competition in the near term.

Other challenges

Thinking beyond the traditional phenomenon of a single athlete bringing a niche sport into the mainstream, cycling has had very few viral moments that successfully cross over to a general audience. When those moments do happen, they are rarely the kind of publicity the sport needs. The example that immediately comes to mind is the 2021 Tour de France, when a spectator holding a sign caused a massive peloton crash. The moment was covered by every major media outlet and spread across social media instantly, but rather than making people curious about the sport, it reinforced the perception of cycling as chaotic and unserious.

When brands have attempted cultural crossovers to reach new audiences, the results have largely fallen flat. On multiple occasions Rapha and EF Education teamed up with globally popular streetwear brand Palace. The kits were genuinely eye-catching and brought a coolness to cycling apparel that most people outside the sport had never associated with it. The problem is that the buzz never left the cycling community. It did not put Rapha on the map for anyone who was not already paying attention.

Another moment that looked like a viral opportunity on paper was LeBron James taking an ownership stake in Canyon Bicycles. Having one of the most recognizable athletes in the world publicly associated with your brand should generate enormous attention. It turned heads, but that was largely where it ended. Despite the public announcement and a fairly generic ad campaign, the investment got lumped in with LeBron’s many other business ventures and faded quickly. The tone of the campaign was essentially look, LeBron rides our bikes. It should have been, our bikes and the sport of cycling are changing LeBron’s life.

Despite these missed opportunities, I genuinely believe there is a path that brands can take to generate real interest from everyday consumers and eventually bring those people into cycling, whether as fans or participants.

It’s time for riskier marketing

By now you have probably figured out the angle I am taking with this piece. Instead of building marketing campaigns solely focused on capturing more of the existing cycling market from competitors, brands should take some calculated risks with their ad spend and try to reach the non-cycling consumer in a meaningful way.

It is a big ask, especially given that the cycling industry is coming off several years of economic headwinds. No brand wants to be the first to try something that might not work, but strategically diverting ad spend toward the wider US consumer market could be the difference between becoming a niche brand and becoming a dominant one in a product category.

The concept is straightforward: put cycling in places it does not normally belong. That does not mean throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. There are specific product categories where brands can be deliberate and calculated about how they introduce cycling to a new audience. When you start thinking through what that actually looks like in practice, the possibilities get genuinely exciting.

While there are ways to be strategic about this type of marketing, it is definitely more art than science. Rather than taking my usual approach of breaking down the strategic elements that make a good guerrilla campaign, I think it is far more effective to just walk through some hypotheticals and let the concept speak for itself.

Finding cultural crossover

Much like skateboarding and running brands finding mainstream audiences through streetwear, cycling has no shortage of brands capable of catching the public’s attention. Not through performance kit, but through the growing range of casual clothing that brands like MAAP and Pas Normal Studios are releasing. The products being produced are eye-catching and stylish enough to work in plenty of contexts that have nothing to do with riding a bike.

One idea that comes to mind is brands like MAAP and Pas Normal Studios using other sports as a platform to showcase their casual wear. If you have spent any time watching American football, you have almost certainly seen star players arriving at stadiums on game day dressed in elaborate designer outfits. The stadium tunnel entrance has effectively become a fashion runway, and that is a prime opportunity for brands that are well known within cycling but largely invisible to the general public.

MAAP is a great candidate for exactly this kind of move. The brand is on the cutting edge of cycling fashion and has a deep lineup of casual wear that holds up on its own outside of a cycling context. Imagine high-profile players like Joe Burrow or Dak Prescott showing up on game day in some of MAAP’s more eye-catching pieces. Either nothing happens, or there is enough buzz generated to send people who have never thought about cycling to research the brand for the first time.

That is the kind of calculated risk brands should be taking. Getting high-profile athletes to wear your product will likely come with a significant price tag, but if it drives a new segment of consumers to research the brand and buy inventory, you have just unlocked an audience that no amount of cycling-specific marketing could have reached.

More subtle examples of this type of marketing could involve smaller brands entering the US market through groups with significant cultural influence. Take an eyewear brand like Alba Optics out of Spain. The brand is well known within cycling but largely invisible outside of it. Sports like Major League Baseball offer an interesting proving ground for a brand in that position.

Baseball players are accustomed to repping eyewear brands like Oakley and 100%, but what about a newer, stylish, and equally high-performing option? Alba Optics turn heads with their frame design and lens coloring, just unconventional enough to make someone stop and ask what they are looking at. Not every baseball fan would notice, but for the ones who do, the brand discovery moment could be significant.

The economics of a full team sponsorship may be out of reach for a brand at Alba’s current scale, but sponsoring a specific high-profile athlete is a more accessible entry point. The risks are real, but so is the potential upside.

Bringing racing back into the equation

While I have argued that cycling will not grow in the US on the back of individual athletes alone, the races themselves are brands in their own right. The Tour de France is a global brand. To a lesser but still meaningful extent, so are race series like the Mountain Bike and Cyclocross World Cups. Bringing those brands to a wider American audience is a marketing problem worth solving.

Part of the challenge is simply exposure. Most American sports fans have no idea that cycling commands fan bases in Europe that rival their own in passion and scale. If anything, I would argue that Belgians attending a cyclocross race or fans camping out on mountain passes during the Tour de France consume more beer on average than the typical American football crowd on game day.

The atmosphere at cycling events is rowdy and electric. That story is not being told. While peak performance is obviously central to the sport, there is an equally compelling story about the fan experience that nobody is broadcasting to a mainstream American audience. A federation could partner with a major beer brand and produce a commercial built around fans handing riders a beer during a cyclocross race. Or set the scene on the side of a mountain with a full party atmosphere as the peloton rolls through. That kind of content would be genuinely surprising to an American viewer who has never associated cycling with that kind of energy, and surprise is exactly what drives shareability.

Small psychological shifts pave the way

All of these brand moves are subtle, but the psychology behind them begins to challenge people’s perception of cycling and sparks genuine curiosity. I often find myself thinking about how to grow cycling in the United States and getting overwhelmed by how monumental the task feels. Exercises like writing this article remind me that it is the small things that can have an outsized impact. It is going to take a million separate pieces coming together to grow the sport the way we want, and shifting the public’s perception of cycling should never be underestimated as a tool to get there.

In other news

Unbound is here

I am in Emporia, Kansas for the biggest gravel race in the world and the energy is electric. I am out here for several reasons, but the main one is serving as team photographer for the Mach1 Performance Devo team. For as much as I write about developing the sport in the United States, there is no team I would rather be with out here. Keep an eye out for a future article on this incredible group.

The Giro is… happening

Fitting to the themes I write about regularly, the Giro d’Italia is underway and the fan response has been underwhelming. Several media outlets have noted how difficult the race has been to follow due to a lack of depth in the field. It goes to show that America is not the only place where road cycling is struggling to engage audiences. The Giro is yet another example of the sport needing new storytelling approaches and fresh angles to keep fans invested.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

I absolutely hate missing a weekly post, and last Friday was no exception. With that said, I hope this piece makes up for it, because this is my longest and most in-depth analysis of a single company to date. Since early March I have been having conversations with the executives of two truly unique companies. While the piece is focused on the product, philosophy, and potential impact of these companies, the story extends far beyond that into what could become a meaningful framework for talent identification and development in American cycling.

This feature actually started with a story I released a while back about the perfect AI training solution. Specifically, how the ideal platform that would combine training, nutrition, health tracking, and coaching does not yet exist. Athletes who seek digital solutions for different aspects of their training are forced to purchase and use a variety of applications and devices without a centralized platform that brings all of that data together and turns it into actionable guidance.

Taking it further, to be truly reliable for athletes, the ideal AI solution would also need access to a large dataset of performance data from a large population of athletes to perform meaningful trend analysis. Beyond the data, it would need to operate ethically, bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds, and create equal impact for the everyday person and high-level athletes.

I covered a lot of brands in that original article, but I had apparently overlooked one that I really should have considered. I will always be the first to admit I don’t always have the full picture, and this is a case where I am happy to fill in a knowledge gap from a previous story. What started as an opportunity to correct an oversight, however, quickly turned into a full deep dive on a company and product that I could not stop thinking about.

Not because the people I was talking to sold me on anything, but because I left every conversation with more questions than I came in with. I was not confused or misled. I was genuinely stimulated by the possibilities, specifically around how effective this company could be at scale for identifying and developing cycling talent in the United States. With that context in mind, let’s take a look at Human Powered Health and the HumanGo platform, and why they believe they can fundamentally change how people approach fitness and health.

My article was making the rounds

As I mentioned, this story came to be because of my previous article on AI training solutions. Shortly after I released that piece, I received a message from Franko Vatterott, Chief Growth Officer at Human Powered Health. My article had apparently made its way to multiple Human Powered Health employees who began sharing it internally. To my relief the feedback was positive. Franko did believe I had missed something though, specifically my thesis that a full context training solution did not yet exist.

Franko suggested I take a closer look at what Human Powered Health is doing with HumanGo, because he believed they were the closest thing to an all-in-one solution currently on the market. What was supposed to be a 30 minute introductory call turned into a 45 minute conversation covering HumanGo, Human Powered Health’s AI-powered platform for improving and metabolic health.

That conversation went well enough that Franko arranged a follow-up call between me, Dan Cohen, Co-Founder of Human Powered Health, and Eric Abecassis, CEO of HumanGo. That discussion went deeper into the inner workings of the product and the Human Powered Health ecosystem as a whole. From there I had a final one-on-one call with Dan to discuss the long-term vision and mission of the companies.

All together it was a month-long process that gave me a comprehensive picture of what this team is trying to accomplish. The rest of this article will break down Human Powered Health and HumanGo piece by piece before zooming out to explore whether their products and services truly have the capability to shape the future of health and endurance sport performance. Before getting into that, I want to properly introduce Dan, Franko, and Eric, because their backgrounds bring significant credibility to everything the company is pursuing.

The architects

Franko Vatterott, Chief Growth Officer — Human Powered Health

Franko brings 25 years of experience in the endurance sports industry. He co-founded Retül, a bike fitting product that delivers highly precise fits. In 2015 he successfully sold the company to Specialized Bicycle Components. From there he grew Human Interest Group into one of the leading sports marketing agencies in the United States, representing top endurance athletes across multiple disciplines. He eventually made the move to Human Powered Health to continue building his impact on the sport.

Eric Abecassis, CEO — HumanGo

Eric holds a PhD in computer science and has spent his career working with AI and machine learning across multiple industries. Before HumanGo, he served as CIO for an oil field engineering company where he applied machine learning and optimization to subsurface reservoir modeling. Eric eventually got into endurance sports and qualified for the Ironman World Championships in Kona. After discovering that his coach was applying essentially identical training plans to all of his athletes, he decided to build something better.

Dan Cohen, Co-Founder and Chief Performance Officer — Human Powered Health

Dan brings 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, including roles like VP of Solution Consulting at Optum Health, Director of UHG Ventures, and Founder of Optum Health Performance. Years of working inside healthcare systems led him to pursue a more proactive solution to the metabolic health challenges facing the country. As he puts it:

“We understand the health system, not just in the United States, but across the globe, and the reality is it’s broken. It’s reactive, it’s not impactful. It’s not set up for long-term longitudinal health.”

These are not the only people building Human Powered Health and HumanGo, but they certainly know the product and mission better than just about anybody.

Human Powered Health’s origins

Fitting to this publication, Human Powered Health was actually a cycling team before it was a company. Much like Project Echelon functioning as both a cycling team and a broader organization, Human Powered Health was born from the peloton. Originally operating under other team names like Kelly Benefits Strategies and Rally Cycling, the name Human Powered Health was eventually adopted as a team identity to express what cycling represents physically. When it came time to build a company, Dan and his colleagues identified with that representation and embraced it.

As discussed, the founding team at Human Powered Health consists of several healthcare veterans including former United Health Group leadership. With Rally Health having previously served as the team’s title sponsor, there was already a strong professional connection to the cycling program. When Dan and his colleagues decided to build a platform focused on metabolic health, aligning it with a professional sports team was a logical first step. In 2022 Human Powered Health was officially founded with a mission of powering health and athletic potential for motivated people.

Three years before Human Powered Health was founded, in 2019, Eric launched HumanGo with the mission of creating better coaching options for endurance athletes. It was not until later that Human Powered Health acquired HumanGo and brought it into the broader ecosystem.

Now that we have a firm understanding of where these companies came from, the more important question becomes: what problems are they actually solving? Once we know that we can truly begin to dissect their operations, goals, and effects.

Getting from Healthcare 2.0 to Healthcare 3.0

In my one-on-one conversation with Dan, we dove deep into the motivations behind Human Powered Health and the specific problems they are trying to solve. The central idea is that the United States is stuck in Healthcare 2.0, a reactive system where people wait until something goes wrong before seeking help. The goal is to shift toward Healthcare 3.0, where proactivity is the default. Rather than waiting to get sick and then going to the doctor, Healthcare 3.0 makes use of available technology to identify and address risk before it becomes illness.

With a long career in healthcare, Dan and his colleagues believed they had a better grasp on the shortcomings of the global healthcare system than most. A driving force behind Human Powered Health was the belief that metabolic health represented a major blind spot in preventive care, specifically the relationship between biomarkers and biometrics and their effect on long-term health outcomes.

“If you look at all the science and research on these biomarkers and biometrics — things like body composition and VO2 Max and resting metabolic rate, lactate, grip strength — they’re all highly correlated to all-cause mortality and longevity. If you can get a baseline understanding of your physiology and get a hyperpersonalized plan across our four pillars of movement, mindset, fuel, and recovery, the statistics are very clear that you have a very good shot at living a long, productive, healthy, full life.” — Dan Cohen

For endurance athletes and enthusiasts, these biomarkers are nothing new. They are central to our performance and numbers we obsess over on a daily basis. For the general public, that familiarity is far less common. The issue is not that physicians or providers are deprioritizing these metrics, but rather that they rarely have the bandwidth or resources to closely monitor them across their patient population. Comprehensive metabolic assessment is either too expensive for the patient or pushed down the list of priorities by more immediate health conditions that demand attention first.

Knowing this, Human Powered Health began with a deliberate focus on athletes. It is something of a trojan horse approach: target the athletic population first, use their data to build best practices, and then apply those learnings to the broader population. Endurance athletes tend to sit at the top of the cardiovascular and metabolic health spectrum, and crucially, they are motivated to keep improving.

Motivation is the key factor. Everyone wants to be healthy and fit, but a significant portion of the population lacks either the access or the experience needed to act on specific health metrics. Athletes provide a base of highly engaged individuals who will actually follow through on protocols and recommendations. If Human Powered Health can better understand and improve these metrics in people who are already performing at a high level, it becomes significantly easier to develop best practices that can eventually scale across the broader population.

“We started with athletes because we wanted to understand from that population and refine from there, but the overarching objective has always been to get to the masses, the 93% of the US population that are of poor cardiometabolic health and the numbers continue to go in the wrong direction. That’s really the ultimate goal.” — Dan Cohen

Now that we’ve established the problem and starting point for Human Powered Health, what are they doing to address and solve the issue while also producing the best training platform?

Performance labs

Human Powered Health provides access to accurate biometric and biomarker testing. If the mission is to improve longevity through the targeting of specific indicators, then athletes and the general population need access to regular data to monitor how their various biomarkers are progressing. When we talk about VO2 Max, resting metabolic rate, and lactate zones, these are not easily or accurately tested by someone on their own, the tests require specific equipment and individuals who know how to administer the test and interpret the results.

Human Powered Health provides athletes with performance labs where they can undergo testing to understand their baseline biometric and biomarker values. These labs are the physical heart of the Human Powered Health ecosystem. The first step in utilizing Human Powered Health and HumanGo to their fullest potential is completing a lab visit.

What happens in a lab visit:

• DXA scan for body composition including visceral fat detection

• VO2 Max testing from a metabolic cart, gold standard rather than wearable estimation

• Lactate testing to establish LT1 and LT2

• Resting metabolic rate testing

• Bike fit and force measurement for cycling athletes

• All data interpreted same day with an actionable insights plan

* These are just some of the tests conducted in the labs. The full scope depends on what testing package an athlete selects

What makes these labs different:

• Run by masters and PhD-level physiologists in front-facing roles, not tucked away in research departments

• Designed to feel approachable unlike university research labs and sterile medical facilities

• Human Powered Health labs have 225 organic five-star reviews

Access to qualified professionals and a welcoming experience are where the brand really differentiates itself, as Franko describes:

“The labs look more like Apple stores than traditional metabolic testing labs or the university research-y behemoth type of lab. We are putting a physiologist in your life, whether you’re an athlete or a general population person, in the same way that you would put a dentist in your life where you have a regular touch point with somebody.” — Franko Vatterott

Currently there are three operational labs in Human Powered Health hub cities: a flagship lab in Boston, followed by locations in Minneapolis and Phoenix, with immediate plans for additional labs in Tampa as well as other markets on Human Powered Health’s radar, such as Dallas, Denver, and Atlanta.

Three labs may not sound like a lot, and admittedly it is not, but there are strategic reasons for the measured pace of expansion. Given the company’s initial focus on high-performance athletes, the demand does not yet warrant rapid expansion. Dan outlined how Human Powered Health plans to grow lab access through a hub and spoke model that scales with the business and eventually brings lab services to the general public:

“We’ll have a hub and spoke model. First you have major regions: north, central, south, east, west where we’ll have our largest hub labs. Next we’ll have smaller footprint labs, think 1,500 to 2,000 square feet, that are more around health optimization and longevity. We’re not going to be doing bike fitting and more of the athlete-focused assessments, rather the things the general population wants.” — Dan Cohen

Thinking back to the ideal training solution, this is one concrete way that Dan and the team are bridging a physical gap in performance tracking. Rather than relying on the inaccurate biomarker estimates that wearables provide, athletes and health-motivated individuals will have access to professional performance testing they can trust. Translating that data into action and putting it to work in the digital world is where HumanGo comes into play.

HumanGo

Human Powered Health’s labs generate the raw athlete data and HumanGo is the digital layer that absorbs that data and turns it into personalized and actionable plans. This connection is what creates the full Human Powered Health platform and differentiates it from current adaptive training applications.

The data used in HumanGo’s models goes a step further than traditional static training plans and other adaptive applications that only adjust to past training history and minimal inputs like HRV, FTP, etc. When you look at how HumanGo’s engine actually works, that difference becomes clear.

In my earlier AI training piece, I raised several concerns about the rise of digital training solutions. Specifically, how having a lack of biometric data and scientific literature embedded in models raises the risk of overtraining and prolonged physiological harm. As we saw in my conversation with Veronica Ewers, there is far more to determining healthy training than power numbers and sleep scores alone. When I spoke with Eric, I asked him to walk me through how HumanGo works, how it addresses these concerns, and what the platform has looked like in practice with the Human Powered Health Women’s WorldTour team.

How HumanGo Works

Eric started by making an important clarification about the current state of AI training platforms. As of today, no training solution has enough data to be truly predictive in nature. There simply is not enough individual performance data to build a reliable machine learning model that can safely advise training based on an athlete’s limited historical record.

“When you’re looking at a machine learning problem, you never have enough data in the context of an athlete training to be able to find a model. There are a few things you can do, you can do some mapping between heart rate and power, but being able to decide from data what is a good plan and what is a bad plan from data only, that’s virtually impossible. You need millions of data points. If people lived for a million years, maybe we could do that, but unfortunately their training period is just a few decades at best.” — Eric Abecassis

With that clarification in mind, HumanGo is by definition an adaptive training platform, but that is where the similarities with other solutions end. What sets it apart is the depth of user input the platform is built to absorb. Where other platforms may allow users to flag that they feel tired or need a shorter session, HumanGo records significantly more variables that the model can draw from alongside human input.

When it comes time to generate a plan, HumanGo’s optimization engine takes all of those factors into consideration and builds around an applied set of rules, as Eric explained:

“What it does is apply a certain number of rules for what you want to have as a time in zone distribution for a certain event, for a certain level of athlete. Then it organizes that in conjunction with a number of constraints: we don’t want to give you two hard days in a row, we want to track if you are overreaching so we can modulate the load, we want to increase progressively the amount of intensity and duration based on your target. All these things are built in.” — Eric Abecassis

While other platforms also work off zone-based models, HumanGo is currently designed with high-level athletes in mind, meaning the level of specificity and depth of guidance available is significantly greater. True coaching is not a one-way communication channel. It is a continuous conversation between athlete and coach, which is where HumanGo’s large language model comes into play.

The context the LLM draws from is unusually rich, incorporating both long and short-term memory, bringing it as close to a human coaching relationship as a digital platform currently can:

“We now have a skill architecture where we have about 20 skills. We have long-term and short-term memory. The LLM is scrutinizing everything that you’re doing, triggered by analytics on your data, and the conversations themselves are driven through an LLM that is enriched with accurate information about your data.”

“The LLM knows your goal, it knows all your health data, your activity data, your workout information. It has long-term memory on anything relevant that you could have discussed. Those conversations can also trigger actual adjustments of your plan or changes in the system. The LLM is connected to our app to understand how to change settings in your plan, and so on.” — Eric Abecassis

The depth of user input is truly what makes HumanGo stand out and allows the platform to implement more meaningful changes based on ongoing feedback. The team was candid that this is also one of HumanGo’s current weaknesses. More input variables create more room for user confusion or misconfiguration when setting up the platform. Human Powered Health’s labs help eliminate a significant portion of that setup friction by providing accurate physiological data from the outset, but the added detail is genuinely necessary for a platform originally designed to service high-level athletes.

Addressing safety concerns

No coaching platform will ever be completely risk-free, but platforms like HumanGo carry a meaningful advantage in that they maintain the full historical context of an athlete’s data indefinitely. Human coaches can forget. They make judgment errors, get caught up in ego-driven decisions, or miscommunicate. HumanGo brings an unbiased layer to the coaching relationship that relies solely on user inputs and objective feedback rather than memory or mood. The team was quick to note that human coaches are a good thing, HumanGo just provides another layer of reliable, auditable data that human coaches can use with their athletes.

Beyond the platform itself, HumanGo has additional safeguards that help further reduce the risk of adverse training outcomes. The first is access to the professionals at Human Powered Health’s labs, who can provide direct physiological insight when athletes receive their testing data. The second is a deliberate design choice to avoid surfacing raw readiness scores that might push an athlete toward an action that conflicts with how they actually feel.

“The philosophy we have at the moment is we’re shying away from a readiness score, so to speak. We’re more tracking behind the scenes and then when we think it’s relevant making a suggestion: okay, we read maybe some fatigue. Does that correlate with your perception? Do you want to take a few days off? Because my experience of all the devices I’ve used is that it’s becoming an obsession for people to just align their perception to the data. I think we want athletes to believe their perception even before the data.” - Eric Abecassis

This directly addresses one of the concerns raised in my conversation with Veronica, who described how constant exposure to readiness data can cause athletes to distrust their own perception and make training decisions driven by a score rather than how they genuinely feel. HumanGo’s approach of prioritizing self-perception over algorithmic output is a meaningful and principled response to that dynamic.

Women’s WorldTour team use

The Human Powered Health women’s WorldTour team gives Dan and Eric a reliable and controlled population to refine both HumanGo and the broader lab ecosystem. Having a professional sports organization at their disposal helps limit the variables that could lead to adverse outcomes. Crucially, it is not just the athletes using the platform. It is the entire support structure around them, as Dan explained:

“We’re not just bringing the sports performance teams and their coaches. We’re bringing the sports psychologist, we’re bringing a registered dietitian, and they’re all looking at the data, and as a team we determine: does seeing your DEXA report going to be more detrimental to that athlete, or is it going to be a value add? Those are decisions you make on an individual case by case basis as part of the team, because even though it’s a team sport, all these athletes are different and have different mindsets.” — Dan Cohen

The team also creates a reliable baseline group for measuring app effectiveness and tracking athlete progression as new lab testing variables are introduced:

“For the last three years, when the UCI WorldTour season is over, all the athletes come over to the United States. We put them through four days of very extensive testing. The medical team comes over, the performance team comes over, and we’re doing really advanced protocols. All that data then flows into Human Go and creates a really nice clear picture.” — Dan Cohen

“The real benefit for the cycling team is coming from the integration between the lab and the app. Having the full integration with all their results from the lab, and having a regular rendezvous every year to get full testing for the team and then follow that with different protocol testing that can be done remotely and aggregating all that — that’s where the value is.” — Eric Abecassis

As more WorldTour teams adopt AI-assisted training partners and national federations like USA Cycling explore similar tools, it is clear that Human Powered Health has been ahead of the curve. The team is refining their product at the highest level of the sport and applying those learnings to broader athlete populations before eventually scaling to the general public. If Petra Staísny’s impressive win on the brutal slopes of the Angliru during the 2026 Vuelta Femenina is any indication, the innovation is already paying dividends on the road.

Is HumanGo full context training?

In my previous piece I argued that the ideal training solution should have the ability to advise on nutrition and eliminate the need for multiple disconnected wearable devices. How does HumanGo address these areas today, and does it meet the expectations I laid out?

Nutrition

The short answer is that HumanGo does not yet solve the nutrition problem comprehensively within the platform, but the team is thinking about it the right way. When speaking with Franko, he was clear that HumanGo is currently focused on refining its core training functionality and is leaning on best-in-class third parties to handle nutrition in the meantime.

“We have been exploring every nutrition and sports nutrition app out there for the last couple of years. We’ve landed on Fuelin as probably the best one, the most clear cut and comprehensive and somewhat simple to use. We’re doing the same integration with Fuelin right now that we do with Wahoo, Zwift., Rouvy, Garmin, etc.” — Franko Vatterott

Fuelin is an app I know well and have had the opportunity to discuss directly with their founder. Having a direct integration with a dedicated nutrition partner is meaningfully more valuable than running several apps in parallel without any data connection. Training data will flow from HumanGo into Fuelin, making Fuelin’s nutrition recommendations more precise and more relevant to what an athlete is actually doing in training.

One way HumanGo is already moving in this direction is through the Hugo Metabolic Test, which also serves as the primary solution for athletes who are not able to visit a Human Powered Health lab in person. Using a peer-reviewed protocol, the Hugo test helps HumanGo derive an intensity-duration curve, identify an athlete’s lactate profile including LT1 and LT2, and estimate a VO2 Max value, all of which allow the app to establish accurate zone definitions. Beyond zone setting, the test also opens the door to more precise nutritional guidance.

“It’s also calculating substrate consumption as a function of intensity. So I can tell how many carbs you require to produce that intensity. And if you correlate with some model for glycogen stores, you can start to have optimization on understanding how many carbs you can actually ingest to maintain a certain intensity based on your glycogen stores, so you’re not depleted before the end of the race.” — Eric Abecassis

Recently, Human Powered Health partnered with the science-based supplement brand Momentous to provide preferred nutrition products to Human Powered Health users, and added Momentous CEO and Co-Founder, Jeff Byers to their board of directors. The stage is certainly set for further nutrition integration.

Hardware

The second expectation from my earlier piece was reducing dependence on multiple external devices. In hindsight this was the most unrealistic part of my ideal platform. Software development and hardware manufacturing are fundamentally different businesses, and it makes complete sense that HumanGo and Human Powered Health would partner with best-in-class third parties for wearables and training equipment rather than attempting to build their own.

HumanGo has chosen Wahoo as its primary hardware partner, providing seamless integration with Wahoo’s ecosystem of trainers, bike computers, and wearables and reducing decision fatigue for consumers who want everything to work together out of the box.

The relationship goes considerably deeper than a standard integration. Wahoo CEO Gareth Joyce sits on the Human Powered Health board of directors. That level of strategic alignment means Human Powered Health labs are equipped with Wahoo hardware for testing, and the HumanGo integration is not an afterthought but a core part of both companies’ product roadmaps.

Zooming out

We have now gone deep into the performance ecosystem that Human Powered Health and HumanGo are building together. From strategy to feature sets, we have a thorough understanding of how both entities are executing on their missions. We also got a glimpse of their longer-term aspirations and the macro problems they are working to address.

While this represented the bulk of my conversations with Dan, Eric, and Franko, I did have the opportunity to ask harder questions, propose hypotheticals, and connect their work back to the broader goal of growing cycling in the United States. That is where the remainder of this article is headed. First, I want to return to my conversations with Dan about Human Powered Health’s mission to improve general metabolic health, both domestically and globally.

Avoiding slippery slopes

The only area of tension for me throughout this process was when discussing Human Powered Health’s vision for Healthcare 3.0. If you are anything like me and have a family member who works in healthcare, you probably have strong opinions about the current system in the United States. For me, strong opinions is putting it lightly.

My primary concern was around possible data integration with health insurers. If the long-term goal is to prescribe Human Powered Health and HumanGo to large populations to track and improve metabolic health, could that data ever be used as a basis for denying coverage to patients? Dan was direct and unambiguous in response:

“We’re not connected to any payers or insurance plans or anything like that. We want to work with the employers that have benefits plans through these providers.” — Dan Cohen

The word employers is doing a lot of work in that statement. Human Powered Health’s long-term scaling strategy runs through the employer benefits channel, not through insurers directly. Dan explained why that market is so compelling and so underserved:

“Most employers will offer some sort of wellness program. They’ll have their employees go into a Quest or a LabCorp, get their blood drawn, get their basic biometrics, and then they’re told they have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and then they get thrust into some kind of coaching program that literally adds no benefit, no value whatsoever, and they’re back at the doctor and it’s the same story but worse. That is a very attractive market. If you can come up with a solution that is evidence-based and set up to actually provide the employee the metrics they need to stay healthy and then the programs to stay healthy based off of their data, that’s how you scale things up.” — Dan Cohen

If the employer channel succeeds and Human Powered Health becomes a standard benefit for millions of working Americans, the data generated will dwarf anything currently available in the endurance sports ecosystem. The normative benchmarks to compare someone’s physiology against pro athletes, competitive athletes, and sedentary populations, will become dramatically more precise and more valuable as the dataset grows.

That candid exchange gave me more comfort around the mission of Human Powered Health. Moving forward I hope to see continued commitment to that mission, their support of cycling, and their role as a neutral party in the American healthcare system. Speaking of their commitment to cycling, I immediately followed up with another question that had been on my mind throughout our conversations: how could Human Powered Health have a meaningful impact on the development of young athletes in the United States?

Affordability

Another question I brought to Dan was around affordability. As it stands today, both the lab services and HumanGo subscription sit firmly in the premium price range. HumanGo is subscription based, with their Essential package at $16.99 per month or $155.99 annually and their Premium package at $28.99 per month or $264.99 annually.

For lab testing, Human Powered Health offers a range of packages built around different health goals. The most accessible entry point is their Longevity Core visit at $405, which includes a DEXA scan, resting metabolic rate test, force plates, grip strength assessment, and movement screening. At the upper end is the Performance Elite package at $780, which includes everything in the Longevity Core plus sweat testing, running gait analysis and bike fit, VO2 Max, lactate analysis, and 12-month subscriptions to both Wahoo X and HumanGo.

The packages offer strong value relative to what you would pay for these assessments individually or through other performance lab providers. Even so, for the average consumer, a voluntary health screening starting at $400 is simply not accessible. It raises a legitimate concern that these services will remain isolated to those with disposable income and continue to be out of reach for the majority of the general population and underserved communities. That pattern is not unique to Human Powered Health. It reflects a much broader inequity in how preventive healthcare is distributed in this country.

Since the platform currently serves high-level athletes and motivated individuals with the means to invest in their health, the pricing makes sense at this stage. But what happens as the vision of Healthcare 3.0 starts to scale? The Hugo Metabolic Test addresses part of the access gap from a digital perspective, but Dan also outlined a more systemic path forward:

“There’s an organization called the United States Preventive Services Task Force. One thing we want to do is make a pitch: if you really want to get the country healthy again, you need to actually do things differently. Getting a DEXA scan covered as a preventive medical service would be massive. Because after a certain age, bone mineral density starts to go down, people start to accumulate visceral fat on their organs, which drives the vast majority of metabolic disease in this country.” — Dan Cohen

While the current pricing reflects the platform’s starting audience, Human Powered Health appears to be thinking seriously about what mass adoption would require and laying the groundwork to get there.

Team Genius

The Human Powered Health women’s WorldTour team is already providing meaningful performance benchmarks to measure training adaptations against, and with HumanGo’s ability to aggregate and analyze user data, could there be a world where the platform significantly impacts the development of junior riders or even functions as a talent identification system? As it turns out, that work is already underway through Human Powered Health’s youth sports platform, Team Genius.

Team Genius is being built and utilized as a normative data platform to help young athletes determine their strengths, identify developmental areas, and benchmark their readiness across a variety of sports. Currently it is rare for junior athletes to have access to professional lab facilities, making it difficult for them to understand where they stand on the path toward becoming competitive or professional athletes. Through Team Genius, Human Powered Health is beginning to open that door more widely.

“With our youth sports platform Team Genius, we’re doing quite a bit of work on normative data so we can evolve that platform to be more of an objective evaluation tool that can use measurements from our lab technology. We can even bring that to a youth sports combine experience. Have these athletes go through some of this testing, the data flows into our platform, and then we use normative data to create this dashboard for these young athletes so they can take it with them.” — Dan Cohen

The applications of Team Genius get particularly exciting when you consider endurance sports, where individual genetics play such a significant role in performance potential. Whether it is an unusually high VO2 Max, optimized biomechanics, or favorable metabolic efficiency, Team Genius becomes a platform where endurance athletes can discover and begin developing their potential earlier than ever before. That work is already happening in collaboration with USA Cycling’s Project Podium program.

“We’ve worked extensively with Parker Spencer’s Project Podium team from a talent identification perspective. In fact, our first engagement was when he called us from Cuba after his athletes had a not very good race experience. Three years ago, his whole team came over and nine of them went through three days of very extensive testing to really identify which ones had what it takes to get to the 2028 Olympics. We’re still working with them.” — Dan Cohen

I firmly believe that simply introducing cycling into development conversations can meaningfully increase the number of competitive athletes this country produces. If a young athlete in another sport shows biometric indicators that translate well to cycling and someone takes the time to say that, the ripple effect can be significant. Sometimes all it takes is pointing someone toward a path they would never have considered on their own.

Addressing the international market

Much of this story has revolved around the US healthcare system and domestic populations, but Human Powered Health is a global platform with a global mission. One of the more surprising data points Dan shared was that over half of HumanGo’s existing users are already based in Europe. At the athlete level the product is effectively borderless, but what about the broader Healthcare 3.0 vision?

Many countries already operate strong government-run healthcare systems and report better metabolic health outcomes than the US, which raises a fair question about whether the same urgency exists in those markets. Dan was optimistic about the opportunity:

“There is certainly an appetite from an employer perspective in Europe, similar to here in the US, to keep their population healthy. If we could build the programs here for employers in the US, I think it would be an easy transition over to the European markets, but it would be a different pricing schedule.” — Dan Cohen

Powering forward

Moving forward, success for Human Powered Health will mean different things depending on who you ask. For the general population the measure of success is a meaningful shift in how Americans approach their metabolic health. For the sport of cycling the implications are different but equally significant.

For the general population: Millions of Americans with access to gold-standard physiological data through employer benefits. A preventive health infrastructure that actually changes the trajectory of metabolic disease. A healthcare system that rewards staying healthy rather than treating illness.

For cycling: A talent identification pipeline that systematically finds and develops the best young cyclists in the country regardless of their access to elite coaching or expensive equipment. A women’s cycling ecosystem where athlete health is monitored and supported with the same rigor as performance optimization. A generation of amateur cyclists who train with the same physiological precision as professionals because the tools are accessible and affordable.

For the growth of the sport: If Human Powered Health achieves its mission of moving the general population toward proactive health management, cycling stands to benefit directly. A population that is more physically active, more aware of cardiovascular metrics, and more engaged with the science of movement is a larger potential cycling audience. The growth of endurance sports generally and cycling specifically has always tracked with health consciousness.

“If I was to summarize what we want to accomplish: we fundamentally want to help transform the health trajectory of this country, and quite frankly, the globe. Not just for athletes, but for everybody. That’s our main objective.” — Dan Cohen

Human Powered Health and HumanGo are genuinely compelling platforms with the potential to change the lives of millions of people. I am grateful that Dan, Eric, and Franko were generous with their time and willing to go deep on their products, motivations, and mission. The volume of information and the level of detail they provided actually made this one of the most challenging articles I have written, but I hope it offers a clear picture of how impactful technology can be for endurance sport and, in turn, for the broader public.

To close with cycling: it is a fitting and somewhat poetic conclusion that the sport which gave this company its name may turn out to be among the smaller beneficiaries of what it is building. But cycling will be the first to benefit, the deepest to benefit, and the community that made it all possible in the first place.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

Built on Bikes is a cycling publication at its core and always will be, but occasionally I like to touch on adjacent topics that are particularly compelling. High-performance endurance nutrition is one of those areas. It is something I have obsessed over throughout my cycling career, spending years researching, purchasing, and working through a seemingly endless market of brands. I still have not landed on a perfect formula, but I have figured out the brands I trust.

I fall firmly in the snob category. I bias toward high-end, high-carb brands like Maurten, Science in Sport (SIS), Carbs Fuel, MNSTRY, and Neversecond. Based on perception alone, each brand carries a distinct identity. Maurten is the minimal, futuristic brand redefining what endurance nutrition looks like. Science in Sport is the original legacy player that helped establish the high-end segment. And newcomers like Carbs Fuel are making a name for themselves by offering comparable quality at a lower price point.

Beyond those five there are dozens of brands venturing into the high-carb era looking to challenge those at the top. On the surface it looks like a saturated market with several brands on similar trajectories. But when I looked closely at the finances of the most prominent premium brands, something stood out. There is a compelling competition playing out between two brands that most consumers, myself included, never think about because it is all happening in the private markets.

That competition is between the incumbent giant Science in Sport and the rising star Maurten. Their financial and strategic positions are almost mirror images of each other, and after analyzing both in depth, I believe they are on a collision course for market dominance. This week I want to look at both brands, their financial and strategic histories, compare where they stand today, and explore what it could mean for the future of premium endurance nutrition. First, it helps to understand each brand and their financial journeys.

Maurten is simple but effective

Founded in 2015 in Sweden, Maurten has become a staple in the endurance sports community. Minimally branded, flavorless, and packed with carbohydrates, they cut out the fluff and deliver on performance through their hydrogel technology, which allows athletes to digest high doses of carbohydrates more easily. Maurten’s growth has been driven largely by elite athlete adoption, with stars like Eliud Kipchoge and Demi Vollering among their most prominent ambassadors.

One moment put Maurten firmly on my radar as a brand operating at a different level than its competitors: a $21.6 million venture capital round in 2024 led by IRIS Ventures. The investment came nearly ten years into the brand’s existence, but that timeline actually reinforces market potential. Maurten did not need outside capital to survive. They raised it to scale. And at a moment when most of their competitors have never seen a significant institutional round, $21.6M is a statement about where this brand is headed.

Since Maurten is incorporated in Sweden, their financial statements are publicly accessible despite the company being privately held. When you dig into those numbers, you begin to understand both why IRIS Ventures invested and what the size of that investment actually signals.

Maurten’s financials: 2017-2024

Maurten’s path to a $21.6M venture capital raise can be broken down into four key storylines: compelling revenue growth, a turn to profitability, efficient cost structuring and operating leverage, and a consistently lean balance sheet.

Revenue Growth

Maurten grew from $553K in revenue in 2017 to $30.1M in 2024. That is almost a 54x increase in seven years. The only down year was 2020, and that was almost certainly due to COVID wiping out mass participation events.

Recent growth rates continue the compelling story:

• 2022: +85%

• 2023: +87%

• 2024: +43%

The deceleration from 87% to 43% might raise eyebrows, but it makes sense. Growing 43% on a $30M base is considerably harder than growing 87% on a $12M base. The trajectory remains strong.

Profitability

Scaling a small CPG business often requires cash burn upfront and that was certainly the case for Maurten. Their burn rate even seemed critical at times, including 2021 when the company lost $2.6M on $7.5M in revenue which equated to a -34% operating margin. Then something shifted:

• 2022: Still losing money, but losses narrowing sharply to (-$1.34M)

• 2023: First year of operating profit, $275K

• 2024: Operating profit nearly quadruples to $991K equating to a margin of 3.3%

2024 also saw the company record its first ever positive net income at $300K. An EBITDA growth rate of 196% and EBIT growth of 258% in FY2024 are numbers that may have made IRIS Ventures move.

Operating Leverage

Between 2020 and 2024 revenue grew 770%. Over the same period wages and salaries only grew 200%. Maurten is scaling revenue dramatically faster than it is adding headcount. That is the definition of operating leverage and it is what makes the margin improvement sustainable rather than a one-time event.

Balance Sheet

No long-term debt. Maurten carries zero bank debt. That is impressive for a scaling consumer brand and makes the business significantly less risky from an investor’s perspective.

Asset-light model. The company carries almost no property, plant or equipment, just $398K. They are not building factories. They are building a brand and outsourcing the manufacturing, which keeps capital requirements low and scalability high.

Healthy liquidity. A current ratio of 3.44 means Maurten has more than three dollars of current assets for every dollar of current liabilities. The business is not at risk of running out of cash in the near term.

One flag worth noting. Cash actually dipped slightly from $3.44M in 2023 to $3.26M in 2024 despite being profitable.

Overall, Maurten has built a clean and efficient operation with a clear trajectory toward long-term success, and they did it without needing to raise significant outside capital. That makes 2024 an interesting inflection point. So what does a $21.6M venture capital raise mean for both Maurten and IRIS Ventures at this stage of the company’s development?

The $21.6M VC round

Maurten’s VC deal closed on July 22, 2024 and fits a classic Later Stage VC investment model. Deal multiples paid by IRIS Ventures provide key insights to what they were underwriting. For those unfamiliar with deal multiples, they are simply a way of expressing how much an investor paid for a business relative to that business’s financial performance. They answer the question: for every dollar of revenue, profit, or earnings this company generates, how many dollars did the investor pay to own it?

Deal Size / Revenue: 0.72x. At 0.72x IRIS Ventures is essentially paying below book value on a revenue basis, which suggests either significant negotiating leverage, or that Maurten’s path to meaningful profitability still carries execution risk in the market’s view.

Deal Size / EBITDA: 18.25x. This is more in line with market norms for a profitable growing business but is not aggressive for a brand with Maurten’s growth profile.

Deal Size / Net Income: 72x. This seems high but makes sense given Maurten’s net income of only $300K on a $30M revenue base. As margins expand this multiple compresses rapidly, which is precisely the return thesis IRIS Ventures is likely underwriting.

The overall picture is of a deal priced conservatively relative to growth, suggesting IRIS Ventures saw an opportunity to buy into a brand at an inflection point before the market fully repriced the profitability story. The capital will most likely be directed toward geographic expansion, continued R&D, and higher profile sponsorships. As I will get into shortly, it is clear that Maurten has ambitions to grow into a brand that competes at the scale of SIS.

Science in Sport, the industry giant

Founded in 1992 in the UK, Science in Sport is one of the original science-backed sports nutrition brands. The brand followed a similar early growth trajectory to Maurten but took the significant step of going public in 2013. Over the years SIS has built a strong reputation through partnerships with some of the UK’s highest performing sports programs, including Tottenham Hotspur, Ineos Grenadiers, and the British Rowing team. It is worth noting that Ineos recently made the switch to Maurten, which says something about the shifting dynamics at the elite level.

Since going public the brand has experienced a trajectory that looks almost like the inverse of Maurten’s, ultimately leading to its acquisition by BD Capital in 2025. That acquisition carries significant implications for where SIS goes from here, so before comparing the two brands directly it is important to understand the financial story and the possible paths forward.

Science in Sport’s financials: 2017-2024

It is worth noting that SIS is a significantly older and larger business than Maurten, and the financials should be read in that context. That said, the same four pillars that shaped Maurten’s story apply equally here: revenue trajectory, profitability trends, balance sheet composition, and operating strength.

Revenue Growth

Between FY2017 and FY2024, SIS experienced both significant growth and a prolonged decline. Revenue peaked at $86M in FY2021 before entering a sustained contraction that has continued through FY2024.

• 2021: $86.0M

• 2022: $78.6M (-8.6%)

• 2023: $77.9M (-0.9%)

• 2024: $66.3M (-14.9%)

While SIS grew revenue 328% from $20.2M in FY2017 to $86M in FY2021, it is important to note that the brand acquired supplement nutrition brand PhD Nutrition in 2018. That distinction matters because acquisition-driven growth inflates revenue without building the underlying brand strength needed to sustain it.

Profitability

This is where SIS’s financials begin to explain why the brand ultimately reverted to private ownership. Across the entire eight-year dataset, SIS did not post a single profitable year.

• 2017: $(4.6M)

• 2019: $(7.2M)

• 2021: $(7.6M)

• 2023: $(14.0M)

• 2024: $(6.1M)

Cumulative net losses across the period total approximately $62.9M. 2024’s reduced loss of $(6.1M) compared to $(14.0M) in FY2023 might look like progress, but it needs to be read in context. The improvement came alongside a 14.9% revenue decline, suggesting the loss reduction was driven more by cost cutting than genuine operating improvement.

Margins

SIS’s gross margin is the strongest element of the financial profile. At 45.3% in FY2024 it compares favorably to most consumer goods companies. With that said, their operating margin has condensed nearly 14 percentage points from peak to present.

Balance Sheet

Equity is technically positive but fragile. Total equity of $41.2M is supported almost entirely by paid-in capital of $99.8M accumulated through share issuances over the years. Retained earnings are deeply negative at $(57.2M), meaning every dollar of equity is borrowed from shareholders rather than earned through operations.

The Altman Z-score of 0.19 is a serious flag. The Altman Z-score is a widely used predictor of financial distress. A score below 1.81 indicates a company in the distress zone. At 0.19 SIS is deep in that territory. This is one of the primary reasons BD Capital took it private. The public markets were pricing in significant financial distress risk and the stock was being punished accordingly.

Debt has appeared and grown. Unlike Maurten which carries zero long-term bank debt, SIS has accumulated financial liabilities. Current financial liabilities of $8.1M and non-current financial liabilities of $12.8M give a total debt position of approximately $20.9M. For a business that is still loss-making this is a meaningful burden.

From public to private

From the numbers it is obvious that SIS was not thriving as a public company, but one of their multiples paints a glimmer of hope. The Enterprise Value to Revenue multiple of 1.86x at delisting compared to 1.22x in March 2022 is interesting. It suggests BD Capital paid a meaningful premium to take the company private, which suggests genuine belief in the turnaround thesis rather than a distressed asset grab.

Maurten vs. Science in Sport

We’ve already laid out the financial story of each company, so this will be a pretty brief recap of the most critical trends when viewing the companies in comparison to one another.

The revenue gap is closing rapidly

SIS is more than twice the size of Maurten on revenue but the gap has been closing rapidly. At SIS’s current trajectory and Maurten’s growth rate they could reach similar revenue levels within three to four years.

Contrast in profitability

Maurten crossed into profitability in 2023 and expanded it in 2024. SIS was profitable on a net income basis across eight years of data. On an EBITDA basis SIS only turned positive in 2024 for the first time.

The EBITDA margins were similar in 2024. Both brands are operating at roughly 4% EBITDA margins, but Maurten is getting there on a growing revenue base while SIS is getting there by cutting costs on a shrinking one. These are fundamentally different businesses even if the margin looks the same.

Maurten is more efficient

Maurten has built a $30M revenue business with $15M in assets and zero debt. SIS has built a $66M revenue business with $83.7M in assets and $20.9M in debt.

Maurten generates approximately $2 of revenue for every $1 of assets. SIS generates approximately $0.79 of revenue for every $1 of assets. That gap reflects the heavy acquisition spending and infrastructure investment SIS made during its growth phase, costs that are now weighing on the business without generating proportionate revenue returns.

Differing private equity philosophies

IRIS Ventures backing Maurten is a growth equity bet. They are investing in a business that has proven the model works, is growing fast, and needs capital to scale further. Can Maurten sustain growth and expand margins simultaneously? The last two years say yes but the story is still early.

BD Capital backing SIS is a turnaround and restructuring bet. They are investing in a business with historic brand equity, an established customer base, and workable gross margins, but one that has not managed its cost structure well enough to generate profit. The risk is transformation. Can BD Capital fix the cost structure, stabilize revenue, and create a path to genuine profitability that the public markets didn’t believe in? The normalized EBITDA improvement in FY2024 suggests the work has already begun.

What does the future hold?

Two companies with completely different backgrounds appear to be on a collision course. Maurten looks increasingly like the next market leader in premium endurance nutrition while SIS is relinquishing its throne after years of accumulated losses. Maurten is backed by venture capital looking to accelerate growth while SIS is undergoing what may be a significant restructuring under a private equity firm with a mandate to fix what the public markets could not.

If I had to place a bet on either company it would be Maurten, but SIS cannot be counted out entirely. A lot will have to go right for SIS to outmaneuver Maurten, and that tells us something important about what actually drives success in the broader performance-focused endurance market, whether it is nutrition brands, apparel companies, or bike manufacturers. Product education, athlete storytelling, and brand identity are what win in this space. Maurten has executed on all three with discipline. SIS needs to recenter on all three with urgency.

It may sound counterintuitive, but Maurten’s expanding commercial success is largely the result of dialing in those three areas within a very focused niche before expanding outward. SIS did the same thing, albeit much earlier, and is now struggling in the mass market it chased. Their most credible path forward may be narrowing their focus, rebuilding brand loyalty within a defined consumer base, and using that foundation to pursue more stabilized and sustainable growth.

Black and white: Maurten’s calculated ascent

Maurten’s entire brand identity is built around their black and white aesthetic. No thrills, nothing flashy, just high-carbohydrate, flavorless products engineered for peak human performance. When they entered the market they were not targeting the mass consumer. Anyone casually participating in endurance sports or new to performance nutrition is not going to gravitate toward a brand with flavorless products that might disturb an untrained gut. Those athletes will start with cheaper and more approachable brands with familiar flavor options like GU or SIS.

For performance-oriented athletes or those getting more serious about endurance, however, Maurten becomes genuinely compelling. Their distinctive branding, elite athlete partnerships, and clear product education make it easy for athletes to identify Maurten as best in class. Their packaging communicates exactly what you are getting, and their original product line is intentionally minimal, which makes the decision process simple. Gel or drink mix, with or without caffeine, and for their energy bar, plain or chocolate. That was essentially the entire decision tree.

As we are seeing today, that strategy has helped Maurten grow both their total addressable market and their product offering. Two recent releases paint a clear picture of where the brand has its sights set.

The first is Maurten’s education hub, which helps athletes determine fueling strategy across a variety of training and racing scenarios. Their product offering was already straightforward, but now they are closing the loop on any guesswork or research athletes would otherwise need to conduct to optimize their fueling with Maurten products.

The second is Maurten Additions. Maurten built its reputation on flavorless products, but they have now released four flavor options that athletes can add to their drink mix. The way they have rolled it out and marketed it is smart. By keeping the mix and the additions as separate purchases, Maurten has achieved two things simultaneously: streamlined production logistics and a dual marketing play that speaks to performance athletes while quietly opening the door to more mass market athletes getting into the performance side of endurance sports.

We have all read about brands dealing with inventory overhang since 2020, and for many the root cause is an expansive product offering that requires more raw materials and SKU management. If Maurten had chosen to pre-add flavors directly to their drink mixes, the number of SKUs, packaging variations, and distribution requirements would have multiplied significantly. Instead of going from three drink mix options to fifteen, they kept the core lineup at three and introduced four additions products. That is eight fewer new packaging designs and production methods to manage.

The marketing is also fully consistent with everything they have done before: performance forward. Additions are positioned as a tool for athletes to combat flavor fatigue rather than an alternative to the flavorless mix. The framing signals a continued focus on high-performance athletes, but it is subtly opening the door for more casual athletes who are accustomed to flavored products. Brand identity intact, market share gained.

Where SIS can learn and execute

If I were advising a private equity firm on SIS, there would be some immediate actions worth taking to help the brand regain its footing and more directly compete with Maurten. We just looked at Maurten’s strengths, and SIS has a real opportunity to put their own spin on each of them. There is risk involved, but in their current situation the clock is ticking. Risk is part of the equation now if SIS wants to reclaim ground from Maurten.

SIS is a legacy brand in endurance nutrition with a long-standing brand image. They were once the original science-first brand in the space, but that edge has clearly eroded. A rebrand could do the company significant good, and that rebrand can come from operational decisions rather than narrative alone.

Maurten has demonstrated that a focused product line goes a long way. SIS’s lineup of gels and drink mixes looks sprawling by comparison, and the root cause is that SIS essentially has two brands competing within the same portfolio. The first is their original line of isotonic gels and mixes that represent the brand’s heritage. Those gels fall behind modern performance standards at just 22 grams of carbohydrates per serving, and their original drink mix offers electrolytes without carbohydrates, which makes it a difficult sell in a market where athletes expect both in one product.

The second brand within their lineup is one I actually use regularly: Beta Fuel. Beta Fuel gels deliver 40 grams of carbohydrates and Beta Fuel mix delivers 80 grams per serving, putting them directly in line with Maurten’s product standards. The Beta Fuel branding is sleeker and more in step with modern performance positioning.

If SIS gutted their lineup and rebuilt around Beta Fuel exclusively, they would reduce their production footprint, free up capital, and achieve a meaningful rebrand that repositions them squarely against Maurten. The obvious risk is losing consumers who still rely on lower carbohydrate options. Maurten does offer lower carbohydrate versions of their products without separating them into distinct sub-brands. A simple solution for SIS would be introducing a lower carbohydrate Beta Fuel gel, preserving the unified brand identity without cutting off a meaningful segment of their existing customer base.

Remember how we discussed Maurten’s Additions line being a smart move? This is where SIS’s size could actually work in their favor. SIS already offers a wide range of flavors for Beta Fuel alongside their unflavored versions, and they do not require consumers to buy and mix two separate products. SIS already has the production infrastructure to support this volume of pre-flavored products, whereas Maurten would be burning significant brand and financial capital to expand their lineup in the same direction.

If SIS can amplify a rebrand and convincingly position Beta Fuel as a direct competitor to Maurten while being more approachable, they could flip the narrative and get back to revenue growth before their current collision course with Maurten becomes irreversible.

On the storytelling front, SIS needs to reinvest in meaningful partnerships and compelling narratives. SIS is a British brand that lost Britain’s most iconic cycling team, Ineos Grenadiers, to Maurten. That is a significant blow to brand identity, and it feels like little has been done to confront that reality head on. With capital freed up from cutting underperforming product lines, SIS should reinvest in storytelling that resonates with younger audiences the way Maurten’s does. As we have seen time and time again in endurance sports, story is the most powerful marketing tool in the game.

Two paths to victory

I always enjoy doing these financial deep dives, and I want to be clear that this is all my outside perspective. I could absolutely be missing context, but I do think these comparisons reveal the different financial levers being pulled across endurance sport right now. We are at a cultural inflection point where endurance sports are growing in popularity every day, and certain brands will capitalize on that while others will not. Both Maurten and SIS have meaningful capital behind them, but the investment philosophies could not be more different.

Through Built on Bikes we have explored how newer brands like Pas Normal Studios and Ventum are finding success, and how established brands like ENVE and Rapha can build on their strengths and right a struggling ship. Both possibilities are very much on the table for Maurten and SIS. My advice is simple: keep an eye on both. Maurten will continue to grow in ways that are hard to ignore, but do not sleep on a quiet comeback from SIS.

In other news…

Veronica Ewers gives inside perspective on pro friendships

Check out Veronica’s latest Substack post where she illustrates the often black and white relationships that professional cyclists have. One moment you could be on a team and everyone feels like family and the next you are off the team having no communication with people that played a massive role in your life.

Andrew Vontz is kicking cancer’s ass

Andrew Vontz, author of the Choose the Hard Way newsletter, has become a great friend since I started Built on Bikes. We were deep into scheming networking ideas for Unbound when he was diagnosed with cancer. Since then he has been riding the waves with incredible resilience, putting out content that offers genuine perspective and inspires you to reframe your own challenges. He also still manages to crack great jokes from the chemo ward. My personal favorite: “I’m the Strava local legend of the chemo ward.” Check out his Substack and podcast.

I might go dark next week

Fresh off my article on AI training solutions, I was approached by a company that claims to do everything I described in that piece. Over the last month I have had the opportunity to speak with their executive leadership team multiple times, and I will be writing a comprehensive article on the company. It will not be possible to do the story justice in a single week, so I may need to take a week off from the usual publishing schedule to bring it to you in its fullest form. If I do not post next week, that is why. And if I do post, expect something shorter than usual.

I’ll be at UNBOUND!

That is right, I will be at the biggest gravel race in the world at the end of May. I will be there supporting the Mach1 Devo Team but will also be hopping around to network. If you will be there, let’s connect: kyle@builtonbikes.cc

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

The financial analysis and commentary provided in this article are for informational and editorial purposes only. While some data has been sourced from PitchBook and other publicly available resources, the analysis includes the use of AI tools and may involve interpretation or estimation based on incomplete information. All financial figures, statements, and insights should be considered approximations and are not intended as investment advice or definitive representations of any company’s financial position.

The author has no financial relationship with the companies discussed and makes no claim to insider knowledge. If you are affiliated with a company mentioned and believe something has been misrepresented, please reach out directly to kyle@builtonbikes.cc.

When I write about developing the sport in the US, I typically focus on the levels that affect U23 athletes up through those just below the WorldTour. Today I am looking at an area of development that touches the top one percent of professional cyclists this country produces, and how a very specific type of investment in that group can drive competitive success that radiates across the sport and accelerates its growth domestically.

My piece on Rapha’s bet on the United States is a useful reference point here. In that story I detailed how Rapha is counting on the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles to deliver a significant boost in the popularity of cycling in America. Through their partnership with USA Cycling, Rapha is banking on the success of US riders on the world stage to get more people racing bikes and wearing their kits. That same theme runs through today’s topic, which also centers on the performance of American riders at the 2028 Games.

If the biggest catalyst for growth coming out of the Olympics is the success of US athletes, what resources are we dedicating right now to give them the best possible chance? The answer is that those resources are significant, cutting edge, and true to the scrappy spirit that has always defined American cycling. Much of it is happening behind the scenes and has already produced two standout performances at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

I know this because of conversations I had with USA Cycling officials at the SXSW event hosted by Hill Climbers last month, and I was reminded of it again during a venture capital group ride I participated in last week. USA Cycling is actively leveraging relationships with top venture capital investors, founders, scientists, and thought leaders to enhance athlete performance outcomes ahead of the 2028 Games.

In this piece we will be taking a closer look at USA Cycling’s Technology and Innovation Council, the work they have already done, what they are building toward ahead of the LA Games, and what it could mean for the sport domestically once the games are over.

What is the Technology and Innovation Council?

USA Cycling’s Technology and Innovation Council is an effort to harness America’s abundance of capital, its leading technology sector, and the broader cycling community to improve the performance potential of the US national team. The council helps USA Cycling deploy cutting edge technology like AI to inform performance decisions that give American athletes the best possible chance of winning on the world stage. It is another avenue for extracting marginal gains, but through resources that are uniquely American.

Origins of the council

At the Hill Climbers investor lunch, USA Cycling Chief of Staff Karl Pelletier spoke about the origins of the Technology and Innovation Council. The story centered on a double Olympic gold medal performance that most of us are well aware of: the two extraordinary wins involving Kristen Faulkner at the 2024 Games in Paris.

Everyone in that room already knew Kristen’s story, but very few knew about the work behind the wins. Kristen deserves every bit of the praise she has received. She was ultimately the fierce competitor who went out and got the job done. But there was a substantial team of people at USA Cycling who helped her prepare, informed race strategy, and modeled scenarios ahead of competition. They did it through the use of AI and mathematical modeling to inform race strategy, team composition, and contingency planning. As someone on the team put it: “we mathed the shit out of it.”

The story had future sports documentary written all over it, and if that ever gets made, one of the central figures would be Ryan Cooper, Director of Product Management at Zwift and co-founder of BestBikeSplit. Ryan brought an extensive knowledge of AI applications in endurance sports to USA Cycling ahead of the 2024 Games, helping the team identify the best possible paths to gold. Through detailed modeling, athlete analysis, and competitive analysis, Ryan and the team pinpointed several areas that could be optimized for success:

• Place emphasis on female athletes, who performed best in Olympic competition

• A unique combination of athletes for the team pursuit could produce a statistically significant improvement in team performance

• In the road race, Kristen Faulkner had a 6% chance of winning gold

• Modeling identified ideal race scenarios for Kristen to outperform the competition

A genuinely cool use of AI, and the results were undeniable. What makes it even more compelling is that this innovation came largely from individuals who were not full-time USA Cycling employees. It was the passion and expertise of the broader American cycling community that made it possible. The message was clear: the wider technology community can help the US succeed on the international stage when the right people have a genuine passion for the sport.

Looking towards LA

Full disclosure: I do not actually know what is in the works for the 2028 Games, but there are some logical areas for expansion and educated guesses to be made based on the individuals involved in the council. Here is who is currently part of it:

Leading AI Experts

• Former VP at OpenAI

• Head of AI at Strava

• Head of AI at Greystar

• Ryan Cooper

Top Venture Capital (GPs and Founders)

• Atria Ventures: life sciences investments

• Union Labs: deep tech investments

• Next Ventures: health and fitness investments

• G2 Ventures: AI investments

• DVx Ventures: venture studio focused on startup incubation across various sectors

Health and Physiology

• Stanford Medicine: cardiologist researching cardiac health and athletic performance

Given how effective AI was in improving performance outcomes in Paris, it is a reasonable assumption that USA Cycling is doubling down on this approach with an expanded roster of expertise. In Paris, the modeling appeared to draw from a relatively focused set of variables including race data, aerodynamics, and rider power output. With this caliber of talent involved, that dataset will almost certainly be significantly larger heading into LA.

With physicians, AI experts, and venture capitalists connected to hundreds of portfolio companies innovating across multiple industries, far more athlete data will feed into the models. Biological markers, sleep, mechanics, and nutrition will all be variables used to optimize for race day. The home turf advantage of the LA Games will also factor in, with course data, weather patterns, and other location-specific variables informing preparation.

It is a reasonable bet that new training techniques, advanced products, and refined models will emerge in the lead-up to the Games and ultimately be adopted by the wider professional cycling community. And it is all happening because USA Cycling has had to get creative, engaging non-cycling industry professionals and leveraging resources that would be overlooked in more traditionally funded cycling nations.

Getting scrappy… with tech moguls

So maybe the AI worked in Paris, but one of the main architects of that initiative works for Zwift and has a deep history with professional cycling. Will bringing in more third party individuals who are only loosely connected to cycling as a hobby really move the needle? The answer is yes, and in fact their distance from the professional cycling world may be one of their greatest assets.

As I explored in my Hill Climbers piece, I firmly believe that our scrappy cast of cycling enthusiasts with successful careers outside the sport can make us stronger than other nations. Fundraising potential is uncapped, technology access expands rapidly, and enthusiasm is not dulled by the grind of working in the industry day in and day out.

Other cycling federations, especially European ones, receive dedicated government funding and institutional support to run their programs and develop athletes. I wish we had that in the US, but the absence of that support has forced us to avoid complacency in ways that more established programs have not. Historic cycling nations have operated like well-oiled machines for decades, and that consistency, while a strength, also makes them prone to stagnating development initiatives.

Consider Belgium, where cycling is genuinely embedded in the national culture. Their federation is well funded and their developmental pipelines are robust. Those are arguably the two most important factors in producing top talent consistently, but that very success may be blinding them to further opportunities for innovation and improvement.

The US has a long way to go on both funding and development pipelines, but we have already identified an advantage that will be difficult for other countries to replicate. USA Cycling has engaged Silicon Valley, tapping top venture capitalists and technology experts to apply their skills and capital to the national cycling program. Other countries have technology sectors, but only the US has Silicon Valley, where some of the brightest and most resourceful minds from around the world are concentrated in one place.

In many ways we are working the problem backwards, and it is working. Years of incremental progress on funding and talent pipelines made it clear that a new approach was needed. Leaning into one of America’s core strengths, its capitalist ecosystem and culture of outside investment, USA Cycling emphasized external support at a moment when government attention was directed elsewhere. The result has been a wave of fresh perspective and innovation unburdened by years of cycling industry convention.

It all connects back to what Hill Climbers is proving on a smaller scale: our piecemeal approach to development acts as a hedge against complacency and tradition. By refusing to rely on any single system, we are forced to optimize across every dimension. Our athletes are the asset, and we have chosen to diversify the portfolio of resources dedicated to their development.

Where we can take it

From the outside looking in, the tech council appears relatively fixed in its focus through the LA Games, but the more interesting question is where the possibilities lead after the Olympics. It would be a real missed opportunity if the council ceased to exist once the Games were over or remained narrowly focused on national team performance. As we just discussed, the council plays a vital role in working backwards to secure more reliable funding for USA Cycling and developing better talent pipelines for riders. The work being done here needs to be built upon rather than archived.

The council’s network is already expansive enough to touch many aspects of athlete performance, which makes it more than reasonable to think it could also address several parts of the broader developmental value chain. There is no shortage of areas where tech professionals and entrepreneurs can contribute meaningful value, even those with no formal background in cycling. Venture capitalists in particular have an outsized role to play here. Their portfolios already span industries that could make development more precise, accessible, and sustainable if pointed in the right direction.

Possible expansions

There are so many areas where technology can be applied to assist USA Cycling and the broader US cycling scene. For the sake of focus, three areas stand out most: domestic events, talent development, and internal operations at USA Cycling.

Domestic Events

Race organization and logistics: Organizing a cycling event, whether it is a road race, gravel race, or any other format, is expensive and time consuming. There is significant room for improvement, particularly in streamlining the process for organizers. A successful event requires managing a long list of moving parts including fencing and barriers, timekeeping, permitting, insurance, volunteers, and registration.

I have already written about how companies like Movemint are streamlining these workflows for organizers. Taking it further, there are products and companies that could partner with USA Cycling to improve each of those individual components. We need more road races accessible across the country, and the tech council could play a meaningful role in making that a reality.

Race coverage: Organizing an event is only half the battle. Getting that event in front of a wider viewing audience is critical to growing the sport and eventually converting viewers into athletes. Whether it is a high-tech drone company providing aerial coverage or a portable satellite company enabling streaming from remote locations, this is precisely the kind of area where a venture capitalist with hardware investments could help broker meaningful partnerships.

Travel and lodging: This is an area where the council is already active in a limited capacity. USA Cycling holds fundraising events in Silicon Valley and has brought on Philip Meyer, Managing Director of Rosewood Hotels, to assist with lodging for guests and athletes and support event planning and execution. Expanding that model through partnerships with national brands or tech-forward companies would broaden access to destination events significantly.

Talent development

Everything in this section represents ways to reduce stress on our athletes so they can perform when it matters most. It does not matter whether the stress is physical or mental — all of it accumulates and affects performance over time. There are several meaningful ways technology can help reduce those mental burdens.

Coaching and training: This is an obvious area where technology could benefit athletes, but it goes deeper than it might initially appear. Developing athletes need access to high-quality and responsible coaches. I have written about what this could look like in the age of AI training apps, but where we can go further is building accessible networks of data that help athletes train correctly relative to their competition. Asynchronous coaching options that include anonymized context on the performance of other athletes can help younger riders develop the skills they need to perform at the races that matter most. Paired with a human coach at a reduced cost, our young athletes will no longer be training in isolation.

Ed-tech: For road racing and mountain biking, the historical requirement to turn professional is still moving to Europe. That has not changed and will take time to change, but in the meantime technology can help ensure athletes do not miss out on important experiences or burn out along the way. As Alexey Vermeulen has highlighted, many athletes are forced to choose between pursuing higher education and chasing professional ambitions in Europe. Ed-tech is a booming industry, and if USA Cycling could build a technology stack for U23 athletes that allows them to pursue higher education and a professional racing career simultaneously, we would see a meaningful increase in the number of athletes willing to take that next step.

Counseling and mentorship: This connects directly to the previous point. Becoming a professional athlete is genuinely hard. From homesickness to missing important life events to navigating mental health challenges, young athletes pursuing a professional cycling career have a great deal to manage. Without the health resources that come with being on a professional team, that journey becomes even more difficult to sustain. If USA Cycling can develop a support technology stack for athletes at this stage, we will begin to see better outcomes for those who choose to pursue a professional career.

Finances: Cycling is not a particularly lucrative sport, especially at the developmental level. Dedicated athletes are willing to make sacrifices if it means a shot at a professional career, but that does not make the financial stress any less real. Investing platforms, accounting tools, banking technology, and other financial products could be a genuine lifeline for athletes trying to better manage their finances and reduce the anxiety that comes with living on a smaller income.

USAC operations

Internal systems and tooling: This might seem like a small detail, but even a technology stack refresh for USA Cycling’s internal operations could pay real dividends for the development of the sport. I encounter this value proposition every day in my own work. The solution I help sell allows venture capitalists to collect and store data quickly so they can spend more time actually providing value to their portfolio companies and investors. The same logic applies here. Equip USA Cycling with modern, automated tools to handle administrative work efficiently, and they can redirect that time and energy toward providing more value to athletes and the sport itself.

Full commitment to the future

We are now fully committed to this new frontier of development for domestic cycling. Without a meaningful boost in funding, not much will change unless we engage members of the cycling community who have capital, influence, and access to superior technology. A robust Technology and Innovation Council alone will not be enough to elevate us to the level of countries like Belgium and the Netherlands, but it gives us a much clearer pathway to building better development pipelines and generating the capital needed to achieve genuine competitive parity.

USA Cycling’s Technology and Innovation Council is ultimately about resourcefulness. What began as a creative solution to a funding problem has evolved into something far more significant: a replicable model for how the broader cycling community can contribute to the success of our national program.

Paris proved the concept has value. Los Angeles is the opportunity to prove it scales. And if we get that right, the benefits will not stop at the finish line in LA. They will ripple through every level of the sport, from the collegiate programs we are trying to build to the development teams racing for a shot at something bigger. The scrappy American approach to cycling development may just turn out to be our greatest competitive advantage.

In other news…

I have been calling this a newsletter for a while now, so I figured it was time to actually include some news. Moving forward, when there are relevant stories and developments worth highlighting, I will include a brief roundup at the end of each Friday edition. This idea was inspired by Seth Lareau and Trail Waves, and I want to give him full credit for sparking it.

MAAP continues to invest in development

Along with sponsoring the Life Time Grand Prix and providing the leaders jersey for the series, MAAP just released a Life Time Grand Prix supporters jersey. Proceeds from sales will go toward their Off-Road Racing Fund, which will back one male and one female U23 athlete with professional level support every season going forward. There is a reason MAAP is far and away my favorite brand in the sport right now.

Races are recognizing the importance of culture

Just a short while ago, the Traka 360 finished up in Girona, Spain and if you were lucky enough to watch the live stream, Leni from Holy Spirit of Gravel was one of the commentators. From meme page, to cultural influencer, to professional voice, Leni is proof that culture matters in growing niched disciplines of the sport. Traka’s inclusion of her in production further exemplifies how powerful storytelling is in growing the sport.

I’ll be at UNBOUND!

That is right, I will be at the biggest gravel race in the world at the end of May. I will be there supporting the Mach1 Devo Team but will also be hopping around to network. If you will be there, let’s connect: kyle@builtonbikes.cc

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

Last week I took three days off work to attend one of the largest events in the cycling industry. Going as a member of the media, it was three days of nonstop action that blended the sporting side of the industry with the business side. If you are already deep into cycling you probably know exactly what I am talking about, but for those who are not, this week I will be sharing my takeaways from the 2026 Sea Otter Classic.

Sea Otter

For the uninitiated, Sea Otter is a four-day cycling industry event that takes place in Monterey, California. This year marked the 36th edition of the event and the fifth year with Life Time as the title sponsor. When I describe it to friends who have never been, two descriptions come to mind. The first is a slogan displayed at the entrance that reads “welcome to your bike family reunion.” The second is a newer one I love, courtesy of Built on Bikes friend Sarah Sturm, who recently called it “Bike Coachella.”

The actual happenings at the event make both references easy to understand. Sea Otter is one of the largest cycling industry expos in the world, with over 1,000 brands converging at Laguna Seca Raceway to launch, demo, and showcase their newest products. It is a premier venue for industry networking and brand press, and for someone like me with a deep interest in the business side of cycling, the access is unbeatable.

The other side of Sea Otter is the athletic competition. Offering pro and amateur races across nearly every cycling discipline, the event attracts over 6,000 athletes who pay to compete in marquee events. Since Life Time acquired Sea Otter in 2021, it has become the official kickoff race for the Life Time Grand Prix. Grand Prix contenders and elite athletes from around the world tackle Sea Otter’s demanding 90-mile gravel course for prize money and industry recognition.

Together, the sporting events and expo draw over 70,000 visitors across the four-day festival. This was my third year attending and it remains one of the events I look forward to most, especially now that I am actively engaged with the industry. If you love bikes, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

What did I do while I was there?

Before I dive into my takeaways from the festival, it makes sense to briefly fill you in on what I actually did while I was there. I love photography, so the mission on day one was to capture images of the pro gravel race on Thursday. Thankfully, I got pulled into another mission that complemented that goal nicely.

A few days before the event I received a message from my friend Deb Urewicz-Kocourek, one of the best bike mechanics in the sport. She asked if I could provide feed zone support for an athlete she had connected with through USA Cycling’s collegiate all-star program. My answer was an immediate yes. Anything that helps a developing athlete is an easy call for me. The athlete was Nathan Surowiec, and we hit it off right away, making the experience of supporting him in the pro race a genuine pleasure.

While I was in the feed zone I made two new friends who will come up later in this piece. The remainder of my time at Sea Otter was spent networking throughout the expo and attending a private industry event that had everyone talking. That event is where I want to start with my takeaways. I will cover the business-oriented observations first and then move to my takeaways for the sport and athlete development.

X-LAB, the elephant in the room

The private event I referenced was a US launch party for X-LAB Bikes, and it turned out to be one of the bigger storylines coming out of Sea Otter. So what is X-LAB? X-LAB is a performance-oriented race bike line from Chinese manufacturer XDS, positioned as their flagship offering. Much like Cannondale’s Lab71 lineup, these are the top of the line bikes raced by the company’s WorldTour team, XDS-Astana.

The event itself had an interesting energy. On one side of the room you had the Chinese delegation of executive leadership from both X-LAB and XDS, and on the other you had people like Nathan and me who were there to see what all the fuss was about. The venue was upscale by bike industry standards, held at a private golf course clubhouse. Everything felt deliberate: bikes were strategically placed throughout the space and X-LAB’s US team lined the perimeter in branded shirts, ready to answer questions and pitch the product.

The event culminated in a series of speakers including XDS CEO Yanke (Edwin) Tan. The central message was clear: X-LAB has emerged virtually overnight as the biggest disruptor in the US bike market in decades. The brand had officially launched in the US just one week earlier and had already sold 90% of its inventory to over 50 independently owned bike shops across the country. The biggest selling point was price. Top of the line, full carbon race bikes with mid-tier groupsets retailing for well under $3,000. Everyone in the room had the same reaction: the hype is real.

That realization landed differently depending on who you asked. For some it was an alarm bell, for others an opportunity. I could not help but notice the parallels to broader macroeconomic conditions. We have heard increasingly that the US is ceding its position as the dominant economic force in the world, while China has accumulated leverage through an enormous stockpile of resources, low-cost production, and government-funded innovation. X-LAB is that dynamic playing out in practice.

The other theme that stood out was X-LAB’s self-described startup mentality. They have a lean, scrappy team moving fast and taking the market by storm. Working in tech in the age of AI, the pattern feels familiar. One day brands like Canyon and Specialized seem untouchable despite their financial headwinds, and then almost overnight a new product emerges that threatens to unsettle them entirely.

X-LAB’s most significant structural advantage is vertical integration, which feels timely given my recent piece on ENVE. XDS produces their own carbon fiber, which substantially reduces the cost of building bikes and is a core reason they can price so aggressively. They have also secured a partnership with Shimano and have plans to introduce their own componentry in the future, putting them on a path toward near-complete vertical integration. Currently selling through a combination of direct-to-consumer and independent bike shops, I have little doubt that once they reach maturity in the US market, XDS-branded retail stores will follow. That feels like a matter of when, not if.

The potential for significant industry disruption is real and could cause genuine turbulence in the US market, but a lot of it feels like self-inflicted wounds from the incumbents. The point was made at the event that the average US consumer cannot afford a race bike with mid-tier components on one or even two months of earnings. X-LAB is meeting consumers where they are and delivering a legitimate product at a price that actually makes sense. My view is simple: if this gets more people on race bikes and ultimately into the sport, then the industry needs to take a hard look at what consumers really need.

For development, a brand like this is significant. Young riders who do not come from wealthy families can access competitive, great looking equipment at a fraction of the traditional cost. For bootstrapped development teams and collegiate programs, that is a genuine breakthrough. Time will tell how far X-LAB and XDS can go, but they are absolutely worth watching over the coming years.

We will be getting more investors in the right rooms

A few weeks before Sea Otter I connected with Brian Bonham from PeopleForBikes. PeopleForBikes is a multifaceted organization that promotes cycling in the United States through lobbying for better policy, improved access, and broader adoption. They also function as a trade association that helps bring together investors, brands, and communities. It is exactly the kind of work I talk about regularly on Built on Bikes.

Brian and I planned to meet at Sea Otter to discuss an initiative that shares a lot of the same goals as Hill Climbers. Without getting ahead of myself, there is an event in the works that will bring notable investors together to learn about and discuss investment into the bike industry. I have already been involved behind the scenes in making some things happen and I look forward to sharing more as the details come together.

People want to be like the cool kids

I will admit upfront that I may be biased here given some close affiliations I have with this brand, but one newcomer to Sea Otter that absolutely stood out was MAAP. My first touchpoint with MAAP was at last year’s Big Sugar through their activation with Leni from Holy Spirit of Gravel. Since then they have worked directly with the Life Time Grand Prix to help shape the future of gravel racing, and I think they continued to build on that vision at Sea Otter through their Pro.Fwd gravel development team and the sponsored leaders jersey for the Life Time Grand Prix.

In my opinion, MAAP was a top contender for best experiential marketing at Sea Otter. Their booth was designed to be a genuine hangout spot, complete with coolers full of water and beer, bean bags, and a rotating cast of representatives who embody cool cycling culture without an ounce of pretentiousness. Walking around an expo you sometimes dread awkward vendor interactions, but that was never a concern at the MAAP booth.

The brand also showed up strongly through their activations throughout the weekend. They partnered with Movemint to streamline event signup and organization, giving participants an easier way to keep track of what they were attending. The activations themselves were equally well conceived: fun group rides, making beaded jewelry alongside pro athletes like Payson McElveen, and a rowdy afterparty hosted in collaboration with Away Message. Taken together, they represented the brand perfectly.

MAAP’s products are flashy but deeply performance oriented, and their Sea Otter presence captured that balance exactly. They celebrated the high level performances of their athletes while making it clear that everyone is welcome to have fun along the way.

Development was on full display

I left Sea Otter with a full heart because I saw so many athletes, brands, and organizations making development possible for young athletes. The following are some highlights, but they don’t even begin to scratch the surface when it comes to all the developmental programs and activities that were happening at Sea Otter.

Nina Machina - Mach1 Devo

While waiting in the feed zone to hand off bottles to Nathan, I somehow ended up standing between some people who I quickly realized were awesome and easy to get along with. One of them was Nina Machina, who asked me to take a clip of her handing a bottle to one of her athletes. One after another, more riders passed through wearing the same kit. When I asked how many athletes she had, her answer was seven, to which my reaction was something along the lines of: holy shit.

An accomplished athlete herself, Nina channeled her passion for performance coaching into an opportunity for U23 riders with Mach1 Devo. She has even convinced several of her sponsors to support her team with bikes, nutrition, and kits. There is something genuinely exciting about meeting someone like Nina, a high-performing athlete who chooses to turn that energy outward and invest it in the next generation. You will be hearing more about this team in the newsletter because I will be joining them at Unbound in just over a month!

Bike Tennessee

Although I fully claim California as home now, I was born in Tennessee and spent the first 22 years of my life there. The day before Sea Otter my mom called to tell me about an organization she had seen featured on the local news. The state government was working with a group to designate and build more off-road trails across Tennessee, similar in spirit to what Bentonville has done in Arkansas. I filed it away and planned to look into it after Sea Otter.

As it turned out, I did not have to wait that long. Walking through the expo I stumbled across a booth that read “Bike Tennessee,” and sure enough it was the very same organization my mom had been telling me about. The concept is straightforward: take what Bentonville did with bike access and apply it across an entire state. With support from the state government, Bike Tennessee has already developed over 90 road and gravel cycling routes to promote cycling among both residents and visitors. Expect to hear more about them in this newsletter as well.

Kate Courtney - She Sends Foundation

Kate Courtney needs no introduction, but for the uninitiated: she is an American mountain biking legend with two world titles and a career full of results that speak for themselves. Rather than focusing solely on her own racing, Kate founded the She Sends Foundation to strengthen mountain biking development programs for girls across the country. The foundation writes checks, provides guidance and visibility, and connects youth programs to a powerful network of allies.

Kate recently made the move to racing as a privateer and has put the She Sends Foundation front and center in that effort. Wherever she races she will be wearing a She Sends jersey from Rapha and riding a bike from Allied Cycleworks. At Sea Otter, despite competing in two of the most demanding events over the span of three days, Kate was still out on the ground connecting with and mentoring young athletes through activations. She is a legend on and off the bike.

Gravel live coverage is ready for the mainstream

There was no denying that Life Time significantly raised the bar on live coverage of the pro gravel race compared to previous years. Standing in the feed zone felt like being at a WorldTour event. Tension was already high as everyone waited for their athletes to come through, and then in the distance you could hear the faint drone of a helicopter and the whole zone knew it was game time.

Life Time has used camera-equipped helicopters for a while, but that moment crystallized just how high the production level has become. Beyond the helicopter footage, there were camera crews and reporters stationed on course, nonstop live commentary, separate streams covering the entirety of both the men’s and women’s races, and cameramen on e-mountain bikes providing point of view footage from inside the front groups.

As most people know by now, the men’s race came down to a sprint finish between Bradyn Lange and Keegan Swenson. Everyone in the feed zone was watching the final moments play out on their phones, and the energy was indistinguishable from what you would feel watching the finish of Paris-Roubaix. With a few refinements, like the introduction of time gap tracking, these streams deliver nonstop action that is genuinely worthy of a major streaming platform. I believe we will see that happen within the next five years.

Leaving with renewed energy

Cycling is a hobby, a culture, a language, and a family. Sea Otter presents the sport in all of its glory. It kicks off a busy season for me and for the athletes I follow, one that will run all the way through October, and I could not feel more energized heading into it. For all the doom and gloom that has surrounded the industry over the last few years, Sea Otter is a powerful reminder of how deeply people love bikes and why this is a resilient industry that will outlast any one brand.

To all the wonderful people I met last weekend, thank you for reminding me why I spend hours of my free time writing these stories every week. And to all my industry friends, I cannot wait to see you out there soon.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

• Making collegiate cycling a clear pathway to a professional career the way mainstream sports like basketball and football already are

• How NCAA classification would add legitimacy to the sport

• How to attract the financial investment needed to create more programs and pursue NCAA status

• How a healthier collegiate landscape would help identify more talent, as was the case with Sarah Sturm

Two themes have remained consistent throughout: finding ways to fund growth and expansion, and building the competitive infrastructure that allows athletes to discover the sport and progress to the next level.

My previous conclusion was that the challenge is far too large to be solved by any one person or entity, requiring instead a broad network of companies and wealthy individuals willing to invest. I still believe that is largely true, but recently I have started thinking about how to narrow the number of investors needed to drive a significant shift in collegiate cycling.

I believe there is one company uniquely positioned to benefit from making a serious investment in collegiate cycling, and in doing so, spark the kind of systemic change the sport has been waiting for.

Finding a company that can do it all

Finding individuals to invest in organizations like USA Cycling and individual varsity programs will be a long and difficult process. To date, there is not much to pitch prospective investors on beyond a passion-driven appeal: if you love cycling, this is your chance to make a lasting impact on the sport domestically. There simply is not enough room for meaningful financial return at that level because investments of this kind are about growing the sport, not generating profit.

If we could instead pitch a larger organization that both genuinely cares about the sport and stands to benefit financially from betting on collegiate cycling, we would eliminate a significant amount of the inertia currently holding back progress at the collegiate level. I believe the company that stands to benefit both itself and collegiate cycling the most through financial investment is Zwift.

A quick background on Zwift

While many Built on Bikes readers are likely already familiar with Zwift, here is a quick primer for those who are not. Zwift is an online platform that provides a virtual, gamified indoor training experience for cyclists and runners. Before Zwift, indoor training meant riding alone, without dynamic power-based conditions, and with little incentive to push beyond basic fitness gains. As many cyclists will tell you, indoor training was essentially a necessary form of torture.

That is the problem Eric Min set out to solve when he founded Zwift in 2014. On the platform, riders can explore virtual environments with dynamic conditions including climbs and descents that more closely mimic the feel of riding outdoors. They can also see and interact with other riders who are online, adding a social dimension to what had previously been an isolating experience. Perhaps most importantly, Zwift introduced racing to the indoor training environment, allowing riders to compete against others from around the world in real time.

Since its founding, Zwift has established itself as the pioneer in indoor training and has largely dominated the space. The company has attracted significant backing from premier venture capital and private equity firms including KKR, Permira, and Highland Europe, with their most recent raise being a $450 million Series C led by KKR.

Those investments have enabled Zwift to further develop the platform, introduce hardware that allows riders to train without a road bike, and pursue high-profile marketing plays like becoming the title sponsor of the Tour de France Femmes, positioning the brand as a meaningful force for development in the sport. Today, however, the indoor training market is growing more competitive, with platforms like TrainingPeaks Virtual, Rouvy, and TrainerRoad emerging as credible alternatives.

Zwift remains the market leader, but has a clear opportunity to secure long-term market stability by investing in collegiate cycling and cementing itself as the definitive gateway into the sport for the next generation of athletes.

Why Zwift?

To meaningfully contribute to the progression of collegiate cycling, a brand first needs to be a stable and credible entity in its own right. Zwift is exactly that. Through its history as a company, Zwift has built a strong business model and the organizational capacity to take on the challenge of strengthening and reimagining what collegiate cycling could look like. Before diving into how they could do that, it is worth examining what makes Zwift an attractive brand to be associated with in the first place.

Strong finances: As already established, Zwift carries the backing of some of the most respected investors in the world, including KKR, Permira, and Highland Europe. Those investors have seen a future for the platform that promises significant upside, and when Zwift aligns itself with a movement or cause, it brings that investor attention along with it. For collegiate cycling, that kind of financial credibility is invaluable.

Zwift also operates a robust business model that generates revenue through paid subscriptions, hardware sales, and on-platform advertising. Their emphasis on community and development has created genuine network effects, where more people want to join the platform simply because people they know are already on it. Zwift is a proven operator with a track record of large, successful marketing campaigns, and they are more than capable of navigating an expansion into the collegiate cycling landscape.

Reputation: Zwift has built community into the fabric of their platform and every piece of outward-facing media they produce. Beyond community, the brand has become a symbol of development within the sport. Their title sponsorship of the Tour de France Femmes was a key catalyst in bringing that race back, an event that has proven to be a landmark moment for women’s cycling globally.

As an indoor training platform, Zwift also carries the reputation of being accessible and safe. For the parents of young riders, there is no concern about crashes or the dangers of riding on open roads. For new riders themselves, the barrier to entry is low, making Zwift a natural on-ramp for people discovering cycling for the first time, people who could one day pursue the sport at the collegiate level.

Infrastructure: Zwift’s most popular feature is its online racing platform, which allows athletes to compete against each other from the comfort of their own homes. For collegiate cycling programs, this feature could be a significant unlock on multiple fronts. First, it provides a standardized race format that enforces equal competition by eliminating the disparity in equipment quality and training conditions that exists between riders and programs at different resource levels.

Zwift also generates an electronic record of every race and training session, enabling easy and comprehensive data analysis across athletes. That consistency makes talent identification more reliable and more equitable than traditional methods.

If Zwift were to enter the collegiate cycling landscape, they would do so with a business model and infrastructure that has been fully optimized over years of development, allowing them to plug into collegiate competition relatively seamlessly.

Reimagining collegiate cycling

By this point the direction of this article is probably clear: if USA Cycling were able to partner with Zwift to introduce e-cycling as a collegiate discipline, access to the sport would increase significantly and collegiate cycling would finally have a well-capitalized partner with the resources needed to fund meaningful expansion, including a push toward NCAA classification.

This is not a new idea. I am aware that discussions have already taken place within our governing bodies about implementing something along these lines, but it is unclear to me whether those conversations also included plans for Zwift to inject capital into the sport. The competitive model for collegiate e-cycling is straightforward enough that it does not need deep explanation here. What is more worth exploring are the benefits this kind of partnership would create for both collegiate cycling and Zwift.

How Zwift benefits collegiate cycling

The list of benefits Zwift could bring to collegiate cycling runs deeper and further than it might initially appear. Here are the areas where I think a Zwift investment and competition partnership would most meaningfully elevate the sport at the collegiate level.

Visibility

Whenever Zwift embarks on a major marketing campaign, the broader cycling community takes notice. The Tour de France Femmes is the most dramatic example, but initiatives like Zwift Academy have also captured the attention of cycling fans, Zwift users, and WorldTour teams alike. Fans and professional teams are two audiences that collegiate cycling desperately needs to reach if it is ever going to become a legitimate and recognized pathway to a professional career.

The NCAA carries significant brand power of its own, and if the two organizations were to join forces with Zwift becoming the title sponsor of NCAA collegiate cycling across all disciplines, the scale of that partnership would command attention well beyond the existing cycling community. A multi-million dollar deal between Zwift and the NCAA would be difficult to ignore.

Accessibility

Building collegiate cycling into a true pipeline for professional development requires at least three distinct talent funnels. The first is a funnel of high school riders flowing into collegiate programs. The second is a funnel of athletes from other collegiate sports discovering cycling as a natural fit for their abilities. The third is a funnel of well-developed athletes exiting the collegiate level and stepping into elite or professional teams.

Zwift has the potential to strengthen all three.

At the pre-collegiate level, Zwift serves as a safe and accessible platform for young riders to develop, race, and generate meaningful performance data. Currently, collegiate cycling programs do not scout high school talent the way other collegiate sports do. If Zwift, USA Cycling, and collegiate programs can organize sanctioned leagues for high school riders, scouting becomes possible without requiring travel or chasing down power data that currently sits in isolation without context.

Within collegiate athletics, Zwift provides a low-barrier entry point for athletes from other sports to discover whether they have a natural aptitude for cycling. Imagine a collegiate cycling program with a few Zwift setups in a campus gym or performance center. Athletes from other sports who are not getting the opportunities they want could hop on a bike and take a power test. If the result is competitive with collegiate benchmarks, both the athlete and the program director get notified automatically.

For athletes exiting the collegiate level, Zwift provides professional teams with a reliable and standardized data set to scout from. Outdoor riding skills will obviously still need to be evaluated, but the reasonable assumption is that most athletes who enter the sport through Zwift will transition to outdoor riding over time. And riders who already compete outdoors will likely incorporate Zwift racing into their schedules once it becomes an official form of collegiate competition.

Scouting and development

Zwift offers a standardized racing format, and if collegiate competition is sanctioned by a governing body, there will be no room for athletes to inflate power numbers with inaccurate weight data. That makes it a reliable platform for professional teams to scout from. And when I say professional teams, I am not referring to WorldTour or even Pro Continental teams. The more realistic and immediate opportunity is at the Continental and domestic elite level.

Collegiate cycling already has a scouting problem rooted in inconsistent events and uneven race fields. Zwift offers a format that enables digital scouting without requiring context about how a specific race unfolded or guesswork about the strength of the field. There is still a tactical and skill element to scouting that cannot be fully captured on an indoor platform, but traditional outdoor race formats will remain available to fill that gap.

Outside investment

Zwift already carries a roster of prestigious investors, which creates an opportunity to expose the broader investment community to collegiate cycling through that existing network. The hope would be that individual partners or directors with an interest in cycling would recognize the opportunity in collegiate programs and direct capital toward initiatives that further develop the collegiate landscape.

Zwift also offers in-app sponsorship opportunities for outside brands, which could serve as another avenue for new brands to enter the collegiate cycling space, whether by sponsoring individual riders, teams, or programs directly.

Competitive Parity

I may be beating this point to death, but competitive parity is one of Zwift’s most compelling contributions to the collegiate cycling argument. The standardized racing format extends all the way down to the equipment used to compete, meaning there is no advantage to be gained from nicer gear. The only differentiator is the natural ability of the athlete.

More race days for current cyclists

For cyclists already competing in collegiate programs, Zwift offers an additional race format that requires no travel and no extra expense. Rather than racing on scattered weekend schedules, athletes can log race days more consistently, much the way a professional would. That regularity would meaningfully accelerate development and bring the US collegiate experience closer to the heavy race culture that defines cycling in Europe.

An easier transition to collegiate cycling 2.0

As we work toward a more professionalized and widely recognized collegiate cycling landscape, Zwift can serve as a meaningful on-ramp for that vision. Becoming an NCAA sport and standing up dozens of new varsity programs will not happen overnight, but a smoother transition point will accelerate the process considerably.

The majority of collegiate cycling teams are organized as club teams with varying levels of infrastructure and financial resources. Zwift offers a cost-effective way for these teams to allow their athletes to compete consistently against varsity programs and more established riders. It creates a genuine incentive for cyclists to choose a school while knowing they can still compete regularly and showcase their abilities to a wider audience.

Zwift’s digital record also provides a far more robust way to track growth in collegiate cycling than what currently exists. Today, the only participation data available comes through USA Cycling records of license holders and event participants. Zwift would enable deeper and more actionable insights, helping governing bodies become more strategic and data-driven in their efforts to grow the sport.

How collegiate cycling benefits Zwift

If Zwift were to sponsor collegiate cycling, it would function more as a mutual partnership than a one-way transaction. While Zwift would be investing in the growth of the sport, they would simultaneously be executing a large-scale marketing campaign targeting younger athletes at a critical stage of their development. There are several meaningful benefits Zwift would receive in return.

A new market entry point

If Zwift is looking to engage a younger demographic, and particularly one that may be discovering cycling for the first time, collegiate cycling presents a unique opportunity to reach that market at one of its most impactful inflection points.

Further differentiation in a competitive market

As more platforms like Rouvy, TrainerRoad, and TrainingPeaks Virtual enter the online training space, Zwift will need to continue solidifying its position as the incumbent product with the widest user base and strongest business model. There is significant room for growth in the US market, and Zwift is well positioned to capture the next generation of cyclists if they continue investing in the progression of the sport.

As we work to bring more capital into the collegiate cycling landscape, we should be looking beyond individual investors toward large corporate sponsors that can provide both structure and visibility for the sport. Zwift is the most compelling example of what that kind of partner could look like.

I have so many thoughts on this subject that I may revisit it in a future edition.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

The article highlighted Shimano seeing three straight years of declining profits, Giant’s profits shrinking by nearly half, and Canyon watching a third of its EBITDA disappear in 2025. Tariffs, inventory overhang, and deflation in China emerged as the primary macroeconomic factors weighing on big brands. The CEO of Giant summarized the environment simply by calling it “a feast and a famine.” All I could see in the article was famine, which raised an obvious question: who is feasting right now?

The answer, as I have written before, is smaller cycling companies with streamlined operations that are outperforming industry giants in key areas like margins, profits, and capital efficiency. While I have written about how brands like Pas Normal Studios are executing more efficiently than larger competitors like Rapha, I have also discussed how these smaller brands are becoming attractive targets for investors looking at M&A opportunities.

In my M&A article, I reviewed a market report from Houlihan Lokey that identified the key trends driving brand growth and stability. The main competitive advantages that emerged were:

• Vertical integration

• The ability to sell direct-to-consumer

• Strong brand identity

In that piece I highlighted brands I thought were ripe for acquisition and strategic investment, but I also briefly mentioned a company that had navigated two separate acquisitions while maintaining its brand identity with zero erosion from either transaction. That company is ENVE Composites.

With industry giants struggling, ENVE presents a genuinely interesting case study: a brand firmly established in the market while still being small enough to avoid the weight of being an industry giant. That positioning gives them a real opportunity to become a leading bike frame and component manufacturer if they play their cards right. They could realistically establish themselves as the go-to brand for mid to high-end bikes and components, taking meaningful market share from companies like Specialized and Roval, Trek and Bontrager, Scott and Syncros, and Giant and Cadex.

ENVE Composites

ENVE’s history as a company is an important part of understanding their path to accelerated growth in the near term. The Utah-based company was founded in 2007 under the name Edge Composites before rebranding to ENVE Composites in 2010. From the start, they focused on producing high-end carbon fiber cycling components including wheels, rims, and handlebars.

Throughout their history, ENVE has resisted industry norms by keeping manufacturing operations within their Utah facilities rather than outsourcing to Asia. That commitment to domestic, quality-first production helped establish them as a recognizable and respected brand at the premium end of the cycling components market.

As I mentioned in my piece on M&A trends, ENVE was acquired by Amer Sports for $50 million in 2016 and later sold to PV3 Investments in 2024 for an undisclosed amount. While those transactions appear to have had relatively little effect on the company’s overall strategy and direction, a significant inflection point came in 2021 when ENVE began producing their own bike frames for road and gravel.

Today the brand has built a reputation for best-in-class products, most visibly through their relationship with the top WorldTour team, UAE Team Emirates, and the sport’s dominant rider, Tadej Pogacar. ENVE’s refusal to cut corners or outsource for the sake of margins has made them one of the most prestigious brands in the industry.

Seizing the current opportunity

That same commitment, however, may now be working against them. Their 2024 sale for an undisclosed amount suggests their market share has remained relatively fixed, raising the question of whether their premium positioning has come at the cost of broader growth. It is the tradeoff that company leadership will need to carefully assess when considering future growth plans.

2026 presents a significant opportunity for stable, well-positioned brands to take market share from struggling industry giants. The question is how ENVE capitalizes on that window. The answer lies in leaning into their strengths more aggressively and expanding their reach faster than they have historically been willing to. Before we dive into how they do that, we should take a moment to acknowledge what has positioned them to take advantage of this unique opportunity.

Bikes are the catalyst for deeper vertical integration

Of the three competitive advantages I surfaced in my M&A article, ENVE has already nailed strong branding and direct-to-consumer capabilities. The area where they excel but could build on further is vertical integration.

Vertical integration is when a company owns more parts of its supply chain. ENVE already owns manufacturing and direct-to-consumer distribution, but there are still gaps in their product lineup that represent untapped opportunity. By introducing bike frames, ENVE effectively entered a small league of brands that touch virtually every product used on a ride. That is a meaningful shift, even if it does not fit the traditional definition of vertical integration perfectly.

In doing so, ENVE is moving away from being purely a components company and toward being a full bike manufacturer, more closely aligning with brands like Trek, Specialized, and Scott. The key distinction is that each of those brands started by making frames and later acquired third party companies to build out their in-house component lines, think Bontrager, Roval, and Synchros. ENVE did it the other way around.

That difference matters more than it might seem. By building components first and frames second, ENVE ensures better continuity across the entire product line, faster innovation, and performance that is optimized from the ground up rather than assembled through acquisition. For the remainder of this article, when I refer to vertical integration, this is what I mean: owning the production and sale of more product categories beyond road and gravel bikes, without relying on third party acquisitions to get there.

The challenges of further integration

The good news is that ENVE controls their own destiny if they choose to expand their product footprint. The bad news is that doing so would be expensive and carries real risk. As the old saying goes, you have to spend money to make money, and in this case the opportunity on the other side of that investment is significant.

ENVE may also have the right owner to pursue such a path. The majority shareholder, PV3 Investments, is the private investment vehicle of Mark Hancock, founder of PACS, a publicly traded healthcare company worth billions. According to Forbes, Hancock has a personal net worth of $2.3 billion, meaning PV3 is well positioned to inject meaningful capital into ENVE if they choose to do so.

With ENVE’s most recent post-money valuation estimated at around $20 million according to Pitchbook, even a modest capital injection could go a long way. Two million dollars in new R&D represents just 10% of the company’s estimated value and a fraction of a fraction of Hancock’s net worth. It is safe to say that many bike manufacturers would consider that funding position enviable.

Whether that capital ever gets deployed remains to be seen, but even if it does, macroeconomic headwinds would still need to be navigated. Inflation and softer consumer spending are pressuring ENVE’s core customer base, while tariffs are raising production costs on the supply side. ENVE assembles their products in the United States, but they do not produce their own raw materials. The primary one, carbon fiber, is imported entirely from Japanese auto manufacturer Mitsubishi, which is currently subject to a 15% base tariff on US imports. That added cost gets passed along the chain and ultimately lands on consumers who are already feeling the squeeze.

The natural question is whether vertical integration could extend to raw material production. The honest answer is probably not. Carbon fiber is not widely manufactured in the United States, and acquiring a manufacturer would be well beyond ENVE’s current scale. It is also likely that sourcing domestically would cost more than importing even with tariffs applied. This is simply a cost of doing business, and importantly, it is an industry-wide problem. ENVE is far from alone in dealing with it and it should not be a reason to slow production or investment.

Consolidate before the expansion

There is one final consideration before we get into what an ENVE market expansion could look like. Alongside any capital injection, ENVE should take a close look at their current product lines to determine whether there are auxiliary categories diverting resources that could be better deployed toward expansion. Without access to their financials it is difficult to say definitively, but product lines like cycling clothing, tires, and tools feel peripheral to the company’s core identity and competitive advantage.

Depending on the cost and profitability of those lines, freeing up resources by cutting them entirely could be a smart move before pursuing something larger.

Where ENVE could expand

It didn’t take me long to think of product lines that could be successful expansions for the brand. Looking at their competitors like Specialized, Trek, and Scott, there is plenty of inspiration to draw from and gaps to fill. Some of the expansion areas I suggest are provided through these competitor’s in-house brands we mentioned earlier, and some are not manufactured at all by the competitors or their in-house brands. ENVE can innovate and improve off their competitors and do it more efficiently. Here are the areas that make sense.

Suspension

This is a product category that none of the major brands currently cover, which may be by design, but I think ENVE has an advantage that their competitors do not. Large bike manufacturers typically outfit their gravel and mountain bike frames with third party suspension systems, most commonly RockShox or Fox. There are boutique suspension brands beyond these two, but RockShox and Fox have set the industry standard, making it far more cost effective for large manufacturers to spec their builds with existing systems rather than developing proprietary alternatives that would struggle to compete with the brand recognition those names carry.

Brand recognition and reputation. Sound familiar? ENVE is widely regarded as the premier high-end component manufacturer, and a move into suspension would make a significant splash. It would become a sought after option for riders and teams almost immediately.

The natural pushback is that ENVE does not even make mountain bike frames yet, so why start with suspension alone? The first reason is cost. Suspension is already an expensive R&D undertaking, and adding a new frame category would multiply that investment significantly. The second is quality assurance. ENVE cannot afford to cut corners on either frames or suspension given how much their brand reputation depends on delivering best-in-class products. The third reason is strategic consistency. Starting with components before expanding to frames has always been ENVE’s development playbook, and there is no reason to abandon it now.

The rollout could be even more deliberate by starting with gravel suspension forks before moving into mountain bike suspension. Keeping the initial focus narrow and centered on performance, specifically race-oriented forks for gravel and cross country mountain biking, would give ENVE the best chance of launching a product that immediately earns the credibility the brand demands. As product expansions go, this one feels like a natural next step.

Gear

I know I just suggested that ENVE reevaluate auxiliary lines like clothing, but there is one hardware-adjacent category that could actually make a lot of sense. If ENVE were to manufacture shoes and helmets, they would be positioned to take market share directly from competitors, since major bike manufacturers already produce both. ENVE’s obsession with quality gives them a smarter entry point than most.

The story of the bike industry since COVID has largely been one of inventory overhang. Brands like Trek and Bontrager carry so many lines of bikes, shoes, and helmets that they are left with overstock they cannot move quickly enough. ENVE can sidestep that trap entirely by entering the market with a focused lineup: two shoe models, one for gravel and mountain bike and one for road, and one or two helmets.

ENVE’s reputation for producing superior carbon fiber products creates an immediate opportunity to compete at the top end of the market, not just against the shoe lines of major bike manufacturers but against dedicated cycling shoe companies as well.

Keeping it simple

To be realistic, ENVE only needs to pursue one or two new product lines at a time, which is why the list above is intentionally short. The goal is to deploy resources effectively and maintain a slow, calculated expansion that compounds as the market adopts each new product. Once adoption and brand recognition in a new category are firmly established, ENVE can then reenter the R&D cycle for mountain bike frames and additional product lines beyond that.

A strategic acquisition that could make sense

One strategic acquisition stands out as particularly compelling: Ceramicspeed’s cycling division. Ceramicspeed is primarily a manufacturer of bearings used across a number of industrial sectors, but they have built a dedicated cycling arm focused on select componentry that ENVE does not prioritize, as well as drivetrain maintenance systems like their popular UFO Wax line. Ceramicspeed carries a reputation for best-in-class products that closely mirrors ENVE’s own, making it a logical addition if the finances make sense. Over time, a full rebrand under the ENVE umbrella would be a natural conclusion to that kind of acquisition.

How much of the market can ENVE capture?

With large brands struggling, the prospect of capturing market share is certainly exciting for ENVE, but how much of the pie can they realistically take? We know that major brands are pulling back significantly during these turbulent times, but it is worth asking how much of their trouble stems from their own strategic mistakes versus broader shifts in consumer behavior.

When we look at ENVE’s addressable market, high-end frames and components, the struggles of competitors likely lean more toward self-inflicted wounds than macro-driven demand collapse. ENVE’s frames start at around $4,100 and top out near $4,800. The consumers buying at that price point, and buying comparable bikes from competitors, tend to be wealthier individuals who are somewhat more insulated from macroeconomic pressure than the average consumer.

At that level, taking market share comes down to differentiation. Peter Abraham wrote a compelling piece on the state of the industry in 2025, and one of his central observations was how little differentiation exists between high-end bikes. With most carbon frame construction happening in Asia, bikes from different brands often share nearly identical manufacturing processes despite looking distinct on the surface. ENVE’s commitment to assembling frames in the US is a genuine and meaningful differentiator, particularly at a moment when competitor reputations may be softening.

Putting a precise number on how much market share ENVE can capture is difficult, but even single percentage points taken from brands the size of Trek, Specialized, and Scott will compound meaningfully over time. It positions ENVE to rise toward the top of a very short list of brands serious buyers consider when shopping at the high end of the market. It’s a hard task, but if ENVE sticks to their guns while taking some calculated risks, they have a unique opportunity to grow in the coming years.

A quick shoutout

On a different note, I want to take a moment to highlight something ENVE is doing to give back to the sport. Recently, in collaboration with Alexey Vermeulen, ENVE launched a gravel development team called the MOG Squad. It is a genuine investment in the future of the sport from a brand that has always done things one way: the right way.

And a quick note

If you are reading this and will be at the Sea Otter Classic next week in beautiful Monterey, California, drop me a line at builtonbikes@gmail.com. I would love to connect!

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

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1. There need to be more development pathways for athletes, and most importantly, they need to be accessible and structured with a clear progression path

2. There needs to be a strong foundation of talent that makes development consistent and sustainable

3. When looking at potential growth opportunities for domestic cycling, women’s racing presents the best platform for US dominance and marketability

The second point traces back to my very first article, where I interviewed Natascha den Ouden, founder of the Women’s WorldTour team AG Insurance-Soudal and NXTG Racing. As Natascha put it, “we build from the top and break the foundation,” meaning all the money flows into the highest level of the sport and never trickles down to the developmental level where future stars are actually racing.

This results in an uneven playing field where lower-level riders are being pitted against the very best in the world, robbing them of the opportunity to learn the basic fundamentals of racing. It also means that the dwindling number of races that exclusively field lower-level teams receive no airtime, leading to more teams disappearing because they are no longer financially viable.

Taken together, the state of professional cycling, especially in nations like the US, is fragile. We will need a strong base of talent that can create a deeper roster of American riders capable of racing and winning at the highest levels of the sport.

While that is the big picture problem facing domestic cycling, there are many contributing factors that make it a difficult problem to solve. Factors like:

• Financial investment in the sport

• Clear pathways to professional contracts

• Strong collegiate programs

• A reduction in rider burnout

• A larger race ecosystem

I am the first to admit that I have put heavy emphasis on areas like collegiate cycling and financial investment, but there is one issue that is consistently overlooked. One that has already taken one of our biggest talents out of the sport and affects many more pros and developmental riders, often unnoticed by the public and even their own support systems. That issue is rider health, specifically as it relates to mental health, disordered eating, and nutritional habits.

It seems like a given that if we cannot maintain healthy athletes we will not produce enough professional riders, but the truth is that disordered eating and energy deficiency conditions have been common in cycling for decades. They have existed and conveniently ignored, not just in the US, but across every level of the sport globally.

To achieve sustainable talent pipelines, governing bodies, coaches, and teams at every level will need to implement practices that help identify and address rider health issues before they become severe. While this is a global problem, but it is especially difficult to combat in the US given cycling’s limited mainstream popularity and the resources that come with it.

For this edition of Built on Bikes, I sat down with former WorldTour rider Veronica Ewers to discuss how we can better address certain health conditions so we can safely and sustainably develop healthy riders as a nation.

About Veronica

Hailing from Idaho, Veronica is an athlete who found her way into cycling the same way many Americans do: by coincidence. Growing up, Veronica always thought of herself as an athlete, playing soccer all the way through the collegiate level. After graduating, she stopped playing soccer, moved to Seattle, and maintained her fitness through running and weight training.

It was not until a friend invited her on a local group ride that she seriously considered cycling as a sport for herself. Later Veronica met a couple who were creating their own cycling team, which she joined. From there, the team evolved into a domestic elite team, and it was there that she truly became a competitive cyclist.

“I really have them [the team] to thank for getting into the sport because they helped me get a better bike, they helped me get into specific training on the bike. They helped me ride in a group and learn what it’s like to pace line and be in a group. And then we would do a couple local races here and there before the team ended up becoming a domestic elite team.”

In 2021, Veronica competed at the US National Championship road race and placed third overall. The result caught the attention of professional teams and led to her signing with Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank, now known as EF Education-Oatly. She quickly established herself as one of the team’s strongest general classification riders, posting impressive results including:

• 2022: 9th overall at Tour de France Femmes, 5th overall at Tour de Romandie Féminin

• 2023: 4th overall at Giro Donne

She was one of America’s brightest talents, but the stellar performances masked an internal struggle that would follow Veronica throughout her professional career.

Developing and treating RED-S

Going back to her days of playing collegiate soccer, Veronica detailed how she developed disordered eating habits that would follow her into her professional cycling career. Veronica wrote a great piece on her Substack that details how these habits developed, how they became a full eating disorder, and how they ultimately led to a condition that forced her to put her professional cycling career on hold. That condition being: Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, more commonly known as RED-S.

In short, RED-S is a condition that develops from a consistent energy imbalance leading to chronic fatigue. Both men and women can develop RED-S, but it affects each differently. Many factors can contribute to it, but repeated underfueling is one of the most common risk factors. *It is also important to note that developing RED-S does not automatically mean an athlete has an accompanying eating disorder.

Today, Veronica has made significant progress in her recovery and has become a prominent voice for raising awareness of disordered eating in cycling and the warning signs of RED-S in athletes. Her story is a powerful one that illustrates how limited developmental structures in the US leave athletes more vulnerable to unhealthy habits that can develop into serious medical conditions.

If we want to sustainably develop healthy athletes in the United States, we will need education, clear guidelines, and systems in place to spot the early warning signs and assist athletes in navigating intervention before they become crises.

*Here is a resource from Cornell Health that better outlines RED-S

What issues are we facing today?

Thanks to athletes like Veronica, there is growing awareness around mental health, disordered eating, and healthy physiological markers in the professional peloton. The WorldTour has by no means solved the problem, but it is heading in the right direction. That awareness and diligence, however, exists almost exclusively at the highest level of the sport. For the vast majority of cyclists, there are few safety nets and minimal resources available to help identify concerning patterns before they become serious.

This is not to say that governing bodies, teams, and coaches in the US do not care. It is simply the reality of competitive cycling in a resource-constrained environment. As I have written before, domestic teams and organizations like USA Cycling operate on extremely tight budgets while overseeing sprawling operations. They are doing the best they can with what is currently available.

The result is that each entity directs the majority of its efforts toward results and return on investment. Looking level by level, the story remains roughly the same:

• USA Cycling: A small budget stretched across sprawling operations, with performance judged primarily on the results of national teams

• Collegiate programs: Varsity teams are making ends meet to pay coaches and get athletes to races, while club teams are run entirely by students

• Domestic development teams: Members and staff often work multiple jobs, with the primary focus on getting to races and performing

• NICA and junior programs: Largely volunteer-run and focused first on teaching the fundamentals of bike racing

Whether the issue is creating clearer pathways to a professional career or addressing athlete health, a lack of organization and financial investment at the developmental level will remain a root cause of the challenges facing cycling in the United States.

Something important to understand

Before we discuss how we can advocate for effective change, it is important to understand just how difficult it can be to convince elite athletes that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. When reflecting on moments throughout her cycling career when concerned coaches or staff approached her, Veronica was candid about how unreceptive she often was:

“I had a really irrational piece in my brain that was very stubborn and even if somebody said, ‘Hey, it’s not okay that you’re not fueling well,’ my response was, ‘Okay,’ but not changing anything about it. So there was no one who was holding me accountable to changing my behaviors. I don’t know what sort of intervention would have been helpful for me at the time because nothing was going to change for me until I decided to make a change. It took me hitting pretty much rock bottom in order to actually decide to make those changes, which is really unfortunate, and I think that’s the case for a lot of people.”

This dynamic is important to understand because addressing health issues, particularly those with a mental health component, is incredibly complex. When we talk about paths forward, support structures will need to be built into any solution from the ground up. Veronica was clear that a consistent and patient support network is not optional, it is essential:

“When people are in it, they’re pretty in it. It’s a very hard place to get out of unless they decide. I think it’s really important for people who have someone in their lives who may be struggling just to constantly reassure them that they’re there. I don’t have the words for how grateful I am for the people that stayed with me through it. They educated themselves on how to kind of handle me without making things worse.”

Support networks are crucial, but so are the proverbial lifeguards who can be trained to spot warning signs even before an athlete’s personal support network does.

Coaches can be the first line of defense

Athlete health should be established as a priority from the very beginning of ones competitive career. Thinking back to Veronica’s entry into cycling, who was best positioned to first recognize the habits she had developed? For Veronica, and for many athletes, that person would have been her first coach.

Veronica was clear that there is no individual blame to assign here. Her experience reflects the strain on our development system as a whole and highlights just how important the athlete-coach relationship can be when it is functioning well. Thinking back to her first team in Seattle, Veronica noted that her coach did try to intervene in certain areas:

“One of the coaches from this team would call me out for not fueling properly on the bike and saying that that’s not okay, but that was kind of the extent of the concern in that way.”

For coaches in that position, that level of intervention is honestly all that can be expected within the current structure of domestic cycling in the US. On an amateur elite team, no one is being compensated enough to dig deeper into an athlete’s eating habits off the bike. The focus is on performance. Veronica understood that reality:

“I know it’s not necessarily someone else’s responsibility to take care of me when I’m this way. But in order to prevent what later happened with me and to intervene earlier, something does need to happen.”

So does that mean we have to accept that meaningful intervention is impossible until athletes reach the professional level, where coaches are full-time employees with the capacity to address every aspect of an athlete’s wellbeing? Absolutely not. This is precisely where institutional change can make a significant difference.

What does a step forward look like?

Addressing mental health, disordered eating, and energy deficiencies in cycling will require real investment from every organization that interfaces with athletes throughout their development. USA Cycling, amateur teams, and collegiate programs will all need to develop new resources and curricula for coaches and athletes alike.

Having access to Veronica was invaluable because she brings experience from every level of sport, having competed as a collegiate soccer player, an amateur domestic racer, and a WorldTour rider. We are both the first to admit that our ideas are just that, ideas, and that medical professionals will play a significant role in crafting better systems. But putting these ideas into the public conversation will hopefully spark meaningful dialogue and move the needle toward real change.

As Veronica and I discussed potential solutions, the conversation naturally gravitated toward areas where USA Cycling could have the greatest impact. As the governing body overseeing coaches, athletes, teams, and collegiate programs, they represent the most organized distribution system for new guidelines and programs. That also makes them another critical first touchpoint for athletes, as well as an advisory resource for the coaches who interact with those athletes daily.

*A note on professional teams: for any pro-level team or program, the UCI would ultimately be the governing body responsible for implementing significant changes at the pro level.

Where a governing body can help

Currently, if you visit USA Cycling’s website looking for resources on mental health and disordered eating, you will find two brief information pages: one covering member wellbeing resources and another with general information on disordered eating.

While these resources exist, the burden of responsibility falls entirely on individual athletes and coaches to seek them out. Even when they do, there are no clear guidelines to follow or structured frameworks to help build better safety nets at the team or program level. With that gap in mind, Veronica offered several suggestions that could establish more reliable and proactive support for both athletes and coaches through USA Cycling.

Support hotlines for coaches and staff

One of the less invasive resources that could make an immediate difference is a simple hotline that coaches and staff could contact when they notice concerning behavior in one of their athletes. Veronica laid out the vision clearly:

“Building a support team for staff and coaches as well as athletes is only a positive. Maybe having some kind of hotline — if a staff member sees something that they think is destructive or dangerous for one of their athletes, having the resource to contact someone anonymously. They don’t have to say names. ‘I’m working with this athlete, these are some of the red flags I’ve seen. Should I be concerned? If so, what are the next steps?’”

The anonymity component is important. It would give coaches the confidence to raise concerns without fear of spreading rumors or unfairly stigmatizing an athlete. A hotline like this would be a meaningful first step because it creates a guided pathway for addressing a problem rather than leaving coaches to navigate the situation alone. That said, it still places significant responsibility on coaches to recognize the warning signs in the first place.

Intervention frameworks

Veronica revealed that this is actually an area where she has already had conversations with USA Cycling. Establishing a standard framework that licensed coaches are required to learn and implement would be a significant step forward in both awareness and empowerment, giving coaches the tools to intervene when certain thresholds are met. As Veronica explained:

“If an athlete is training so much and you don’t have the education to know how to fuel properly, then you might fall into some really bad deficits that can lead to RED-S. And that is just purely educating that individual, which is a simple intervention a coach can make. But if you have the other side, that is intentional underfueling and intentional overtraining, that’s obviously a red flag people should be trained to spot and address.

I think there’s just so much education that can be done around what is appropriate to say, what’s not appropriate to say, and what sort of education we can give to coaches and staff on red flags when they may see something that is destructive behavior from one of their athletes.”

As such a framework is developed, there could be tiered levels of certification that coaches work toward, each building a deeper understanding of warning signs and intervention strategies. Over time, mandatory baseline education for athletes at the point of USA Cycling licensing could become a natural extension of that system.

Racing license suspension

On the surface this feels like a controversial step, but the reasoning behind it makes a great deal of sense given what we have learned from Veronica’s experience. Staging any kind of serious intervention with a high-performance athlete is incredibly difficult. If an athlete is completely focused on competing, the possibility of losing that ability might be the one thing that convinces them to take an issue seriously and, over time, accept that change was necessary.

“Maybe USA Cycling can intervene in the sense that they have the power to take away someone’s license. It seems like a really severe intervention. Obviously I think there could be like a three-strike kind of rule. If you’re at least making changes and you’re showing that you’re making changes, then the risk of having your license taken away is less severe, but if you’re at a point where you are severely undernourished and severely underweight, not being allowed to race, I think that could be a beneficial intervention.”

It is a fine line that would need to be walked carefully. Any license suspension would need to come with immediate access to a support network to help the athlete understand that they have not done anything wrong and are not being punished. This information would also need to remain completely confidential between the athlete, their coach, and USA Cycling so as not to affect the rider’s ability or willingness to compete in the future. Any license suspension should also come with protections ensuring that the athlete retains access to team resources in accordance with their existing contracts. In other words, a team should not be permitted to drop a rider solely on the basis of a health-related license suspension.

UCI physiological minimums

The next level of intervention extends beyond USA Cycling and addresses the issue at the professional level through the UCI. This approach is more scientific in nature and introduces a layer of accountability in the professional peloton where, as we know, ulterior motives can and do influence the decisions of both athletes and teams. Athletes are already tested for anti-doping protocols, so it should be simple to monitor other biological markers.

“I think being able to track bone density and ensure that women’s estrogen and progesterone levels are at a certain level, and in men’s testosterone is at a certain level. Having minimums be met in that sense could be beneficial to ensure health for all riders. I think people have spoken about having a body fat minimum, but that can be so different for different people. So I think having just basic functionality markers at a bare minimum would be helpful to ensure everyone maintains health.”

Extra resources for collegiate programs and beyond

As discussed in previous editions of Built on Bikes, USA Cycling is currently the sanctioning body for collegiate cycling, meaning all of the resources outlined above would also be available to collegiate programs and amateur teams across the United States.

With that said, we know that many cyclists come from other sports, and Veronica’s story is a clear example of that. Her underfueling began during her time as a collegiate soccer player, which means there was an opportunity for intervention long before she ever became a cyclist.

This extends beyond the reach of cycling specifically, but for collegiate endurance sports there is a real opportunity for governing bodies to collaborate on earlier detection systems and educate coaching staff across disciplines including cycling, triathlon, and rowing.

Through the combined efforts of several governing bodies, or even a direct partnership between the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the NCAA, more concrete guidelines could be developed to train collegiate coaching staff across all sports on recognizing and responding to disordered eating. It is a significant undertaking, but it addresses something that touches virtually every competitive sport. Veronica’s own experience makes the case clearly:

“My coach in college absolutely knew that there was something going on, but she definitely didn’t know how to go about intervening other than putting me on the bench and telling me that I seemed tired. That’s not necessarily a fault to her. She just didn’t have the education or the resources to deal with that.”

With collaboration from bodies like the NCAA, addressing the broader issue of disordered eating in collegiate sport becomes a much more achievable goal.

External influences to consider

So far we have outlined foundational systemic solutions that would help move the needle on preventable health issues affecting cyclists at every level. That should be the central takeaway from this article. But there are external factors that can influence an athlete’s mental health and eating habits independent of any institutional system, and that affect perfectly healthy athletes as well.

Veronica highlighted a significant outside influence that can heavily impact an athlete’s self-image: wearable training technology. Issuing sweeping guidelines on third party products would be nearly impossible for any governing body, but this is an area where targeted education for coaches and athletes can go a long way.

Cycling has always been one of the most data-obsessed sports, so it is easy to understand why athletes and coaches place significant importance on performance data coming from wearable technology.

Whether it is a Whoop recovery score, power numbers from intervals, or resting heart rate, cyclists will inevitably track and compare their metrics against their own baselines and their peers. Too often, those numbers become directly tied to an athlete’s sense of self-worth, which can become a catalyst for unhealthy obsession. It was something Veronica identified with personally:

“Once I started getting power data on my computer, I was so focused on the power. I wasn’t thinking about anything else. I wasn’t very good at understanding how I was feeling at a certain effort and I was too focused on the data.”

Veronica also shared stories of riders going into races convinced they would perform poorly simply because their sleep score was low the night before. It is a telling example of how access to certain data can actually hinder athletes who would never have struggled had they not seen the numbers at all. For this specific problem, coaches once again have the greatest potential for impact, as was the case for Veronica:

“I know coaches that are out there who will just say, ‘I don’t even want you to have power on your screen. Just go.’ And I think that’s really necessary to have. I had a phenomenal coach the last few years who I was incredibly transparent with. He knew what I had been struggling with, and he helped me try to improve while also trying to recover, which is a really contradictory world to live in.”

While this is a broad issue without a simple fix, Veronica offered one concrete suggestion for helping athletes find the right coach reliably:

“Maybe that’s something USA Cycling can do as well — vouch for certain coaches that are out there and available to ensure that athletes who go through USA Cycling are able to access quality coaches that will have the education and the resources to navigate that sort of thing.”

It’s time to get the ball rolling

Growing cycling in the United States requires a bias toward action, and that applies to every factor that contributes to reliable and sustainable development. If we are not producing healthy athletes as a nation, we will see fewer wins on the world stage and fewer careers that reach their full potential. Women’s cycling offers the best opportunity for the US to establish itself as a dominant force in the sport, but after speaking with Veronica, it is clear that we remain vulnerable to health issues that are far more common in women’s cycling than most people realize.

Siloed governance and fragmented decision making are only slowing us down. Major organizations need to come together to establish clear guidelines that empower healthier athlete-coach relationships at every level of the sport. Veronica brings lived experience and has outlined simple but meaningful ways to combat the health challenges facing cycling in the United States. We need to be receptive to that feedback and move with urgency before more athletes pay the price with their health and their careers.

What’s next for Veronica?

Since stepping away from professional cycling in November 2024, Veronica has returned to school to pursue her next chapter while continuing her recovery and maintaining a relationship with cycling as a sport she loves. Veronica shared a tremendous amount of valuable insight for this piece, and I wanted to give her the opportunity to highlight anything I may have missed and share what she has learned through her own journey.

Veronica reemphasized the importance of support systems and expressed deep gratitude for the people who have been with her throughout her own recovery. She also highlighted Project RED-S, an organization dedicated to educating and providing resources for athletes, coaches, and support networks dealing with the condition:

“Project RED-S is a really good organization that has a lot of resources, both based in the UK and Europe, and in the United States. That is the main organization that is providing resources for individuals, and it’s for people that are struggling with RED-S and also for people who are in the realm of somebody struggling with RED-S.”

A sincere thank you to Veronica for being so open and thoughtful on a topic that matters deeply to the future of this sport.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind. Between developing new stories for Built on Bikes, getting in shape for spring riding, and keeping up with my career, I also had the opportunity to travel to Austin, Texas for SXSW. I was there for a mix of business and cycling events, including a podcast recording, a private cycling and investment lunch, and a live panel featuring USA Cycling Chief of Staff Karl Pelletier, US Criterium National Champion Lucas Bourgoyne, and Kenetik CEO Devon Price.

It was an incredibly busy few days, but the trip left me with renewed confidence that cycling can and will grow significantly in the United States. Specifically, I came away thinking about two topics I have covered previously on this Substack:

• America needs more cycling capitals

• Growing cycling domestically will require investment from outside individuals and industries to fund the development that produces more talent capable of competing on the world stage

For me, these topics emerged once again as key factors in growing the sport here at home. In Austin, I watched cycling unite individuals from vastly different backgrounds and industries and facilitate genuinely thoughtful conversations about moving the sport forward. It showed that strangers can quickly connect through cycling culture and build something meaningful together, growing the sport in a way that feels uniquely American.

Before diving into the details, I want to acknowledge the incredible group of people that made all of this possible.

Hill Climbers

The driving force behind all of these events is Hill Climbers, a business network built around cycling. Founded in 2023, the Austin-based group is led by Sam Huntington and Stephen Cunningham. What started as a cycling podcast has since grown into a community of professionals united by a shared passion for the sport.

Hill Climbers’ goal is to promote and grow cycling by connecting people through networking events that bring professionals together, particularly those with influence in the cycling community. Since its founding, Hill Climbers has expanded from podcasting to regularly hosting investor events, live panel discussions that draw large crowds, and a weekly networking ride.

Sam was an early supporter of Built on Bikes, and we always intended to connect. As our schedules got busier, that conversation didn’t happen until a few months ago when Sam called to tell me about an investor lunch he was planning at SXSW.

Our shared passion was immediately obvious, and it made sense why he chose to reach out. Sam knew that I regularly write about the need for outside industries to invest in cycling in order to build deeper development pipelines in the United States. His vision for the event was to bring together venture investors, founders, and cycling industry professionals, including members of USA Cycling.

I will get into the details of the events shortly, but first I want to highlight the diversity of people who were in the room. On one end of the spectrum you had individuals whose full-time job is to grow cycling in the US. On the other, venture investors operating at the cutting edge of their industries, founders of brands with no prior connection to cycling, and even a few guests who weren’t cyclists at all. And somewhere in the middle, me, a passionate fan who happens to share his opinions on the internet.

For the majority of attendees, cycling was the common thread, and as I will describe, that created a uniquely dynamic environment that led to genuinely constructive conversations with real, actionable outcomes. I will circle back to Hill Climbers, but first let me provide some additional context on why the trip reaffirmed my hope for growing cycling domestically.

Austin proves cycling cities are possible

When I wrote about Bentonville transforming into a cycling town, it was clear that turning a smaller town into a cycling-forward community would be much easier than turning a major metropolitan city into a cycling mecca. Infrastructure costs less in smaller towns, and locals are more likely to get behind it given the direct economic benefits.

Going into Austin, I admittedly had preconceived notions that only a handful of cities have a noticeable cycling culture, mainly San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Boulder. While heavy cycling culture exists in each of those cities, it still doesn’t match the fervor and scale seen in Bentonville. Austin proved me wrong. It showed that a major city can cross the line from being a place where a lot of people ride bikes to becoming a city where cycling is genuinely known, celebrated, and fostered by the broader community.

The connection I made quickly was that in cities like San Francisco and New York, cycling culture exists but tends to come secondary to people’s careers. Group rides draw smaller turnouts due to less flexible work schedules and varying levels of interest in the community. In Austin, it felt like people’s personal and professional lives existed in greater harmony, and cycling was just as important to them as anything else.

That attitude toward cycling as more than a hobby has helped establish community institutions like the Breakfast Club, a monthly group ride that draws hundreds of cyclists and has been recognized as one of the largest group rides in the world. Visibility and community are everything when it comes to making a city truly cycling obsessed. Austin may not have the dedicated investment that Bentonville has, but the community alone has been enough to establish it as a genuine cycling city.

Investment and getting the right people in a room

It is common knowledge in the business world that transactions and deals are far easier to close when both parties share a common interest. The classic example is that a lot of business gets done on the golf course, and that is for a mainstream sport with a broad audience. So how does the same dynamic apply to cycling? It makes the connection even stronger.

When I write about the need to convince non-endemic sponsors and wealthy individuals to invest in the sport domestically, this is exactly the kind of dynamic I am talking about. People are far more likely to open their wallets for someone they trust and share a niche interest with. And if there is one thing you need to know about cyclists, it is that we will not shut up about bikes. We can talk about them all day.

Hill Climbers recognizes this and is growing its reach by bringing together people from unique backgrounds that fit together like puzzle pieces, each one a potential building block for something that could meaningfully grow the sport in the United States. I believe I saw proof of concept at the events I attended in Austin.

The lunch

The first event I attended was one I would also be participating in: a small lunch with investors, founders, and representatives from USA Cycling. There were even a few guests who were not cyclists, which made for a useful gauge of how well these ideas might resonate with a general, non-cycling audience.

Sam was gracious enough to give me the floor to share some remarks on what I have been writing about, mainly the case for private investment in domestic development pipelines. The conversation was strengthened considerably by the presence of USA Cycling Chief of Staff Karl Pelletier.

One area of focus was the opportunity to grow the sport through women’s cycling. For the non-cyclists in the room, attention sharpened when Karl told the story of Kristin Faulkner and Team USA winning gold at the Paris Olympics. In short, USA Cycling used AI and complex modeling to inform race strategy, ultimately determining that Kristin had a statistically significant chance of winning gold in the road race. They did the math, and it paid off.

The story landed immediately with a room full of venture investors. Beyond the technical appeal, it doubled as a classic underdog story with the kind of patriotism that only Olympic sport can produce.

No commitments were made during the lunch, but that was never the point. By facilitating that conversation, Hill Climbers planted the seed that cycling can be genuinely exciting and helped educate an important audience on why investment in the sport matters. It felt like proof of concept to me: that we can absolutely convey the importance of development and spread the vision of a more competitive cycling scene in the United States.

The live panel

As mentioned earlier, Hill Climbers also hosted a live panel podcast featuring Karl, Devon, and Lucas. This is not a new format for Hill Climbers, as they have produced multiple live panel events that consistently draw large audiences. Friday night was no exception. On what could have easily been a quiet evening, Sam and his team drew a packed crowd eager to listen and engage in conversation about the state of cycling in the United States.

The panel could not have represented more different backgrounds, but once again, a shared passion for cycling and endurance sport tied everything together in a way that felt completely natural. Every panelist brought something distinct to the discussion, and the audience could relate to and draw insight from each of them. Beyond the formal discussion itself, the time before and after the panel was filled with organic networking that felt effortless rather than forced.

I am naturally a somewhat shy person, but the room was incredibly welcoming and produced the easiest networking environment I have ever been a part of. Even guests who could not directly contribute to specific initiatives often knew someone who could, and they were genuinely happy to make the connection.

If Hill Climbers and the broader cycling community keep the momentum going with events like these, I believe we will achieve real progress in US cycling development by consistently connecting the right people and facilitating the right conversations.

What Hill Climbers is proving

The United States is often written off in the cycling world as a nation with a stagnating racing scene and weak development pipelines, but maybe that is actually our strength. In sports, nothing seems to motivate this country more than being overlooked and counted out. As USA Cycling and Kristin Faulkner have shown, cycling has no shortage of underdog stories capable of capturing the attention of American audiences. It is just a matter of telling them well and inspiring the right people to invest in future ones.

I have said it before, but the way we do that is by being scrappy and finding creative ways to move the sport forward. Hill Climbers is providing the spaces and conversations to make that happen. Unlike European nations where cycling development is government funded and centrally organized, the United States can reach and surpass their level of talent by piecing together an unconventional coalition of everyday individuals, cycling experts, investors, and passionate fans to build a pathway forward.

When the US wins big, the story will be incredible. We will be able to look back and say we made it possible by uniting the domestic cycling community and leveraging the talent and connections of thousands of passionate individuals. Instead of USA Cycling working in relative isolation, it will be a story about how organizations like Hill Climbers united a community to drive real change. The patriotism that process evokes will be unlike anything produced by any other national sports story.

Cycling in the United States has a fighting spirit, and with continued community building that connects industry professionals with influential people, it will have a real fighting chance at hitting the mainstream.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

We connected earlier this week to discuss some of the topics I covered in my M&A article as well as broader cycling industry trends. One question I asked them was whether they were seeing anything in the cycling sector related to live events. Having previously written about how race series like the Life Time Grand Prix might position for a future acquisition, I wanted to pressure test that theory with someone who operates at the deal level.

While they acknowledged that race series are growing in popularity, they pointed to cycling tourism as a particularly promising business model within live events. Cycling touring companies are well positioned to benefit from the growing consumer demand to center travel around outdoor activities, a trend closely tied to the rise of ecotourism globally.

As someone who regularly dives deep into the cycling industry, cycling tourism is a segment I have mostly overlooked. I know relatively few companies that offer this kind of bike-centric travel experience. Beyond businesses that rent bikes to explore a city, the touring companies I am most familiar with are focused on providing bike tours in Europe, exploring the famous roads and mountain passes featured in grand tours like the Tour de France.

These models largely require consumers to do their own research on providers in a specific region, and most are centered around road riding. That feels more like infrastructure tourism than ecotourism. Cycling tourism is clearly growing, but is there a way to expand its benefits to more cycling businesses, get more people out on bikes, and more directly capitalize on the rise of ecotourism?

How I combine cycling and vacation

As someone who is no stranger to ecotourism or cycling in new locations, this immediately made me think about how I personally approach bike touring. The United States is home to premiere gravel racing events, and that is exactly how I combine the sport I love with exploring new natural areas. I am far from alone in this. Many cyclists have started using gravel races as an excuse to travel to new and interesting locations. Beyond having a goal tied to their travels and a built-in community to connect with, most will extend their stay at a race location to explore the surrounding area.

This got me thinking about the opportunities that could open new revenue streams for existing businesses looking to capitalize on the continued rise of ecotourism. But before diving in, let’s take a quick look at the current landscape of cycling tourism.

A largely unchanged industry with massive potential

As I mentioned, cycling tourism has historically been a business model centered around road cycling that exists and thrives in Europe. But is there massive potential to expand across continents and cycling disciplines?

To better understand the current landscape, I came across a telling report on the global bike touring industry put together by the Adventure Travel Trade Association, CycleSummit, the European Cyclists’ Federation, and EuroVelo. Compiled in 2024, the report surveyed 245 bike touring operators, roughly 70% of whom are based in Europe, and gauged market growth possibilities across disciplines and geographies. Here are the key insights I took away.

Europe dominates the market

• The top three touring markets, in order, are: Italy, France, and Germany

The U.S. has a large consumer base

• The USA is the single largest source market globally, with 29% of operators reporting the majority of their clients come from the US

• For non-European operators specifically, 51% of clients come from the US

• Despite this, the US is not among the top cycling tour destinations, suggesting significant untapped domestic opportunity

Discipline breakdown

• Road bikes dominate in Europe at 63% of tours

• Mountain biking is the biggest discipline outside Europe at 34%

• Gravel is still small but growing, representing 7% of non-European tours and 2% in Europe

• Gravel cycling identified as a key emerging trend by 15% of operators

Accessibility is growing

• 64% of operators report at least 25% of their clients now use e-bikes

• 33% of operators already have more than 50% of clients on e-bikes

• E-bike adoption is significantly higher in Europe at 72% versus 46% outside Europe

• E-bikes are identified as the single biggest trend in cycling tourism by 51% of operators

Challenges

• Marketing to new customers is the second biggest challenge at 50%

• Safety and road infrastructure are significant concerns for itinerary planning

According to operators in the industry, business is growing and markets are expanding, but there is still a lot of ground to make up after years of historic stagnation. What stood out to me most were the challenges listed in the report. To me, they scream opportunity for some very specific players in the market.

A modern alternative

The market is telling us that there is an emerging appetite for off-road touring, and I believe there are already big players providing this experience, just not beyond a single day. As I mentioned, gravel racing has become a go-to way for cyclists to travel to unique destinations and center a trip around the bike. Some standalone races embrace this destination theme, but two series have scaled it into a full identity.

The Gravel Earth Series and the GRVL event series both center their brands around destination gravel events. The Gravel Earth Series consists of eleven standalone races held in some of the most unique places on earth, including Maasai Mara in Kenya and the Oregon Trail. The GRVL event series consists of three races located in Colorado, Finland, and Australia.

Both series embrace ecotourism to the fullest while making the experience unforgettable through secondary events and amenities for participants. And both have a real opportunity to profit from the challenges currently facing the bike touring industry.

With marketing and safety being the primary challenges facing bike touring operators, both series have already addressed these problems. The Gravel Earth Series and GRVL have built some of the most recognizable brands in the space, earning a reputation for putting on world class events in destinations that cyclists might not otherwise think to visit. The problem is that they are leaving significant revenue opportunities on the table, ones that would benefit organizers and bring more stability to their overall business model.

Simply put, both series and their individual race organizers should consider launching subsidiary businesses that function as bike touring companies, supplementing the revenue earned from their main race events.

There is no reinventing the wheel here. Both series would work with their individual race organizers to gauge capacity and interest in launching a touring business alongside their existing events. Unlike someone starting a touring company from scratch, these ventures would have the full backing and brand recognition of well-known race series already famous for putting on outstanding events. There are risks associated with any new business model, and the approach would look different between the two series, but there is a clear gap in the market that their efforts could fill.

For the remainder of this piece, I will be running an abbreviated SWOT analysis, covering the strengths and weaknesses of both race series and the threats and opportunities associated with expanding their business models to include a bike touring operation.

*The GRVL event series does advertise GRVL Travel, which is the exact business model that I am pitching here. Transparently, I never knew about this venture and after talking with sources familiar with the series’ operations, it seems like this product is sporadically offered and not consistent year to year.

Both series have strengths and weaknesses

While both series have strong branding and operating structures for gravel racing, certain attributes will help and hurt their ability to launch secondary bike touring businesses.

Gravel Earth Strengths

• Event location diversity will allow the series to tackle several geographic markets and offer a network of experiences operated by locals at each destination.

• Strong brand recognition with broad reach. Gravel Earth Series is known for marquee stage races like Oregon Trail and Migration Gravel, which are essentially fully catered bike tours with a racing component. Consumers can reasonably expect that any bike tour organized through Gravel Earth Series partners will be a premium experience.

• Decentralized organizational structure. While the series oversees high level strategy, race logistics remain with individual organizers. Gravel Earth essentially functions as a marketing platform, collecting commission from organizers who pay to be included in the series. The same model would translate naturally to a bike touring business.

Gravel Earth Weaknesses

• The series is known for physically demanding races across a wide range of road and off-road surfaces. This could deter more casual cyclists who might assume tour routes would be equally as challenging.

• The highly managed race experience means individual organizers carry significant logistics costs, tying up capital that could otherwise be directed toward launching a touring business.

GRVL Strengths

• GRVL events are famously inclusive. Courses offer distances for every skill level and the atmosphere is curated around the average rider, with activations and community events built into race week.

• GRVL events have a strong reputation among both racers and amateurs for exceptional event execution.

• Their events are approachable to new cyclists and can be as performance oriented as an individual desires.

GRVL Weaknesses

• With only three races on the calendar, opportunities to build a touring business around existing organizers with proven track records are limited.

The opportunities and threats presented by a new business model

Opportunities

When thinking purely about the business model, adding bike touring to an existing race series presents a few significant opportunities to grow revenue.

A touring business would extend the earning window and operating season for organizers. Rather than relying on a handful of days per year to generate revenue, brands could expand that timeframe to weeks or even months.

Customer bases would grow beyond riders who are primarily interested in racing. This expansion would reach across age groups, genders, and ability levels, opening the door to a much broader audience.

With the right staff in place to run the touring operation day to day, this could become a largely self-sustaining revenue stream that reports up to existing race organizers without disrupting the core business.

Threats

In many ways, the threats associated with launching a new business model mirror the opportunities that come with it.

Cannibalization is a real consideration. Once consumers are presented with more options, it becomes possible that fewer people sign up for the main race events associated with each series, ultimately hurting both business models in the long run.

If sufficient staff cannot be hired to run the touring operation, the added complexity could begin to affect the primary business, leading to inefficient use of resources and improper scaling.

What it could look like in practice

Gravel Earth

To execute effectively, Gravel Earth will need to lean into their strengths while also combating preconceived notions about their brand. The rollout of a touring business would be gradual, starting with traditional markets in Europe to build operational experience before expanding into markets like Africa. With four races in Spain and one in Italy, the series has a strong foundation in the European market, which also has an underdeveloped off-road touring scene.

If they can pull market share away from traditional touring companies without cannibalizing their core business, it would be a strong signal that the expansion is viable. Gravel Earth would also need to reposition their image in the touring space as a brand that can support shorter, less demanding experiences at a more accessible price point.

Once initial success is proven, expanding into high growth markets like Africa, New Zealand, and Eastern Europe would be the natural next step. If they scale as quickly as their race series has, they would have a real shot at becoming a market leader in off-road touring.

GRVL

Given that the GRVL event series has already experimented with travel experiences in the past, I see two paths forward. Either the brand determines that a touring business is not a viable model for them, in which case they should double down on race events and expand their calendar, or they fully commit and launch three touring operations that correspond to each event in the series.

If the latter is the right path, a measured approach could serve them well, much like it would for Gravel Earth Series. With three races on the calendar, each organizer should consider offering a limited number of touring experiences in the early years to refine operations before scaling. This creates room for experimentation and iteration, minimizing cannibalization while ensuring the brand maintains its reputation for best in class event execution.

A space to watch

Barring negative macroeconomic trends and the impacts of climate change, ecotourism will continue to rise, and with it, the popularity of exploring outdoor spaces on two wheels. Since its inception, the bike touring industry has been predominantly focused on road riding in European markets, but the data points to a growing demand for off-road options in emerging markets around the world.

Breaking into one of these markets as a brand new touring company would be difficult without an established name behind the business to earn consumer trust. For these reasons, popular off-road race series are uniquely positioned to expand their earning potential with a business model that already plays to their existing strengths. If they can manage cannibalization risks and scale efficiently, race series have a real opportunity to evolve into true adventure platforms.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

Compared to other industries, cycling and endurance sports haven’t embraced AI to the same extent. It makes sense. Endurance sports are focused on humans using their bodies to compete, and there is only so much AI can do for an athlete when they are actively racing.

The question isn’t if endurance sport will catch up to other industries in AI adoption, but when. As I thought about this, a more interesting question came to mind: what AI use case will dominate the endurance market and have the most impact on cycling?

As it currently stands, that use case is applications and platforms that help athletes and everyday hobbyists maximize performance through coaching, nutrition, and fitness tracking. No real surprise there, since we are already seeing major companies like Strava, Whoop, and Oura tackling this space and generating billions of dollars in revenue.

The problem is that those products only tackle one part of the equation. The same is true for platforms like TrainingPeaks and Join Cycling, which each address one specific use case. These platforms can integrate and communicate with each other, but that is asking a lot of the general market. People new to training won’t know about all of these platforms and will be looking for a one-size-fits-all solution that optimizes their performance and training in one place.

This week we’ll take a deep dive into AI in the endurance performance space. We are already seeing an influx of companies entering the market, but they remain siloed into their own subsections. The space will become increasingly competitive as new companies try to become the all-in-one solution while others look to merge and consolidate, but what will be the winning formula?

The current performance AI landscape

As I mentioned, cycling and endurance sports are already familiar with AI. Top WorldTour teams are using custom AI solutions that cover every aspect of performance, but for the privateer athlete and everyday hobbyist, the market remains fragmented into separate category segments.

Wearables and Tracking: Companies like Garmin, Whoop, and Oura collect biometric data and track trends in sleep, heart rate, fatigue, and more. These products have reached the mass market and have already educated the public on what is possible when it comes to optimizing health and fitness.

Training and Coaching: These two functions could each be their own subcategory, but products that specialize in one often have features that encompass the other. TrainingPeaks, for example, allows coaches and athletes to develop a training strategy while also offering virtual training where athletes can connect their indoor trainer to the app. AI is then gaining insights from actual riding data to inform better coaching. Other examples in this space include Strava, AI Endurance, and Join Cycling.

Nutrition: The key distinction for nutrition apps is that the best ones don’t just track daily meals and macros, they also optimize race and training nutrition specifically. Fuelin is a strong example, helping athletes dial in race day fueling while tracking their everyday dietary habits.

Many of these platforms already integrate with each other, but the core issue remains: new hobbyists won’t know all of these platforms exist. And even when they do, purchasing multiple subscriptions* at $100 or more each and integrating them all can feel overwhelming. You already know where I am going with this, but there is more nuance to the issue than simply picking three platforms and merging them into one service.

*The annual cost of maintaining subscriptions to Strava, TrainingPeaks, Whoop, Zwift, and Fuelin totals $735.

What gives a product the most potential to benefit from AI?

Before we get to the most likely scenario for an all-in-one AI endurance solution, I think there are some pieces of the equation that most people are missing. It cannot be overstated how a single attribute can take an AI product from good to transformative. To identify these attributes, it helps to understand the features that make an AI solution truly impactful, not just in sport but across most industries:

• Creating equal impact for consumers and professionals

• The ability to automate a process from start to finish while constantly learning, streamlining, and optimizing

• Interoperability with other platforms through the use of an MCP*

• Ethically collecting large amounts of user data for enhanced context and learning

• Bridging the gap between the digital and physical world

It seems like our endurance-focused AI platforms already do all of these things, right? Mostly, but I have my doubts about how much actionable user data exists on more specialized applications compared to giants like Strava, Whoop, and Oura. That is piece one: a winning solution will need access to massive amounts of user performance data to develop more pointed analysis and actionable insights for athletes.

The second piece relates to bridging the gap between the digital and physical world. Wait, isn’t that the whole point of these applications? Yes, but that is not what I am referring to. These platforms have already gained popularity by bridging that gap, but there is another gap that remains largely unaddressed, and it comes down to nutrition.

*MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. Essentially, it allows an AI tool to connect with another application, learn from the data on that app, and then let you use the AI tool to work with that data.

Nutrition products are a key component in an all inclusive solution

Nutrition can benefit from all five attributes we just mentioned, but no application is currently bridging the gap between the athlete and actual performance nutrition products. Apps like Fuelin are checking most of the boxes, but can leave a lot of ambiguity in their nutrition plans. For anyone who isn’t a professional athlete, the guidelines can quickly become hard to follow.

Take a beginner who is new to performance training. Their nutrition app suggests consuming 60 grams of carbs per hour, 0.5 liters of water at a certain sodium concentration, and 30 milligrams of caffeine in hour two of their workout. How does a complete beginner even begin to decipher and implement a plan like that?

Assuming they have at least a basic understanding that endurance athletes use gels and performance nutrition products, the number of products to choose from is overwhelming. Each brand uses its own buzzwords, formulas, and dosing suggestions. On top of that, every person has a different gut tolerance, and dialing in nutrition requires a lot of testing and product mixing to get right. Someone might visit their local sports store or browse The Feed online and buy certain products in bulk, only to discover those products cause gut distress and do more harm than good.

For these reasons, a truly comprehensive AI performance solution will need a nutrition component that can guide athletes through product offerings and ideally automate their purchasing and testing, bridging the digital and physical world.

To meet the requirements of an all-in-one solution, nutrition AI products will need to do the following:

Meet athletes where they are at: Solutions need plans that serve both the seasoned professional and the beginner hobbyist. If a pro already knows what products work for them, the solution should focus on race and training specific nutrition requirements and ask for more detailed user input. If someone is new to the sport, the AI should take a holistic approach, suggesting products and nutrition plans while helping the athlete test different combinations. The dialogue between athletes and AI shouldn’t get lost in the finest details, but instead focus on building a solid foundation of understanding and performance implementation.

Continuously interact with the latest science: Current offerings employ staff dietitians and nutrition experts, which is great, but it is unclear whether their AI is being fed the latest peer-reviewed research on nutrition and performance. The ideal solution should constantly monitor the most relevant and accurate science, staying on top of developments that a human researcher might miss.

Connect to a marketplace: Integrating with a marketplace like The Feed is essential. The goal is to reduce the work an athlete has to do by helping them buy and test products suited to their preferences, rather than sending them to scroll through hundreds of options at a retailer. In an ideal world, the nutrition AI takes in athlete feedback on specific products and uses that to inform future buying decisions, making it a truly hands-off experience for the consumer.

So, what does the dream AI performance product look like?

The path forward is straightforward. All performance data and guidance needs to live under one platform and connect to third party retailers that provide the physical products that enhance an athlete’s performance. The AI also needs to be well trained on ethically sourced user data and peer-reviewed research that reflects the best performance practices.

Thinking as a cyclist, my dream platform would have the following functionality:

• Workout planning, tracking, and reporting, similar to TrainingPeaks

• The ability to create virtual workouts for indoor training systems, like Zwift or TrainingPeaks Virtual

• Fueling coaching, tracking, and experimentation on and off the bike, like Fuelin

• Social sharing capabilities, like Strava

• A reasonable yearly subscription

• Preferred partnerships with nutrition suppliers that can automate orders based on AI-assisted nutrition plans

• Partnerships with retailers that can recommend the best third party wearables based on an athlete’s preferences and goals (Garmin, Whoop, Hdrop, etc.)

• Personalization that draws on data from professional athletes to inform training for more dedicated amateurs

This is the starting point for a truly all-encompassing solution that could benefit a professional or a complete beginner training for their first triathlon, marathon, or gravel race. From that base, the possibilities for further capabilities get really interesting.

Imagine the platform partnering with a professional cycling team like Visma-Lease a Bike and gathering data from their riders’ training plans. You could ask the AI to analyze your training data and identify which rider you most closely align with. Say it determines your training and strengths most closely resemble Sepp Kuss. From there, your training gradually shifts to reflect your needs while nudging you toward Sepp’s rider profile. Or imagine a complete beginner watching Wout van Aert race and deciding that is their sign to start cycling. They could begin training and optimizing toward Wout’s rider type from day one.

There is an obvious slippery slope here, which is why it is important for the AI to have enough context to guide people toward the healthiest and most realistic path. If a 6’4”, 230 pound rider says they want to train like Jonas Vingegaard, there should be guardrails that flag that as a difficult and potentially unhealthy goal. Complete context is everything for an AI application, and products like these need to be developed with extreme caution and diligence.

These platforms will be a massive unlock for overlooked communities

One of the most meaningful benefits of this type of platform would be improved access to informed coaching guidance for athletes with specific physical considerations. Women are often completely overlooked in conventional training platforms and even in broader training discussions. Menstrual cycles and pregnancy are significant factors in structuring training goals, plans, and nutrition that are both effective and, most importantly, healthy.

The ideal solution would be able to track cycles and optimize training for every phase of them. For athletes who are pregnant and hoping to maintain fitness, reliable guidance can be incredibly hard to find, and a platform like this could ease that burden significantly. Post-pregnancy recovery presents an even greater challenge, as athletes need to be mindful of how certain nutrition practices and training loads affect them while breastfeeding.

An almost entirely overlooked situation is maintaining effective and healthy training for athletes who are in the process of transitioning or have recently done so. Having the context to guide an athlete through that process would be a significant unlock for trans athletes and could meaningfully contribute to greater representation in the sport.

As already noted, the AI will need to be continuously and rigorously evaluated to ensure it is providing healthy guidelines and consistently prompting athletes to seek medical advice before implementing certain practices.

Ultimately, a truly inclusive solution will broaden access to performance and lead to greater representation at every level of the sport.

Back to business, how do we get there?

Assuming the industry recognizes the need for an all-in-one solution that eliminates multiple subscriptions, how will the development of such a platform unfold? In my eyes, there are really only two possibilities.

1. An existing platform scales rapidly and gains the resources to outbuild competitors and develop comprehensive functionality

2. A consolidation event through M&A sees popular solutions fall under the same banner, integrating seamlessly to create a new product under unified branding

I believe the latter would be the best case scenario for consumers given the amount of data and infrastructure already available, but with AI companies raising money at a staggering pace, either situation is possible and a mix of both is most likely.

On the M&A route, there are several possibilities. A private equity firm or holding company could acquire companies like TrainingPeaks, Fuelin, and The Feed and initiate a merger to combine them and begin building out a comprehensive solution. Buying two or three companies at once might seem aggressive, but in the world of private equity, companies like these sit on the more affordable end of the acquisition spectrum.

We could also see strategic acquisitions, and there is one scenario that stands out as particularly high risk, high reward. In the context of this piece, the only companies in the space that are profitable enough to acquire others are Strava, Whoop, or Oura. Any of them could make a play at acquiring some combination of the companies mentioned above and build a one-size-fits-all solution under a well known brand name.

Say Strava acquires TrainingPeaks, The Feed, and Fuelin over a relatively short period of time. All three continue operating their independent businesses, but select resources are pulled from each to begin developing a new flagship subscription product. That product is an all-in-one AI assisted training platform with retail integration, priced at a fraction of what four separate subscriptions would cost.

What about wearables? Simple: partner with or recommend non-subscription biometric trackers like Garmin. If executed well and quickly enough, Strava is suddenly competing at the level of Whoop and Oura.

Time will tell

We see bold mergers and acquisitions happen across industries all the time, so a scenario like this is certainly not out of the question. AI is here whether we like it or not, and with endurance sports continuing to grow in popularity, consumers will eventually demand a comprehensive, all-in-one performance solution. The result will be more athletes and more talented athletes turning pro as a result. If it all comes together, this is certainly a case of AI for good.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

In that piece, I also showcased an industry report indicating that brand and storytelling will be a key differentiating factor for companies moving forward. Smaller brands have known this for a while, and for investors, finding strong stories will be a key factor in their diligence process.

Storytelling has been a major theme since I began writing for Built on Bikes. While analyzing why the Netflix series Tour de France: Unchained fell short, I highlighted its lack of consistent storytelling throughout a WorldTour season, lackluster presentation of grit, and minimal focus on cycling culture. If a brand or documentary could accurately portray those characteristics of cycling, it would be far more likely to find success in the United States and, most importantly, grow the sport domestically.

This week, I had the opportunity to chat with two founders who sit at the intersection of these topics. They are building a scalable business and creating a brand built on storytelling that resonates far beyond diehard cycling fans. Their product is a new race format that is easily digestible and characterized by constant action, much like traditionally popular sports such as basketball and hockey.

For this edition of Built on Bikes, I interviewed James and Clare Grady, co-founders of Formula Fixed, a new professional race series addressing the historical challenge of making cycling entertaining and accessible to mainstream audiences. Together, we dive into their business model, how they are building a strong brand through storytelling, and the future opportunities ahead for Formula Fixed. We also zoom out to discuss how Formula Fixed is benefiting fans, athletes, and the sport of cycling as a whole.

What is Formula Fixed?

Formula Fixed was founded in 2023 by James and Clare Grady. Before Formula Fixed, the pair were running Mission Crit, a fixed-gear bike race in San Francisco. Mission Crit was born in 2014 as an underground race held in a parking lot, but over time became a marquee cycling event that amassed over 6,000 spectators and 300 competing athletes.

While Mission Crit was extremely popular, James and Clare noticed there might be a better way to present fixed-gear racing that could draw in even more fans and athletes. The traditional race format required significant planning, including road closures, media coverage that captures the full race course, and finding ways to help fans enjoy and understand the race while only being able to view one section of it at a time. James summed up the problem well:

“We basically had to build an entire race course every single time we were putting on an event, and we observed that maybe it’s harder for people to get into the story of a race if they can’t see the whole race the whole time.”

Formula Fixed addresses those problems by organizing short track fixed-gear races that are fast-paced, dynamic, and repeatable. The series defines its event style around four core attributes:

• A heat format where multiple 5-minute races qualify athletes into the final

• Roughly 400-meter closed-loop tracks that are highly technical

• Fixed-gear, brakeless track bikes that produce dynamic racing, bold moves, and physical competition

• Events designed for broadcast clarity and a comprehensive fan experience

What is being fixed?

Beyond addressing the challenges that James and Clare experienced with Mission Crit, Formula Fixed is built to address a larger issue, the historic barrier to entry for fans in the United States. I’ve talked about this in length while analyzing why cycling media has not been able to attract a significant amount of new fans, but Clare outlined the challenge clearly:

“Traditional cycling can be hard to follow. The races are long, the storylines are fragmented, and the fan experience just isn’t really built for modern audiences. We created Formula Fixed to be the cycling property that’s easy to understand, easy to watch, and really built around athletes as characters. It’s a format first, story first, race series designed to make cycling compelling in real time, not just impressive in hindsight.

At its core, Formula Fixed is solving for traditional cycling’s complex race formats, costly production requirements, limited in-person viewership, and a cultural disconnect that has historically deterred younger and more diverse audiences.

Where is Formula Fixed at today?

Since launching in 2023, Formula Fixed has grown into a formidable event platform. This year will also mark the launch of a pro series featuring a roster of 48 athletes split between men’s and women’s fields. Formula Fixed events are set to be multi-day experiences, with three short-track races across one week and projected attendance of 2,400 spectators per event.

James and Clare aren’t building this alone either. They have assembled a small but experienced team of sports media professionals, including Emmy-nominated content creators and brand professionals with backgrounds at properties like Wasserman, X Games, the Olympics, and Nike.

The foundation has clearly been laid, but what will make Formula Fixed succeed and make it an enticing brand for sponsors and investors alike?

Fan engagement is a formula for success

We’ve seen cycling try to engage larger, mainstream audiences over the last few years. Netflix France released three seasons of their documentary series, Tour de France: Unchained, and gravel race series like the Life Time Grand Prix and Gravel Earth Series have led the charge for adventure ready consumers. TDF: Unchained proved to be underwhelming and not engaging for mainstream audiences while gravel still relies on participation to bring in new fans.

Gravel is certainly having an impact in the United States by getting more people on bikes, but no mainstream audience will be watching a five hour livestream that has a rotating set of characters and little storytelling in between. With engagement being a rare commodity in domestic cycling, Formula Fixed is framing it as the main issue it’s trying to solve.

As I see it, Formula Fixed attacks live and virtual fan engagement on four fronts:

• Optimizing for repeatability and scalability

• Utilizing fixed-gear culture to make attending live events enticing to fans

• Prioritizing story to create a brand that will engage fans beyond events

• Producing media and coverage that is palatable and easy to consume virtually

Repeatability & Scalability

As they learned with Mission Crit, James and Clare know that having an event format that is easily repeatable and scalable across geographies will be crucial to growing Formula Fixed. By implementing a consistent race format, they are positioning the business to benefit from economies of scale. As production becomes more efficient, the costs associated with each event will stabilize while revenues from ticket sales and sponsorships grow.

When describing the challenges of traditional race formats, Clare highlighted unit economics as a key factor affecting growth:

“The unit economics of races as they currently exist are hard. Because you have to create the event infrastructure every single time.”

James shared the thinking behind the Formula Fixed format:

“We thought we might be able to put on events at scale more easily if we have an economy of scale and we’re not building a race course on city streets every single time.”

If Formula Fixed is able to scale over the coming years with an established race series that delivers significant value to sponsors and investors, the long-term ambitions become really exciting. James and James have made no secret of where they want to take it:

“Long term, we do want to put team based events in stadiums, specifically fixed gear criterions in stadiums.” - James

“I also have this dream of doing cyclocross in a stadium, in the dead of winter, where it’s all snowy, and you’ve just got 50,000 people yelling.” - James

We’ve seen the format succeed in cycling with one-off events like the Little 500, and we’ve certainly seen commercial success from similar sports like motocross. If James and Clare continue to grow Formula Fixed sustainably, they will have the chance to put those long-term aspirations to the test.

Culture is the entry point

Formula Fixed is merging these two sides of fixie culture, and it’s working. On the race course, the strength and ability of the cyclists is on full display, and the racing itself is as chaotic as a bike messenger weaving through traffic in a major city. For the audience, it’s a party-like atmosphere. Drinks are flowing, vibes are high, and whether you’re a diehard cycling fan or a first-timer, you will quickly fit in and have a blast.

That loose, welcoming nature of fixie culture is opening doors for new fans and giving Formula Fixed a marketability that doesn’t exist in other cycling formats. As James put it:

“We regularly hear from people who come to the live events who are not cycling fans whatsoever. And they’re just blown away, and they’re like, ‘Is all cycling like this? I’ve been missing out.’”

The bikes themselves also act as an entry point for new fans and athletes alike. Rather than racing bikes that cost upwards of $10,000, top athletes can compete on stripped-down equipment that could be bought for a fraction of the price. Clare outlined the appeal:

“It’s got this cool factor. It might be tied to the fact that the bikes are kind of sexy. They’re just a machine that you connect to your body to make yourself go faster. Part of that is access, because the fixed gear bike is so much less expensive to get started on.

The reason why we’re doing fixed-gear is because we’ve seen from the start, the culture is as important as the sport itself.”

Telling stories is a requirement

I’ve touched on this point often since starting Built on Bikes, but James and Clare clearly understand the importance of good storytelling and consider it an integral piece of their overall strategy. Formula Fixed is putting all the pieces together to create what could become the strongest media engine in domestic cycling.

They have already assembled a strong team of brand professionals and storytellers, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for compelling content through a 48-athlete race series that will give them an abundant source of athlete stories that are easy for fans to understand and connect with. Clare made a comparison that put the storytelling style of Formula Fixed into perspective:

“An early comparison that I used was professional wrestling. What do they do really well? They tell stories. They build characters, and they build the world. That’s what we want. Because we’re a centralized league and we’ve got a recurring cast and a consistent format, the continuity is the product.“

The audience growth engine

Traditional cycling formats have always struggled to rapidly grow audiences. Disciplines like mountain biking and cyclocross get little airtime in the United States, and even the Tour de France struggles to capture mainstream attention. Long, tactically complex races aren’t built for social media or live viewing. Formula Fixed was designed to be the opposite: short, fast, and made for social media.

Scaling Formula Fixed will only happen when more fans show up to events, post about them on social media, and eventually draw in remote viewers. To grow their audience, Formula Fixed takes a three-tiered approach to content that drives higher monetization over time:

• Always-on content: daily short-form posts and highlights that drive consistent engagement

• Amplifying race moments: action clips that produce high-intensity spikes in engagement

• Growing their distribution network: gaining organic reach from athletes, fans, Formula Fixed, and partner channels sharing content

James and Clare are building a media engine that meets people where they are, and most of the time, that’s online. The goal is to give people content they are already comfortable consuming, but with the added novelty of showing them something they’ve never seen before. James summed it up well:

“Putting on events is only one part of audience growth. We have a really robust content strategy backing everything up. We basically present Formula Fixed from all angles and give everybody an on-ramp.”

With Formula Fixed, athletes win on and off the track

When our conversation shifted to the types of athletes competing in Formula Fixed, I was curious how James and Clare are able to attract the caliber of athletes that they do. Is it the prize money, the racing style, or the pure love of the culture? Culture yes, prize money no.

“If the only way that they make money is through prize money, it’s always going to go to the same small group of people that have more resources.” - James

As Clare went on to explain, the biggest draw for athletes is exposure and financial support.

Athlete support

When I asked the question, I was not expecting financial support to be part of the answer. Marquee series like the Life Time Grand Prix are only now introducing rider stipends, and those likely cover travel and lodging for one race, if that. In 2024,Formula Fixed provided athletes with a stipend based on several criteria, including distance traveled. Starting in 2026, the series will provide travel and accommodation as standard support for rostered athletes. As Formula Fixed scales, so too will athlete compensation

“The cost of having to travel around to these events is something that makes people be like, ‘oh, I’m going to choose to do this one and this one.’ So, for our athlete roster, if you’re racing in the series, you’re racing every single race. We have resources set aside to make sure that you can actually do that financially.” - James

For a new series, that is a remarkable level of support, but it is already paying off. By committing to their athletes financially, Formula Fixed has built loyalty and trust within the community, establishing a reputation that will continue to draw future talent to the series.

New talent pipelines

As I discussed with Hayden Christian, younger athletes are venturing outside of standard development pipelines and opting for paths that provide more social capital, attract brand sponsors, and showcase their abilities to a wider audience. Formula Fixed is all in on their media machine, and for many athletes that is a massive draw.

Unlike the Life Time Grand Prix, which gained notoriety largely from the fan bases of its participating athletes, Formula Fixed is able to provide athletes with a media platform that can reach far beyond what they could build on their own. James, Clare, and I all agree that there is an abundance of talent in the United States, but not enough development pipelines or marketable events to make those athletes full-time professionals.

“We suffer from a wealth of talent in the United States, and those super talented athletes are underserved by the platforms that they currently have. The best riders in the country were just racing in Tucson, Arizona, and the majority of sporting fans in the country didn’t hear anything about it. We’ve got athletes on our roster who, if they were playing basketball, would be all-stars.” - Clare

The Formula Fixed media strategy has made it easier to fill rosters with talented athletes from a diverse set of backgrounds, whether that be from a different cycling discipline, underserved communities, or even newcomers to the sport entirely. For all of them, Formula Fixed is presenting an enticing platform and a genuine entry point into professional racing.

Simple but powerful: the Formula Fixed business model

We’ve talked about all the characteristics that make Formula Fixed an attractive entity, but their business model is just as compelling. It is simple, scalable, and pitchable. Formula Fixed has three main revenue streams.

Brands

Formula Fixed has already a proven track record with brand partnerships, like collaborating with notable brands Rapha and Red Bull in previous seasons. Paid partnerships, branded content, and brand licensing all create an outsized revenue stream as long as Formula Fixed continues to grow their audience.

In 2024, Formula Fixed reached a projected audience of 5.6 million viewers with zero dollars in ad spend. As long as they continue to grow audiences organically, Formula Fixed will remain an attractive partner for major brands. Clare also highlighted why their focus on storytelling creates a stronger value proposition than a typical race series. When speaking about their previous partnerships with Red Bull and Rapha, she said:

“They saw culture. Formula Fixed lives at the intersection of performance and culture. It’s urban, it’s fast, it’s youth driven, and that really aligns with brands that want relevance, not just exposure. It’s not just logo placement. It’s identity alignment.”

Fans

Ticketing, merchandise, and associated experiences represent core operational income. As with any live events business, Formula Fixed is aiming to generate predictable attendance that will drive higher consumer spending over time.

Media

While media may not be a significant revenue driver yet, Formula Fixed is laying the groundwork through their social engine and focus on storytelling. Over time, this will allow them to generate revenue from media rights, content monetization, and licensing.

Clare summed up where revenue comes from today and where they expect it to come from in the future:

“At outset, revenue is driven by paid partnerships, ticketing and merchandise are secondary revenue streams. At scale, our revenue drivers are brand, fans, and media, and revenues coming from key partnerships and brand integration.”

A compelling economic entity

Investment will be crucial to growing cycling in the United States. In some instances it will mean making the case for wealthy individuals to donate to collegiate programs or USA Cycling. In others it will be venture capital and private equity investing in businesses that provide the goods and services that make the sport possible. Investing in Formula Fixed would be a financial investment that directly contributes to the sport’s growth, but with the possibility of a real return.

Even for an investor who is disinterested in the growth of cycling and purely seeking economic gain, the unit economics of Formula Fixed are compelling. As we discussed last week, Formula Fixed falls firmly into the small to medium-sized business category. A venture investor won’t be generating hundreds of millions in return, but they can most certainly outperform the market when it comes to percentage return on investment.

James and Clare were gracious enough to share their pitch deck with me, and I can confidently say no numbers were pulled out of thin air. They know exactly what impact additional capital would have on the business. There are plenty of sports focused VCs that invest in small sports entities, and they should not overlook Formula Fixed.

Created by two determined partners, Formula Fixed is offering a fresh take on cycling that is built for the digital age. Nothing about the format is traditional, and for cycling, that is its greatest strength. Non-cycling fans will see an exciting new sport and be drawn in by a true live viewing experience. If James and Clare continue on their current path, Formula Fixed is about to redefine what cycling can look like in the United States.

Do yourself a favor now and follow Formula Fixed!

Formula Fixed | Instagram | YouTube | Strava

Ride and Rip,

Kyle Dawes

A common theme is that the largest brands appear to be struggling the most. In previous editions of Built on Bikes, I’ve highlighted how emerging brands with lean operating structures have often outperformed their bigger competitors in efficiency and adaptability. Companies like Pas Normal Studios and Ventum have focused on specific corners of the market and scaled in a more sustainable way over the last five years.

Now that the COVID surge is firmly behind us, larger brands are trying to restore healthy margins and regain profitability. Smaller brands, meanwhile, seem to be operating business as usual, staying lean and concentrating on brand development and steady growth.

One of the biggest differences between large and small brands during this period has been outside capital. Many smaller brands are bootstrapped or lightly funded, while several larger players were swept up in private equity activity during the COVID boom. Holding companies acquired brands in an effort to scale operations, meet surging demand, and extract value from already strong names. The upside, however, was short-lived.

High-profile deals such as GBL’s acquisition of Canyon and RZC Investments’ purchase of Rapha have faced criticism. Canyon leaned heavily into mass direct-to-consumer scale, and service quality appeared to decline post-acquisition. Rapha, as I’ve written about before, seemed to drift from some of the brand qualities that defined its rise in the 2010s. It’s no surprise that many cycling enthusiasts now view private equity involvement with skepticism.

The prevailing narrative has become simple: large acquisitions lead to profit-first thinking at the expense of quality and heritage. While I understand that sentiment, I think it misses an important nuance. Not all acquisitions are destructive. Some smaller, strategic deals have actually delivered meaningful benefits to consumers.

2026 and 2027 could be pivotal years for the cycling industry, particularly if we see a renewed wave of mergers and acquisitions. There will probably be monster deals similar to Canyon’s, but I think the real opportunity lies elsewhere, in smaller brands that have already proven sustainability and built strong, recognizable identities.

And before anyone jumps to conclusions, I’m not on the side of the investor. I think these types of deals could be incredibly beneficial to the brands we love and to us as consumers. Today I want to discuss how it could look and work.

What is the market telling us?

We know there was a COVID boom followed by a sharp decline, but now that things have stabilized, where is the industry heading? Will the entire market struggle alongside the biggest brands, or will a new wave of smaller brands emerge as the next industry leaders?

It is difficult to predict. But if recent history tells us anything, the cycling industry appears primed for another phase of private market activity.

In 2024, investment bank Houlihan Lokey and management consulting firm Kearney released a comprehensive report on M&A activity in the cycling industry, analyzing trends from 2020 through 2024. It is worth reading in full, but here are the key takeaways.

M&A ebb and flow

M&A activity peaked in 2022, riding the momentum of the COVID boom years in 2020 and 2021. There were 96 transactions in 2022. In 2023, that number dropped sharply to 66. For comparison, between 2015 and 2019, annual M&A activity typically ranged from 20 to 25 transactions.

That contrast underscores just how significant the COVID boom was. So does this mean we are heading back to historically low M&A volumes? Not necessarily.

As part of the report, more than 30 industry executives and 10 financial investment firms were interviewed. The prevailing sentiment was that activity is unlikely to drop back to pre-COVID levels. Houlihan Lokey forecasted a “gradual recovery with significant upside in the medium to long term” and noted that “2026 and 2027 mark pivotal years for increased M&A activity.”

The timing aligns with the typical lifecycle of a private equity investment. Firms generally aim to create value over a three to six year period before exiting. That framework lines up closely with investments made during the 2020 and 2021 boom. As those assets mature and the market stabilizes, exits will likely increase, and new investors may enter the space as well.

Strategic vs. financial investment

The type of M&A activity can be just as important as the volume of transactions, because structure often determines what happens to a brand after the deal closes. Broadly speaking, there are two categories worth focusing on: financial and strategic.

Financial investments typically involve private equity or other outside investment firms acquiring a company outright or taking a majority stake. In most cases, the company’s leadership team remains in place, while the board expands to include new stakeholders.

The expectation is straightforward. With additional capital and operational oversight, the company should grow faster, improve margins, and ultimately become more valuable ahead of a future exit.

Strategic investments usually take the form of mergers or acquisitions where one brand is absorbed into another operating company. The core idea is synergy. Shared R&D, combined distribution, and overlapping customer bases are meant to create efficiencies and unlock growth that would be difficult independently.

A recent example is Strava’s acquisition of Runna, where product integration and audience overlap were clear drivers of the deal.

Since 2020, the split between financial and strategic deals has remained relatively balanced:

2020: 67% financial vs 33% strategic

2021: 55% financial vs 45% strategic

2022: 54% financial vs 46% strategic

2023: 58% financial vs 42% strategic

While fairly even, financial investments have consistently edged out strategic ones.

Looking ahead, I would expect that pattern to continue, and possibly tilt even further toward financial deals. As capital looks for disciplined growth opportunities in a stabilizing market, investment firms may see more upside in backing strong independent brands rather than consolidating them outright.

The importance of brand

In line with many of the trends I have written about previously, 100 percent of the industry executives interviewed for the study agreed that brand strength will become more important moving forward.

That may sound obvious from a consumer perspective. But in M&A, a strong brand has not always been a prerequisite.

For private equity firms, a company with solid financials but limited brand equity can actually be appealing. If the fundamentals are sound, investors can acquire the business at a more attractive valuation and create value by upgrading marketing, refining positioning, and expanding distribution. In that scenario, weaker brand recognition can mean a lower entry price and more room for multiple expansion.

If well established brands become table stakes for deals, that changes the equation. Private equity investors would need to pay a premium upfront for companies that already command pricing power and customer loyalty.

Keys to growth

Houlihan Lokey identified several themes expected to drive future M&A activity. While the report outlined multiple factors, these stand out as particularly important:

• Presence in, or the ability to produce, e bikes
  

• Strong and defensible branding
  

• Vertical integration, especially with direct to consumer distribution
  

• Streamlined production models with healthy margins

As the industry stabilizes, brands are positioning themselves to grow again. If forecasts hold, the next few years could bring another surge in M&A activity.

My suspicion is that there will be a lot more smaller deals that might necessarily create big headlings. These acquisitions could strengthen balance sheets, improve operations, and ultimately benefit founders, investors, and consumers alike.

Back to the M&A stigma

I alluded to it earlier, but the elephant in the room is how cycling fans feel about outside capital entering the brands they love.

Many will point to Rapha and argue that external investment contributed to the erosion of what was once a dominant and culturally defining brand. There is some truth to that critique. At the same time, it is far too simple to say outside money automatically leads to brand decline. There are plenty of examples that complicate that narrative.

Take ENVE Composites. The Utah based carbon wheel and component manufacturer has gone through two acquisitions in the past decade. In 2016, it was acquired by Amer Sports for 50 million dollars. In 2024, it was sold again to PV3 Investments for an undisclosed amount.

An undisclosed sale price often raises eyebrows. In some cases, that language can mask underwhelming returns. It is reasonable to assume that may have been part of the story here. According to PitchBook data, ENVE’s annual revenue reportedly grew by only about 4 million dollars between 2016 and 2025. That is essentially flat growth over nearly a decade, suggesting Amer Sports likely did not see the kind of return it hoped for.

But that does not mean private ownership was inherently bad for the brand.

Under Amer Sports, ENVE remained highly regarded in the market. Its wheels are used by UAE Team Emirates, one of the most successful road teams in modern history. The company also expanded into complete bikes, which have been widely praised for their design and ride quality. The fundamentals of the brand remained intact.

It is also worth noting that the owner of PV3 Investments is an avid cyclist. That alignment of passion and capital, combined with ENVE’s stable positioning at the premium end of the market, could create a more focused growth chapter.

Strategic acquisitions tend to face less backlash from consumers. In many ways, they are simply part of the industry’s fabric. One of the most prolific strategic acquirers is SRAM, which has built a portfolio that includes:

• RockShox

• Velocio

• Zipp

• Time

• Quarq

• Hammerhead

SRAM certainly has its critics, but rarely because it acquires brands. If anything, its track record shows that strategic consolidation, when executed thoughtfully, can strengthen innovation, distribution, and brand longevity.

Outside capital is not inherently good or bad. The outcome depends on structure, incentives, leadership, and how well the acquiring party understands the culture of the brand they are backing.

Finding brands on the verge

Up to this point, everything I have outlined is informed speculation based on the data available to us. We do not know whether increased M&A activity will materialize, or how it would ultimately reshape the industry.

That said, my hypothesis is straightforward. The cycling industry is filled with small to mid sized brands that present attractive targets for private equity investors and strategic buyers alike.

Most headline deals will likely focus on brands serving the broader mass market. But within the performance and enthusiast segment, there are companies that could generate respectable returns on a shorter investment horizon, think three years rather than seven to ten. Smaller funds, especially those with genuine ties to cycling, may view these brands as relatively safe, brand driven growth plays.

For founders and operators, the appeal is just as clear. Outside capital can provide operational guidance, expanded distribution, marketing resources, and supply chain leverage that meaningfully accelerate growth. There are risks to that strategy, and I will address those shortly. For now, it is worth highlighting a few brands that strike me as compelling investment candidates.

Pas Normal Studios

This is not the first time I have written about Pas Normal Studios in Built on Bikes. The Copenhagen based apparel brand has consistently outperformed larger competitors in the premium cycling category. Its disciplined growth strategy and sharp brand identity have positioned it as one of the most influential players in modern cycling apparel.

With reported 2024 revenues of approximately 27 million dollars, the company is substantial, but still meaningfully smaller than a brand like Rapha. That makes it large enough to matter, yet small enough to grow.

There is also a structural nuance worth noting. One of the founders previously launched Wood Wood, a respected name in luxury streetwear. That background matters. In luxury fashion, M&A activity is common, and founders are often familiar with minority stakes, growth capital, and strategic partnerships.

In fact, Pas Normal Studios already has outside investment. Archive Srl, the investment vehicle of the family behind Moncler, holds a minority stake in the company. That existing structure suggests two things. First, the founders are comfortable operating with outside capital. Second, there is already institutional validation of the brand’s long term value.

Pas Normal has already ventured into off-the-bike clothing that appeals to luxury fashion and streetwear consumers beyond cycling, making them an attractive acquisition target for PE firms already investing in the fashion industry. With experienced founders at the helm, Pas Normal could navigate an acquisition strategically and potentially challenge Rapha’s market position.

Ventum

Another brand you might recognize from a previous story is the bike manufacturer, Ventum. This brand shares many qualities with an earlier version of Canyon with their sleek race designs and a direct-to-consumer model. But Ventum hasn’t expanded as rapidly, and I don’t think that should even be the goal.

Ventum excels at making affordable frames with an emphasis on race geometries for triathlon, road, and gravel. Their consolidated frame selection shields them from the excess inventory problems that have plagued brands like Canyon and Trek.

Two resources that would unlock Ventum’s next phase are better distribution in the EU and Asia, plus expanded manufacturing capabilities to meet rising demand. Otherwise, Ventum is already operating with efficiency, scalability, and healthy margins.

A strategic acquirer is hard to envision, but a PE firm with bike industry experience could provide the capital and infrastructure to elevate Ventum to the level of Pinarello or Factor while maintaining their price advantage.

Wolf Tooth Components

Wolf Tooth Components specializes in making high-quality bike components and accessories. Within the performance and equipment-focused communities, the brand has made a name for itself by producing components that can significantly upgrade the efficiency or functionality of certain parts of a bike.

Based out of Minnesota, the brand is already producing a large volume of products, indicating they have formed an incredibly efficient base of operations. Wolf Tooth has a strong direct-to-consumer business but also maintains a healthy retail footprint in the United States through their ecosystem of partner dealers.

The brand’s next step is major retail expansion, specifically in markets outside of the United States. For this goal, a strategic acquisition from a major retailer could make sense. Decathlon could be that acquirer.

Decathlon is the largest global retailer of outdoor equipment in the world, with thousands of stores spread across 60 countries. With annual revenues reaching 15 billion euros, Decathlon is positioned to easily acquire smaller brands.

The move wouldn’t be to acquire Wolf Tooth for exclusive retail rights but rather to increase traffic and sales in their bike department, which is on the rise. Decathlon recently introduced its in-house bike brand Van Rysel, and demand has been exceptional. Acquiring Wolf Tooth could offer an easy upsell on new Van Rysel purchases and make Decathlon a go-to destination for bike enthusiasts seeking quality parts faster.

Cycling will need money in the post COVID era

Whether we like it or not, the cycling industry will need more investment in a post-COVID world if we want the sport and the activity to continue growing. I don’t think the goal should be to return to pre-COVID M&A numbers. Increased investment from outside investors will certainly hurt the quality of certain brands, but it will also benefit deserving brands that will eventually reward consumers with better products.

Just like when I talk about funding development in the United States, the best-case scenario for financial investment is the presence of people who care about cycling and have experience investing in consumer brands in a growth capacity. All we can do is keep our eye on where the money goes over the next few years.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

Two weeks ago, I published a piece outlining how the United States could become the dominant nation in women’s cycling. The focus was simple: there is a clear gap between the U23 level and WorldTour racing, and we have not built a strong enough bridge between the two.

I outlined two potential paths that could improve American rider development and ultimately produce more professionals. The first was a significant investment in the domestic road scene. More high-quality pack racing in the U.S. would better prepare athletes for the demands of European competition. The second was to expand our footprint of women’s Continental teams. A higher volume of Conti teams would increase competition domestically while also creating more structured stepping stones for riders aiming to race abroad.

The final component of that article addressed the economics of Continental teams and sponsorships. I broke down what it actually costs to start a Continental team and how those teams could be pitched to sponsors in a way that communicates real, measurable value rather than abstract exposure.

Shortly after publishing the piece, a former Built on Bikes guest reached out. Yuri Hauswald, Athlete Manager at GU, said the topic immediately made him think of a Bay Area team that is already attempting to bridge the gap between development and professional racing: SpeedBlock-Terún.

Yuri connected me with Sarah Flamm, who races for the team while also handling various administrative responsibilities. Within days, I had a call scheduled with Sarah and Erik Garfinkel, owner of Palo Alto Concrete and SpeedBlock, the team’s title sponsor.

Going into the conversation, I wanted to understand how SpeedBlock-Terún approaches rider development, how they have achieved longevity in a volatile domestic road scene, and how they think about professional ambitions as an organization. I was equally interested in hearing from Erik. What does it actually mean to sponsor a team like this? What factors matter when a sponsor evaluates a proposal? And how can teams create value in a way that feels sustainable rather than transactional?

SpeedBlock-Terún

Similar to my conversation with Eric Hill, founder of the UCI Continental team Project Echelon, I wanted to understand what makes SpeedBlock-Terún both viable and marketable in today’s domestic landscape. My goal is the same as it was with that piece, to highlight working models so other teams in the United States can learn from them and, in turn, help move the sport forward.

Before diving into what makes the team tick, a bit of background on the team.

Based in Palo Alto and founded in 2004, SpeedBlock-Terún operates as a three-tiered men’s and women’s program. The structure includes a club team, a development squad, and a domestic elite racing team. That layered system is central to how they think about sustainability and growth.

The team’s title sponsors reflect a community focused approach. SpeedBlock, a revolutionary concrete block system, is owned by Erik Garfinkel through his local company, Palo Alto Concrete and Construction. Terún is a Palo Alto pizzeria owned by Franco and Maico Campilongo. Both sponsors are deeply embedded in the community the team rides in every day.

Longevity in a volatile sport

The first thing I asked Sarah was how the team has achieved longevity in the American road racing scene and what’s made it possible. Sarah was precise in her answer, listing three pillars of the team’s identity that creates loyalty and attracts talent.

Community first culture

One of the most unique aspects of SpeedBlock-Terún is that it embraces a culture more commonly found in European club cycling. At its foundation is an 80-rider club team that is open to anyone who wants to join, supported by an active calendar of group rides and community events.

On top of that foundation are both a development team and a domestic elite squad for the most competitive racers. Together, these tiers create a system where community and performance coexist. The elite and development riders benefit from structure and professional support, while the broader club gains exposure to high-level racing experience that filters down through mentorship and shared training environments.

Sarah described the dynamic simply:

“The team is formed in a dynamic fashion. Friends bring friends, fellow racers recruit fellow racers. Folks who are involved genuinely enjoy riding bikes, being outside and like hanging out with each other. It’s a big tent, all types of riders are welcome.”

Local, tangible sponsors

A major upside for local businesses that sponsor a cycling team is simple visibility. At any given time, multiple riders are out on community roads serving as rolling billboards. But beyond exposure, there is something more powerful at play.

Unlike sponsorships from intangible brands such as software companies, SpeedBlock-Terún represents businesses that are physically embedded in the community. Their sponsors are not abstract logos. They are restaurants people eat at and construction companies that build homes and commercial spaces in the very neighborhoods the team rides through.

Tangible sponsors from the team’s community create a mutually beneficial relationship. Sponsors benefit from consistent, visible advertising, while the team gains relevance beyond the cycling world.

Strong non-profit organizational structure

Just like Project Echelon, SpeedBlock-Terún is organized as a non-profit. Sarah highlighted that this is a major strength for the team because it creates a legitimate structure for decision making and administrative accountability, ensuring all funds go back into the organization.

“There’s a four-person board of directors, and those directors rotate out. We have a board president, a CFO, a secretary, a vice president, and we all meet and discuss administrative matters.”

Much like Project Echelon, SpeedBlock-Terún is a well-organized team with strong stories to tell, firmly rooted in the community they operate in. These elements work together to create a meaningful local footprint that naturally attracts emerging talent.

Development is a team effort

Attracting talent is important, but a team also needs to follow through on developing it. Sarah made it clear that SpeedBlock-Terún takes a long-term approach, prioritizing sustainability for both the athlete and the organization. The philosophy is protective and rider-first, avoiding the kind of pressure that can lead to burnout.

Key attributes of SpeedBlock-Terún’s development model include:

Access to professional support:

A recent example is the hiring of the team’s first director sportif.

“We’ve recently hired a professional who can assist with development this year. She is recently out of the sport after 12 years of professional racing and she meets one-on-one with riders to have check ins and chats. She will be at the races and she will be directing the team.”

Diffused leadership and mentorship:

Because the team is not currently a Continental program, it can retain experienced riders who help guide younger teammates.

“We have a diffused system of leadership so riders can teach their fellow riders. It’s really strong and sustainable.”

Rider-first policies:

There is no requirement to race in Europe or follow a rigid schedule. While the team targets certain events and may travel abroad for blocks of racing, riders maintain autonomy. That flexibility reduces stress and allows development across different environments.

“No one has this mentality of, ‘I have to race. This is so stressful.’ We don’t want that. The attitude is, we’re so lucky, we can train, we can ride, and we can race.”

Developing women’s cycling

This was one of my favorite topics to discuss with Sarah. She raised important points about the potential downsides of pushing American riders to Europe and the WorldTour as quickly as possible. Her perspective made me reconsider how heavily I emphasized that goal in my previous article.

The most significant risk is burnout. Intensive, accelerated development can shorten careers just as easily as it can elevate them. Sarah offered several viewpoints that support a different approach: build more Continental teams, strengthen U.S. racing, and focus first on creating a deep and sustainable domestic system. Producing a higher volume of WorldTour talent can follow from there.

“I’m not convinced that necessarily that a lot of riders want to go race in Europe. I’m not sure that that needs to be the goal necessarily or if that’s the best way to develop talent. We have some riders that did race in Europe and it backfired because they burnt out.”

Staying rooted in the United States has benefited the team. Riders can learn race tactics from experienced teammates while remaining connected to their day-to-day lives. Sarah emphasized that the ecosystem of women’s road racing in the U.S. is stronger than many realize, pointing to events like the Redlands Cycling Classic as proof.

“This year there are 20 women’s teams. There’ll be 150 women in the field this year, which is the biggest field that women have ever had.”

Rather than solely acting as a bridge between amateur and Continental racing, SpeedBlock-Terún’s goal is to elevate its own program to Continental status, expanding its development capabilities from within. Sarah’s perspective suggests a more measured path forward: allow a steady trickle of American women to reach the WorldTour while continuing to invest heavily in domestic racing. Over time, that foundation could produce even more WorldTour talent.

Switching gears

After gaining valuable insight from Sarah, I shifted the conversation to Erik to better understand his decision to sponsor an American club team. Pitching a development or semi-pro team to U.S. sponsors is notoriously difficult, so my first question was simple: why?

It turns out Erik was more than casually familiar with cycling. He grew up in the sport, raced competitively, and even moved to Europe when he was younger to pursue professional racing. That background made it clear he understood what sponsoring a team entails. As he explained:

“I did it when I was younger, so I’m kind of giving back. For sure it starts with a passion.”

Passion alone was not enough, though. Erik emphasized that the team’s professionalism and structure played a major role in his decision. He had previously considered starting his own squad, but found it more practical and reliable to support an established organization with strong leadership and deep community ties.

“What I really like about Sarah’s team and the organization is exactly all of these she said, the community, the organization that they had already had. They’re professional.”

It may sound obvious, but pitching to sponsors who already have a connection to cycling is a significant advantage. For teams seeking funding, identifying business owners who are embedded in the sport may require more effort upfront, but it can make the pitch far more natural and effective.

As Sarah noted earlier, pairing that passion with tangible, community-rooted businesses creates a powerful combination.

How to be attractive to a sponsor

Erik made a pertinent point that for a team to be attractive to a sponsor, they need to have a media footprint. Especially for smaller teams that won’t get TV time, having a social following that is much broader than that of a sponsor’s is the single most attractive for a team from a marketing standpoint.

In the United States, live streaming for road and gravel events is on the rise, but still doesn’t reach a large enough or even local enough audience for the types of sponsors we are looking for. Erik believes the marketing landscape, and the role of teams within it, has fundamentally changed.

“It’s a new job that teams didn’t have to do 10 or 20 years ago. Be all the cool factors so that people rally for you and people want to sponsor you.”

Alongside that shift, he reinforced a point I’ve emphasized before: storytelling is how teams grow and attract sponsors. With teams like EF Education–EasyPost and Unibet Rose Rockets building large audiences through behind-the-scenes content, it’s more feasible than ever for a developmental program like SpeedBlock-Terún to carve out meaningful attention.

In many ways, SpeedBlock-Terún’s biggest opportunity may lie in telling the stories of its developing riders. With many athletes balancing full-time careers alongside racing, that narrative could resonate far beyond the traditional cycling audience and show what’s possible for “ordinary” people pursuing the sport at a high level.

Budgets

In my previous piece on women’s cycling in the United States, I broke down the financial commitments required to become a Continental team recognized by the UCI and USA Cycling. After learning more about SpeedBlock-Terún’s budget, I can admit I was generous in my projections for a hypothetical eight-rider Continental squad.

For SpeedBlock-Terún, moving up to Continental status is a realistic future goal. Even with a larger roster, the budget required appears more attainable than I previously estimated. It’s still a significant sum, but far more manageable.

The primary hurdles would be rider and staff compensation, along with travel costs. With the addition of another sponsor or successful fundraising, building a Continental team capable of targeting select European races feels achievable. My conversations with Sarah and Erik made the prospect of more U.S.-based pro teams seem far less distant.

SpeedBlock-Terún is taking the next step

My conversation with Sarah and Erik was incredibly insightful and, honestly, energizing. It added important context to my previous article and challenged some of my assumptions. Two weeks ago I was unaware of this team. Now, after speaking with two of its key figures, my perspective has broadened significantly.

I have a clearer understanding of:

• What is already possible and actively happening in domestic development
  

• The reliable building blocks that create a strong, marketable team structure
  

• How far a well-managed budget can realistically go

More than anything, the conversation reinforced that meaningful progress in American women’s (and men’s) cycling is not theoretical. It is already underway.

Connecting the dots

Many of the points I made in my previous article were reinforced by Sarah and Erik’s insight, while others were challenged and refined. Both outcomes are valuable. This Substack is meant to evolve alongside the conversations shaping the sport.

My understanding of domestic development shifts with each new discussion, and I’m never hesitant to revisit or revise earlier theories. Grounded, real-world insight is how we make progress. Before wrapping up this topic, I want to clearly outline what currently feels like the most effective path forward for domestic development.

What are the building blocks of strong domestic development teams?

Every situation is different, so this is by no means a one-size-fits-all approach. But these are traits that have proven both successful and differentiating among the domestic teams I’ve spoken with.

Teams rooted in community succeed

This point carries a double meaning, but centers on one theme: having people physically present makes a team stronger.

Speaking with Sarah and Erik made it clear that SpeedBlock-Terún’s European-style club structure has been key to its longevity and growth. Riders have a community to train with, confide in, and learn from. The combination of a large club base, a development squad, and an elite team keeps the program visible, active, and appealing to sponsors.

The second meaning of community is geographic. Rooting the team’s identity in a physical location creates tangible value for local sponsors. As we saw with Project Echelon and its active local outreach, becoming embedded in a community is highly attractive to businesses. SpeedBlock-Terún has successfully leaned into this through strong, locally rooted sponsorships.

There is a “type” of sponsor you should pitch to

As mentioned above, Erik pointed out the advantages of partnering with tangible, local businesses. If those businesses already have ties to cycling, even better.

Other desirable characteristics in a sponsor include:

• A business model that typically generates strong cash flow
  

• A genuine use case for increased community marketing, especially in a way that differentiates the brand and adds a “cool” factor to its image

Flexibility reduces burnout

While SpeedBlock-Terún is primarily focused on road racing, riders have the flexibility to target select events and even compete in other disciplines. That variety helps athletes develop a broader skill set, maintain their love for the sport, and balance professional ambitions with their careers outside of cycling.

It also raises an important question about how quickly we push riders toward European racing. Many domestic athletes may prefer to compete primarily in the U.S. rather than immediately pursuing the WorldTour. By incorporating European racing strategically, rather than treating it as the ultimate objective, riders can gain valuable experience without dramatically increasing the risk of burnout. It also allows them to make a more informed decision about whether that path truly aligns with their goals.

Continental status is nice, but not required

SpeedBlock-Terún is proof that elite domestic teams not only exist, but can thrive. I previously assumed Continental status was the minimum requirement to secure meaningful sponsor support. In reality, any team can attract sponsors if it can tell a compelling story.

In fact, we may need more teams like SpeedBlock-Terún rather than simply more Continental programs. Bridging the gap between U23 or amateur racing and the pro ranks is difficult. Jumping straight into the deep end does not always build skill, it often just teaches survival, as we saw with Hayden Christian. More strong domestic elite teams would deepen the U.S. racing scene and create a healthier development ladder. Over time, that could send more riders to Europe or even help make American road racing strong enough to attract the WorldTour back to the U.S.

Ultimately, budget determines whether a team survives. Domestic elite programs allow resources to stretch further than they might at the Continental level, offering a more sustainable path for many organizations.

Full speed ahead

I’m grateful that Yuri connected me with Sarah and Erik. Our conversation gave me a clearer understanding of what makes a team both sustainable and marketable. SpeedBlock-Terún has a big year ahead, and I’m excited to follow their progress throughout the season.

Racing in the United States is alive and well. If we continue building sustainable and marketable team structures, there is real potential to elevate it back onto the world stage.

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Remembering Hannah Henry

It’s with a heavy heart that I close another edition of Built on Bikes with tragic news. Last Saturday, two-time NCAA triathlon national champion Hannah Henry was struck and killed by a driver who fled the scene. Hannah was training in a dedicated bike lane when she was killed by a criminally negligent motorist. Sadly, this is not a unique story and something that has somehow become the default risk associated with cycling.

In addition to keeping Hannah’s family in our thoughts, I strongly encourage you to support the work of the White Line Foundation. The foundation was created by the parents of Magnus White, a 17-year-old national champion cyclist who was killed by a driver while training. They advocate for stronger safety measures, better driver education, and stricter consequences for motorists who negligently strike cyclists and pedestrians.

Visit their website to donate and prevent future road deaths.

Safe riding,

Kyle Dawes

We are back to a topic that has become near and dear to my heart: collegiate cycling. If you have been reading Built on Bikes for a while, or if you are new here, you have probably seen the growing archive of articles I have written on this subject for my content series, Foundations. From interviewing a professional cyclist who got their start in college to speaking with a USA Cycling official, I have explored a wide range of perspectives on the current state and future of collegiate cycling in the United States.

Those perspectives have been incredibly valuable as I continue to examine whether collegiate cycling could evolve into a more defined pathway to a professional career. One perspective I had been missing until now was that of someone working inside a collegiate program. I wanted to understand the realities they currently face, along with the opportunities they see moving forward. Strengthening collegiate cycling as a development pipeline will require a deep and honest understanding of every part of the ecosystem, especially from those operating within it.

I tend to put forward a lot of hypotheses about what might work best, but hearing directly from someone embedded in a successful varsity program may be the most important input of all. That perspective allows me to pressure test previous assumptions and better identify which opportunities actually exist within collegiate competition, not just in theory but in practice. It also helps ground this conversation in reality before attempting to distribute ideas to the people who can make meaningful change possible.

For this piece, I spoke with someone uniquely qualified to assess collegiate cycling. He came through a successful collegiate program as an athlete, turned professional after his college career, and now serves as the director of the very program that helped develop him. There may not be anyone better placed to offer a clear and honest evaluation of where collegiate cycling stands today and where it could realistically go next.

*Varsity cycling programs are central to this conversation. If you want more context on why varsity status matters, I recommend reading my previous article on cycling and the NCAA.

Ian Burnett

For this piece, I spoke with Ian Burnett, who is currently the Cycling Director at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. As mentioned earlier, Ian came through Fort Lewis’ cycling program as an athlete, where he was a member of championship-winning teams in cyclocross and the team time trial. After graduating from Fort Lewis, he went on to race professionally for five years, including time with Jelly Belly Pro Cycling. Today, he heads the cycling program at Fort Lewis, which spans six disciplines and continues the school’s reputation for excellence in mountain biking, cyclocross, and road racing.

In his day-to-day role, Ian oversees the fundraising efforts that make the team possible, works closely with the school’s athletic department, creates team budgets, manages trip planning, insurance, and the many other administrative responsibilities required to keep the program moving forward. Taken together, these responsibilities, along with Fort Lewis’ status as a legendary program, make Ian one of the most qualified people to speak to the forces shaping collegiate cycling in the United States.

Fort Lewis Cycling

As I’ve already alluded to, Fort Lewis carries a reputation as one of, if not the best, collegiate cycling programs in the United States. Notable alumni include Todd Wells, Savilia Blunk, Sarah Sturm, Payson McElveen, Riley Amos, and Howard Grotts. Within the world of off-road racing, Fort Lewis could reasonably be considered the best development program in the world.

The program’s success is not only a product of exceptional staff, but also of its location. Durango, Colorado is one of the most iconic mountain biking communities in the world and gives the Fort Lewis cycling team access to world-class terrain, along with the physiological benefits that come from training at altitude.

This combination of leadership, environment, and long-term vision has resulted in a sustainable model of success, which is why Fort Lewis is one of only twenty varsity cycling programs in the United States. Where Fort Lewis really becomes a model for success is in their program structure.

The varsity/club balance

One of the first things that Ian brought to my attention was Fort Lewis’ all-inclusive structure.

“We’re the only varsity program that also has a club side to it… an all-inclusive varsity program.”

Whereas every other university keeps their varsity and club programs separate, Fort Lewis combines the two with great success. This unique structure carries many benefits, with the biggest being in-program development that allows new talent to be identified quickly, even when athletes start at the club level.

Sarah Sturm is a perfect example of this in practice. Sarah entered the cycling program without racing experience and with no formal bike training. Even though she was completely new to the sport and had significant inexperience to overcome, her natural talent on the bike quickly became apparent. Today, Sarah is one of the top off-road athletes in the world. Her story highlights the importance of collegiate cycling and why Fort Lewis’ approach may be one worth replicating.

Fort Lewis’ varsity and club structure may be a model we want to recreate, but first we need full context on the other challenges and opportunities that currently exist within collegiate cycling.

The current role of collegiate cycling

I was especially curious to hear Ian’s thoughts on the role collegiate cycling currently plays in U.S. athlete development. His program is consistently producing elite talent, but Fort Lewis can fairly be viewed as an outlier within the broader collegiate landscape. If we can develop a clearer picture of how collegiate cycling functions today across disciplines and programs, identifying where meaningful change can happen becomes far more achievable.

Ian’s first observation was that the answer depends heavily on discipline. There is no one-size-fits-all assessment for collegiate cycling’s role in development. In mountain biking, collegiate racing has established itself as a legitimate pathway. As Ian put it, “pretty much the top U.S. men and women are racing collegiate.” That alignment between junior, collegiate, and elite racing is one of the strongest signals that the system can work when the incentives and infrastructure are in place.

Other disciplines remain less defined. Road racing continues to struggle with declining participation and limited domestic opportunities. Gravel, on the other hand, has created an alternative path entirely. Riders like Hayden Christensen have turned professional by independently attending races and earning results, often without any connection to a collegiate program. In those cases, college cycling is no longer a prerequisite for advancement.

Where Ian sees the greatest value in collegiate cycling is as an exploratory environment. Programs provide a space where new talent can be identified and developed in ways that align with the individual athlete, rather than forcing an early specialization or professional track.

“Collegiate programs give the students an opportunity to do something that they might not have necessarily done as a junior.”

That perspective reframes collegiate cycling less as a direct pipeline to the pros and more as a gateway into competitive racing. It introduces structure, coaching, and competition to athletes who may have never imagined themselves racing seriously.

Ian acknowledged that collegiate cycling is not producing a high volume of professionals immediately after graduation, but that alone is not evidence of a broken system. The real issue is the size of the gap between collegiate racing and professional competition in the United States.

“I think as a whole, for varsity programs, most students come in with that aspiration of turning pro, but they struggle with the reality of what ‘pro’ means right now. They may see the pro World Cup racers, but there’s just such a gap between college and that.”

While athletes like Riley Amos, Savilia Blunk, and Howard Grotts show that the leap is possible, they remain exceptions rather than the norm. For most talented riders, there still needs to be a bridge. That likely means either raising the overall level of collegiate competition or building clearer post-collegiate development pathways that help athletes progress without forcing them to abandon education or the sport altogether.

Challenges facing collegiate programs

In addition to his perspective on collegiate cycling’s role, I most wanted to hear about the biggest challenges that collegiate programs face so we can identify a better path forward. Ian discussed both expected challenges and several that I had not previously considered. Here’s what he highlighted.

Funding

No surprises here. Collegiate cycling programs operate in a resource-constrained environment, from USA Cycling’s limited capacity to assist programs to the fact that institutional funding for varsity teams is extremely limited.

The following challenges all act as reasons why universities might withhold funding from collegiate varsity programs or abstain from creating a program altogether.

Disparity between club and varsity competition

While Fort Lewis succeeds with their all-inclusive varsity program, schools without varsity programs struggle to produce club teams that can compete with varsity schools. Unlike Fort Lewis, where club-level talent can develop alongside the varsity squad, club teams often remain the ceiling for most universities.

“I think there’s a pretty big discrepancy between varsity and club teams, so that just makes it hard to create a larger volume of teams for consistent competition. Finding schools that support what is defined as varsity right now is hard. There’s less of the schools that want to invest in that.”

With a limited landscape of varsity competition, athletes lose development opportunities that come from highly competitive racing, and club teams remain the ceiling for varsity-worthy talent. As a result, the collegiate racing ecosystem is scattered and inconsistent.

Enrollment

This was a challenge I had not previously considered when arguing for cycling to become an NCAA sport. My initial thinking was that NCAA status would add legitimacy and encourage larger universities to invest in varsity programs. As Ian explained, enrollment ratios play a major role in a school’s decision-making.

“When you look at the big schools, the state schools, a cycling team is just never going to have that much of an impact on enrollment. That’s what we’ve seen, just by natural effect: small private schools adding varsity programs. When they add 50 to 75 kids to their admission numbers, it has a real impact on the school.”

Smaller universities have more incentive to invest because every net new tuition student carries a larger impact on the school’s finances.

Shifting attitudes towards higher education

Another major challenge facing collegiate cycling is a broader cultural and socioeconomic shift away from higher education in the United States. Fewer high school graduates are pursuing four-year degrees, instead opting for trade schools or entering the workforce immediately. This trend is well outside the control of collegiate cycling, but its root cause is clear: rising costs. More students simply cannot afford tuition and cannot justify taking on significant debt for a degree.

While collegiate cycling cannot reverse this cultural shift, it does have control over one critical factor: the barrier to entry into its programs. If more teams were fully funded, similar to NCAA sports, cycling would not represent an additional cost that students must justify on top of tuition. Under the current model, athletes are often required to buy into both club and varsity programs, which only further deters prospective students who are already weighing the financial burden of attending college in the first place.

Structural complexity of programs

This challenge builds on Ian’s earlier point about the disparity between varsity and club teams, but extends further into the structural inconsistency across collegiate cycling as a whole. Unlike NCAA sports, which are tightly regulated to promote competitive and organizational parity, collegiate cycling programs exist on a wide spectrum. At one end are scrappy, student-run club teams with limited resources. At the other are highly organized varsity programs like Fort Lewis that resemble professional development environments.

The natural instinct is to raise the overall level of professionalism and competition across collegiate cycling. However, Ian was careful to point out that doing so comes with trade-offs:

“I think adding barriers and making collegiate cycling more professional would be good. But making it more professional could add some complications to students’ lives that would maybe deter them, since there is so much added responsibility, pulling them away from school with traveling and all those things that come along with it.”

He also highlighted how academic standards and expectations vary widely between institutions, adding yet another layer of complexity. Unlike NCAA sports, where academic eligibility is more standardized, collegiate cycling operates across vastly different educational models.

“One thing we deal with specifically is the diversity of online schooling versus in-person requirements at different universities. There’s so much complexity to different programs, and I think we’ll have to fix things like that.”

Together, these structural inconsistencies make it difficult to create a unified, scalable system. Any effort to elevate collegiate cycling must balance increased professionalism with accessibility, academic compatibility, and the realities of student life.

Thoughts on NCAA classification

I’ve written about the NCAA extensively, so I was eager to hear Ian’s perspective on cycling potentially becoming an NCAA sport. Ian held a largely neutral stance on the proposition. He was candid about both the advantages it could bring and the potential drawbacks that deserve serious consideration.

When discussing the positives, Ian consistently returned to three major themes:

• Legitimacy

• Regulation

• Institutional knowledge

Sound familiar? If you’ve been following this Substack for a while, hopefully so. However, the way Ian framed these advantages added nuance to how I had previously thought about them.

“I think we’re fortunate right now that we’re not in that deep side of the admin work that the NCAA would bring. I think they can bring a lot of their institutional knowledge of how they regulate in a positive way too, because right now the current system is not that well regulated.

They have such a long list of things to try to figure out, but I think they’ve figured out organization and regulation for collegiate-level sports. I think that’s definitely the side they would bring, and I think it brings some legitimacy.”

To outside audiences, NCAA affiliation would immediately add legitimacy to collegiate cycling. Within collegiate programs themselves, the NCAA’s real value may be even more important. Structure, consistency, and institutional knowledge could bring much-needed order to a system that currently operates with significant variability. Over time, that stability could allow programs to plan further ahead and invest with more confidence.

As for the unintended consequences, we have already touched on many of them. Increased professionalization could deter certain athletes, raise barriers to entry, and make balancing school and racing more difficult. Those risks are real and cannot be ignored.

Even with those concerns, I believe this is an experiment worth exploring. Based on Ian’s perspective, it seems that collegiate cycling directors would at least be open to giving the NCAA a serious look, provided the transition is handled thoughtfully and with the student-athlete at the center.

Surprising insights

We’ve covered a lot of what Ian and I discussed and I can personally say that my views and aspirations for collegiate cycling have become clearer with the context that Ian provided. Overall, there were three points Ian made that surprised me. Those three points are areas for improvement and guidance for growing collegiate cycling. Incredibly helpful information if we are to make a detailed plan for growing collegiate cycling.

Smaller institutions might be the way, at least for now

Ian’s point around enrollment was something I hadn’t previously considered, and it makes complete sense. At the end of the day, it takes far less outside funding to start a varsity program at a smaller university, and the incentive for the school is clear: a meaningful increase in yearly tuition revenue. Creating a strong ecosystem of varsity teams at smaller universities would increase the density of competitive collegiate programs and, ideally, allow that momentum to spill over into larger state institutions over time.

This is not some grand proposal on my part, it is simply the natural order of things and what has been happening within collegiate cycling for years. With greater advocacy and visibility, we could help accelerate this process rather than relying on the historically slow pace of organic growth.

Lastly, if NCAA classification remains out of reach in the near term, raising outside funds to help launch more varsity programs may be the most practical path forward. Schools are rarely opposed to initiatives that open the door to new donors, and cycling could be well positioned to benefit from that reality.

Reframing pro pathway ideology

There are two parts to this point, and as I write this, USA Cycling has just announced an initiative that addresses one piece of the equation.

The first part centers on combating the fear prospective riders face when choosing between college and alternative professional pathways. Rising stars are getting younger in nearly every discipline of cycling, but the majority of athletes will still progress on a timeline that sees them peak physically in their late twenties and, for women, often well into their thirties.

Choosing to attend a strong collegiate program and develop through graduation does not mean an athlete is missing their opportunity to turn professional. Ian pointed to Sepp Kuss as a clear example. Sepp attended college and pursued professional racing after graduating, and he has since become one of the best riders the United States has ever produced. The issue is not age or timing. The issue is perception. To change that perception, we need to strengthen both the organization and the competitive level of collegiate cycling so athletes feel confident that college is a legitimate step forward, not a detour.

The second part of this topic is bridging the gap between collegiate cycling and professional racing. Very few athletes will graduate from college and immediately step into a WorldTour contract or a World Cup start line. That jump is simply too large in the current system. To close it, we need more professional development teams and more UCI-sanctioned racing within the United States.

USA Cycling has just announced the return of an initiative aimed directly at this problem. As you might remember from my recent interview with Eric Bennett at USA Cycling, this week he announced the revival of the Collegiate All-Star Program, described as “a development opportunity that recognizes top athletes and offers them the chance to compete with a composite team in a prestigious U.S. stage race with elite-level support from USA Cycling.”

Ultimately, we need to recognize that the short- to medium-term goal is simple: produce more American professional cyclists, period. Star status is a nice-to-have, but it cannot be the priority. Growing the sport through sustainable programs has to come first, because without a deeper base of professionals, long-term success and global relevance are impossible.

Offsetting a cultural shift

Battling the broader cultural shift away from higher education is largely outside the control of collegiate cycling. What is within reach is ensuring that cycling programs do not add to the already heavy financial burden of attending college. This is where NCAA classification could play a meaningful role, introducing regulations that prioritize the student-athlete and reduce the financial barriers to participation.

Collegiate cycling can also take cues from Fort Lewis, which does an exceptional job of keeping cycling fun, even at the highest levels of competition. Fort Lewis’ all-inclusive varsity structure brings new riders into an environment where they learn alongside more experienced peers while still benefiting from professional coaching and resources. The result is simple but powerful: more people stay in the sport longer, and natural talent is identified and nurtured that might otherwise be overlooked in a purely club-based model.

Mountain biking

To be honest, I wasn’t sure where to fit this into the piece, so it deserves its own section. I’ve previously argued that mountain biking may be the most viable discipline for creating viewable content that can help grow cycling in the United States. Ian echoed that sentiment, adding that mountain biking may also be the discipline best positioned to make the leap to NCAA classification first.

The reasons are straightforward. Mountain biking is currently the most popular cycling discipline at the youth and collegiate levels, it emphasizes individual competition rather than complex team dynamics, and it carries growing mainstream relevance. The upcoming Olympic Games in Los Angeles only strengthen that case, especially with American riders like Riley Amos and Christopher Blevins expected to contend for gold.

Mountain biking already has the participation base, competitive structure, and cultural momentum that make it the clearest entry point for collegiate cycling’s next phase of growth.

Marching orders

Fort Lewis is arguably the premier collegiate cycling program in the United States, operating with a unique structure that continues to produce elite talent. Ian experienced the program firsthand as a student-athlete, went on to build a professional racing career, and now draws on that experience to develop the next generation of riders at Fort Lewis.

His inside perspective on collegiate cycling revealed important nuances that must be addressed if we want to grow and strengthen collegiate competition nationwide. Fort Lewis is setting a leading example of what’s possible, offering a model other programs can learn from and giving me even more optimism about the future of collegiate racing and development in the United States.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes

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The very first feature piece I ever wrote for Built on Bikes was with Natascha den Ouden, the founder of the women’s WorldTour team AG Insurance–Soudal. That conversation centered on the structural development challenges facing women’s professional cycling, particularly the historic imbalance between the three tiers of professional road racing (take a look at that article where I breakdown the three tiers of pro racing). At the time, third-tier Continental teams were, in some cases, racing directly against top-tier WorldTour teams. The result was a distorted competitive environment that did not allow riders to progress at a natural pace before reaching the highest level of the sport.

When we shifted the conversation to women’s racing in the United States, Natascha pointed out an additional and uniquely American problem. The U.S. does not offer strong scouting or development opportunities because the style of pack racing differs so dramatically from Europe. As a result, American women face a double barrier to turning professional. Not only is the domestic racing ecosystem underdeveloped, but relocating to Europe is effectively mandatory for career progression. By failing to build credible developmental pathways at home, the United States is leaving significant talent untapped.

Women’s cycling is growing rapidly on a global scale, but especially in the United States with the rise of gravel racing and a broader surge in endurance sports participation. While the U.S. still lacks clear developmental pathways for men to reach the WorldTour, the men’s side of the sport has existed long enough that the ecosystem is relatively established. There is at least a stable group of American teams spread across the three professional tiers.

Women’s cycling presents a very different opportunity. While American representation in the men’s WorldTour remains limited and difficult to expand, the women’s WorldTour is far more open to new sources of talent. As Natascha noted, there is a clear lack of depth across the three tiers of professional women’s road racing in Europe. That reality creates a rare opening. With the right investment in development, the United States has a real chance to position itself as one of the dominant countries in the women’s WorldTour rather than a peripheral contributor.

The United States already has strong representation in the women’s peloton, but there is real potential to expand that talent pool to rival cycling-obsessed nations like Belgium and the Netherlands. The question is not whether the athletes exist, but how we build a system that consistently identifies, develops, and supports them. The real challenge is figuring out how to make that happen.

Two possible routes

As I see it, there are two paths that lead to more American women reaching the WorldTour in a way that is both successful and sustainable.

First, we can create racing environments and courses in the United States that more closely resemble those in Europe.

Second, we can build out the professional development pipeline by adding more UCI Continental and Pro teams based in the United States.

In a perfect world, both happen. Realistically, though, the first path does not exist without the second. Road racing in the United States has shrunk dramatically, and it is unreasonable to expect a meaningful expansion of UCI races without a strong base of domestic teams to compete in them. Right now, we simply do not have a mature ecosystem of Continental and Pro teams capable of supporting a robust U.S. calendar or consistently sending riders to Europe.

That said, a fully built-out American race calendar is not a prerequisite for sustainable development. In my view, simply increasing the number of U.S.-based Continental and Pro teams would quickly create a viable pathway to greater American relevance in the women’s WorldTour. In today’s piece, we will explore how more Continental and Pro teams in the United States could lead to WorldTour dominance.

The current situation in the U.S.

I’ve already talked at length about the three tiers of UCI-sanctioned professional racing, but how many women’s teams currently operate under a U.S. license with rosters that are majority American? As of the 2026 season, the United States has two Women’s WorldTour teams, zero Pro teams, and one Continental team.

Compare that to the men who have one WorldTour team, two Pro teams, and eight Continental teams. It certainly seems like the men’s ecosystem follows my suggestion, just with limited success. Again, that limited success is due to much deeper development pipelines globally that don’t result in Continental teams racing against WorldTour teams.

Circling back to the women, the number of teams in the United States actually isn’t terrible when compared to other countries. Belgium, one of the most historic cycling nations in the world, currently has two WorldTour teams, one Pro team, and three Continental teams. By comparison, the United States is only slightly behind, and in theory should be capable of matching or even outnumbering most nations given its size and talent pool.

For the remainder of this piece, I want to focus specifically on increasing the number of women’s Continental teams in the United States and why I believe that would lead to stronger, more consistent representation in the European peloton.

Why more Continental teams?

As a reminder, WorldTour teams often look to Continental and Pro level teams as primary scouting grounds for rising talent. Having a strong base of Continental and Pro teams is essential for increasing the visibility of American riders to top level programs.

Beyond talent identification, the second and third tiers of professional racing provide greater parity in physical ability, which leads to more dynamic and meaningful competition. These environments better simulate the tactics and structure of WorldTour racing, just at a slower overall pace. That allows riders to develop technical and tactical skills against peers of a similar level, rather than racing purely for survival at the top tier.

As Natascha pointed out in my first article, until 2026, when the UCI made it illegal, there were races where Continental teams were forced to compete consistently against Pro and WorldTour teams. This imbalance severely limited meaningful development and highlighted the need for clearer separation between tiers. Continental teams will still compete against Pro teams in .1 and .2 races, but this structure mirrors the rules found in men’s racing. In those races, the skill gap will still be small enough for competitive racing.

*.1 and .2 races refer to classifications that determine UCI regulations limiting the amount of Pro and Continental teams in a given race.

When looking at the United States, I suggest bolstering our Continental team footprint because Continental teams are the “easiest” type of team to start and operate (more on this later). Beyond lower startup inertia, Continental teams can still race against higher level Pro teams, but without the cost and logistical commitments required for Pro classification.

I feel obligated to say that stronger youth development pipelines, particularly more robust collegiate programs, will only strengthen a healthy Continental ecosystem. More importantly though, by increasing the number of Continental teams, we would be building a far stronger and more accessible bridge to professional racing for women than currently exists.

As we dig deeper into the “why” behind my push for more Continental teams, my hypothesis rests on three key pillars. Ultimately, Continental teams could be valuable assets for the United States because they:

• Offer the lowest barrier to entry financially for owners and sponsors
  

• Provide the most flexibility in scheduling and race calendars
  

• Serve as a bridge for less experienced American riders to transition into European racing

A flexible entry point

Starting a women’s continental team is by no means easy, but it is much more doable than forming a Pro team or hoping more American women find their own way to the European peloton. Here’s why.

Lower financial and operational barriers

Any women’s Continental team licensed in the United States must go through USA Cycling to meet the administrative requirements for UCI registration. Conveniently, USAC clearly lists every requirement needed to form a registered women’s Continental team.

Starting with finances, there are four essential fees required for registration:

• $975 to Waugh & Goodwin, LLP, the accounting firm USAC partners with\
  

• €7,150 to the UCI for registration and anti-doping contributions
  

• $3,500 to USA Cycling for U.S. registration
  

• A bank guarantee, determined by auditors, with a minimum of €20,000 or 15% of the combined salaries of riders and staff, whichever is higher

Assuming the minimum bank guarantee, the administrative cost of forming a Continental team comes out to roughly $37,000. That is a good amount of money, but in exchange for the ability to race against top Continental and Pro teams in Europe, it is relatively modest.

Technically, wages are not required for UCI Women’s Continental Teams. But we are not living in the stone ages, and if the goal is to build U.S. cycling with any level of respect or sustainability, paying riders and staff matters. So let’s make some realistic salary assumptions.

The minimum roster size is eight riders. Let’s also assume a staff of four. No one is getting rich, but we’ll assume annual salaries of $60,000 for riders and $70,000 for staff. Finally, let’s be very budget conscious with travel and race expenses and allocate $400,000 for the season. We’ll also assume the team has secured bike and equipment sponsors, meaning those costs are covered.

All in, the total cost to get this hypothetical team off the ground comes to approximately $1.2 million.

That is a lot of money, no question. But in the context of startup capital for a legitimate business, it is not astronomical. There are plenty of assumptions baked into this estimate, but I think it’s reasonable to believe that, with intent and coordination, three or even four Continental teams could be created for roughly this level of investment. I’ll get into how that might happen later.

I can’t provide exact comparisons, but some gravel teams already exceed this budget with fewer riders. If we can justify those investments, we can justify investing in women’s development in the United States. Finally, it’s worth noting that registration itself is not a long process. If riders and staff are already identified, UCI registration typically takes about three months from start to finish.

Flexible scheduling

In WorldTour racing, teams are required to attend all WorldTour-level events, with the ability to miss only one. In Continental competition, there is no fixed requirement for how many races a team must participate in during a season. This allows teams to operate on leaner budgets and prioritize competitions that offer the best opportunities for rider development and results.

If budgets are constrained, an American Continental team would not even be required to race in Europe, although that is the central goal of this plan. That scheduling flexibility can actually help American teams gain visibility in the European peloton. European UCI races are invite-only and often have team composition requirements, which means teams from the United States are frequently deprioritized and not guaranteed an invite.

At present, the U.S. has only one women’s Continental team. If that team were invited to a European race but could not attend, the United States would lose its only opportunity for representation at that event. With multiple teams, another could step in and fill that slot.

The other major benefit of flexible scheduling is the freedom for riders to compete across disciplines to raise the team’s visibility and earn UCI points. A 2026 rule change allows riders registered on road teams to earn UCI points for their road team by competing in other disciplines, further strengthening the case for this model.

A realistic skill environment

As Natascha mentioned, European teams are often cautious about American riders out of concern that they lack experience racing and positioning within a large peloton. We have, of course, seen exceptions, such as Kristen Faulkner joining the sport late and finding success, but that path is not the norm, nor should it be.

The Continental level gives skilled American riders the opportunity to hone these abilities in an environment that is better suited to teaching them. The United States already produces riders who are strong enough to compete at the Pro and WorldTour levels, but without the chance to learn the tactical and situational nuances of peloton racing, their likelihood of long-term success is lower.

By strengthening the Continental level, the U.S. talent pool becomes far less constrained. There is no shortage of capable riders, and we could confidently fill multiple Continental team rosters with athletes who have the physical tools and the potential to develop into WorldTour-caliber professionals.

In conclusion, Continental teams offer the lowest barrier to entry into professional road racing from both a skill and organizational standpoint. They expand the talent pool in the United States and, just as importantly, ensure that talent has a place to develop and showcase its abilities. Combined with collegiate cycling, Continental teams allow women who are just entering the sport to race alongside athletes who may have found cycling later in life. That dynamic creates an opportunity to build one of the most comprehensive and mature development environments in women’s cycling.

All of this sounds promising, but it raises a critical question: how do we make it work financially? Especially when, as Natascha pointed out, Continental teams receive little to no airtime in Europe and virtually none in the United States. If visibility is limited, how do we convince sponsors, investors, and stakeholders that there is real value in supporting this kind of venture?

There’s always a pitch

Remember when I said gravel teams often have larger budgets than Continental teams? That disparity exists almost entirely because of visibility. If Continental racing has low exposure compared to the WorldTour, why would a brand or individual choose to sponsor a team? And how could a team operating at that level realistically convince them there is value?

Much like my idea of securing outside funding to make cycling an NCAA sport, the answer comes down to how the opportunity is pitched. To do that successfully, we need to:

• Highlight the lack of opportunity for women in the current Continental landscape
  

• Be honest about lower visibility in the short term
  

• Emphasize the upside of developing the next successful American WorldTour rider

Even if the bulk of opportunity ultimately exists in the WorldTour peloton, Continental teams can use that reality to their advantage by building it directly into their story. These teams would be on the front lines developing the next wave of American talent that could eventually break through at the WorldTour level. If a Continental team identifies, develops, and enables the next American star, that narrative alone becomes powerful marketing for a small program.

Scheduling flexibility is another underrated asset. Road racing in the United States may not command the attention it once did, but gravel and mountain biking continue to thrive. Multi-discipline riders can represent their team at those events, extending the team’s visibility beyond traditional road racing and helping build a brand that resonates across disciplines.

We have already seen with teams like Project Echelon that building a team around a clear mission can be an effective marketing tool in itself. If a team is able to pay riders a living wage and operate within a defined geographic region, it can become a pillar of its local community, both within cycling and beyond it. Proximity to collegiate programs only strengthens this effect and creates a natural recruiting pipeline.

The list could go on, but the flexibility afforded to Continental teams should not be viewed as a weakness. It is an opportunity to create a team with a compelling identity and purpose, one that may ultimately generate more fan interest than a traditional road team whose only story is competitive success.

Finding the right path to relevance and visibility

I’ve said it before, but I spitball a lot of ideas in this newsletter. That’s the point, and it’s something we need more of in cycling, especially in the United States. If we want relevance and visibility on the world stage, there are countless paths we could take. So far, though, we’ve largely stuck to traditional road development models.

Those traditional pathways have produced limited results for men and, in many cases, barely exist for women. Like any emerging business frontier, women’s racing presents enormous opportunity, but it requires people willing to take real risks. If we want a reliable and sustainable professional pathway for women in the United States, people and brands will need to step forward and help build it.

I genuinely believe the United States could become the dominant nation in women’s cycling within the next ten years. The talent is already here. What’s missing is the base. We need to start building it now and give that talent a place to develop.

Continental teams represent the path of least resistance. They offer a realistic, scalable way to create opportunity while also telling compelling stories that can elevate the brand value of an American team far beyond that of a typical European Continental program. It’s hard not to be inspired by what four new Continental teams, thirty-two talented female athletes, and under $10 million in total investment could do for us as a cycling nation.

A message that goes far beyond cycling

The past week, and months, have been very difficult for many of the people who call America home. Many citizens have lost their lives, and on January 24, Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE agents while practicing his 1st and 2nd Amendment rights and while protecting a fellow community member.

Alex was a dedicated ICU nurse who made his living by providing care and respect to our veterans, many of whom have risked their lives in World War II fighting the same hateful ideologies that Alex was standing up against. Alex was also a member of his local cycling community in Minnesota.

My platform here is limited, but I think it’s everyone’s duty to use the platform they have to confront hate and embrace humanity. We need to speak out against injustice and show that hatred and bigotry will never win.

Since my platform is within the world of cycling, I thought the best thing I could do is highlight members of the Minnesota cycling community that you can support in these dark times. I especially want to highlight Alex’s local bike shop, Angry Catfish Bicycle. Head to their Instagram, which is linked below, to see the dozens of unity rides that are being organized across the United States and the world tomorrow, January 31.

Angry Catfish Bicycle
Instagram

Salsa Bicycles
Instagram

Wolf Tooth Components
Instagram

Stay safe,

Kyle Dawes

In an early edition of Built on Bikes, I examined how Pas Normal Studios has taken a steady, disciplined approach to brand growth. I contrasted that strategy with the increasingly erratic financial performance of Rapha, a legacy brand in the premium cycling apparel space that has been on a downward trajectory for several years. I still stand by my conclusion from that piece. Rapha needed to take decisive action to stabilize the business. It appears the leadership at Rapha agreed.

Since that article was published, Rapha has made a series of moves that suggest a far more aggressive and unsentimental approach to regaining its position at the top of the premium apparel market. In the months that followed, the brand has:

• Become the apparel partner of USA Cycling

• Closed five global clubhouses that function as retail locations, four of them in the United States

• Ended its long standing sponsorship of both the men’s and women’s EF Education WorldTour teams

• Announced a strategic shift toward the U.S. market, increased emphasis on off-road cycling, and a goal of achieving positive EBITDA by 2027

In an interview with BikeRadar, newly appointed CEO Fran Millar noted that the United States currently accounts for roughly 20 percent of Rapha’s global business. Rapha remains the largest brand in the premium cycling apparel category, but the rise of competitors like MAAP, Pas Normal Studios, and Velocio has forced the company to confront several years of weak financial performance and slowing momentum.

That is what makes the renewed focus on the United States so interesting. If the U.S. represents only one fifth of Rapha’s revenue, why double down here instead of refocusing on Europe or accelerating growth in emerging markets like Asia? At the same time, the closure of four U.S. Rapha clubhouses creates the impression that Rapha is pulling back from the American market rather than investing further into it.

This piece is not an attempt to judge whether each individual decision Rapha has made is correct. Frankly, that question isn’t that interesting to me. What I am more interested in is whether this strategic shift toward the United States reflects a genuine growth opportunity for cycling domestically, or whether it represents another risky bet by a brand under pressure. If Rapha is right, it may signal untapped potential in the U.S. cycling market. If they are wrong, it could reinforce the idea that meaningful growth here remains elusive.

Why look at Rapha?

As always, I’ll caveat this by saying that everything here is my opinion, and I could be completely wrong. This question is a difficult one to answer. Can the strategic pivot of a single company really tell us anything meaningful about the potential of the U.S. cycling market? The honest answer is yes and no.

Viewed narrowly, Rapha is just one data point. But it is an important one. Rapha remains one of the largest apparel brands in cycling and, since its acquisition by the Walton family, has become more deeply embedded in the American cycling ecosystem. That context matters.

It is not surprising to see smaller, high-growth brands like Pas Normal Studios and MAAP investing heavily in the United States. They are a fraction of Rapha’s size, and the U.S. is the largest consumer market in the world. For emerging brands, that represents a significant opportunity to capture and steal market share.

Rapha’s situation is fundamentally different. As a much larger company facing real financial pressure, its strategic decisions are unlikely to be made lightly or opportunistically. If the goal is a return to sustainable growth, Rapha will need meaningful momentum to reverse several years of underperformance. A substantial bet on the United States suggests the company believes there is upside here that is not immediately obvious to the average consumer.

Only time will tell whether that belief proves correct. For the purposes of this piece, however, Rapha provides a unique and useful lens through which to examine the current state and potential of the American cycling market.

How do we determine if the hype is real?

If we are going to use Rapha as a lens into the wider U.S. market, then it becomes critical to understand how and why these strategic decisions are being made. What are Rapha’s executives seeing in the United States? Is this a targeted push to stabilize the business, or a broader bet that the U.S. cycling market is on the verge of explosive growth? The answer to that question will tell us far more about market signals than any single press quote ever could.

How do we gain insight into Rapha’s decision making process beyond what its CEO has said in interviews? Simple, we will have to think like a strategy consultant.

This approach goes against much of what I have historically argued for when it comes to growing cycling in the United States. I have always emphasized storytelling, cultural investment, and long term foundation building. Strategy consulting firms, on the other hand, are known for prioritizing numbers, operational efficiency, and profitability above all else. Identify bad business practices, cut unprofitable initiatives, and reallocate resources toward activities that move the balance sheet in the right direction.

Viewed through that lens, Rapha’s recent decisions begin to make more sense. The initiatives being cut are the same ones that have traditionally carried the brand’s storytelling and cultural weight. That tradeoff aligns closely with a classic consulting mindset. It is entirely plausible that Rapha has either hired a strategy consulting firm or adopted a similar internal framework to restructure its operations and reset expectations.

To be clear, I do not like seeing Rapha clubhouses close or storytelling platforms disappear. There is real cultural loss in those decisions. But there is also an argument that this kind of blunt, black and white approach is an attempt to rebuild the foundations of the business. Stability has to come before new ambitions.

If Rapha is able to regain financial footing and return to sustainable growth, there is every reason to believe the storytelling that helped define the brand will return, and potentially with even greater impact. We may not like the approach in the moment, but the hope is that it pays dividends over the long term.

Thinking like a consultant

I’m not a strategy consultant, but there are well-established consulting frameworks we can use to try to make sense of Rapha’s recent decision making. One of the most widely used is the BCG Matrix, developed by the Boston Consulting Group.

At its core, the BCG Matrix is a simple way to break down a company’s operations and evaluate where capital, attention, and resources should be allocated to improve financial and operational performance. It maps products or business units across two variables: market share and market growth. Together, those variables create four quadrants that categorize how different parts of a business contribute to its overall health.

Dogs:

Low market share in low-growth markets. These are often the products or initiatives that get cut in order to free up capital and reduce operational drag.

Question Marks:

Low market share in high-growth markets. These areas require heavy investment and carry risk. With the right execution they can become Stars, but without it they often slide into Dogs.

Cash Cows:

High market share in low-growth markets. These businesses generate more cash than they consume and often fund experimentation or growth elsewhere in the company.

Stars:

High market share in high-growth markets. They are expensive to maintain but, if growth continues, can eventually mature into Cash Cows.

Using this framework, we can attempt to place Rapha’s key operations and strategic initiatives into the matrix and better understand the logic behind recent cuts, investments, and shifts in focus. Once that picture comes into view, we can begin to extrapolate what Rapha’s leadership may be seeing in the U.S. market and whether their strategy reflects genuine opportunity or calculated necessity.

The Dogs

If we are going to examine the weakest links in Rapha’s business model, there are two areas that stand out as high cost and low reward.

Clubhouses

Clubhouses became a core part of Rapha’s identity and were pioneers in using community engagement to grow cycling and establish deep brand loyalty. It is undeniable that clubhouses played a critical role in Rapha’s early growth in the United States, particularly through the RCC membership program. They gave cyclists a physical space to gather, ride, and connect, while also serving as premium retail locations. Over time, they evolved into a global network that RCC members could rely on when traveling or shopping, reinforcing Rapha’s position as more than just an apparel brand.

As the cycling landscape has evolved, however, it appears that at least in the United States some clubhouses have begun to deliver diminishing returns, both financially and culturally. Much like the rise of run clubs, platforms like Strava have made it easy for anyone to organize group rides and build communities without the need for a centralized brand hub. In most major metropolitan areas where Rapha clubhouses exist, riders now have an abundance of group rides, events, and social scenes to choose from. Rapha no longer controls the narrative or infrastructure around physical community building in the way it once did.

At the same time, clubhouses are retail locations at their core. In the U.S., they are concentrated in cities with extremely high real estate costs and rising labor expenses. In the early days, those costs could be justified by the outsized marketing impact and cultural relevance the clubhouses delivered. As the market has become more saturated and community-driven cycling less centralized, it’s unlikely that many of these locations could continue to justify their operating costs on a purely financial basis.

It’s awful that we are losing four clubhouses in the United States. Full stop. That loss will be felt by local cycling communities and longtime Rapha loyalists. That said, shuttering these locations does not necessarily weaken Rapha’s position in the United States. In fact, it may do the opposite. Closing cash intensive clubhouses frees up significant capital that can be redeployed into new initiatives with higher impact, better scalability, and clearer paths to profitability in the U.S. market.

WorldTour affiliation

Rapha’s partnership with the EF Education WorldTour team is another example of an initiative that delivered massive early upside before producing diminishing returns. When the partnership debuted, Rapha was immediately positioned as the brand with the most distinctive kits in the WorldTour. The bold designs and prominent use of pink, aligned perfectly with EF Education’s branding, stood out in a conservative peloton and quickly became a fan favorite.

The partnership reached its peak when Rapha and EF Education collaborated with PALACE, the London based skateboarding brand. By introducing streetwear aesthetics into professional cycling kits, Rapha cemented its status as the most culturally relevant apparel sponsor in the WorldTour. The collaboration pushed EF Education into the spotlight, making the team instantly recognizable even as on-road results remained inconsistent.

By 2025, however, the novelty had clearly worn off. What was once disruptive had become normalized. Eye-catching kits alone were no longer enough to drive incremental sales, particularly in mature European markets where Rapha already had strong brand awareness and where overall cycling growth had begun to plateau. The partnership remained expensive, but the marginal returns appeared to be shrinking.

Once again, by cutting this partnership, Rapha will free up significant capital and operational resources that can be reallocated to new endeavors.

Cash Cows

There could certainly be more, but the only true cash cow I can clearly identify is European road cycling apparel. While I just argued that sponsoring a WorldTour team had effectively become a dog, marketing and sales are not the same thing. WorldTour representation may no longer be driving meaningful incremental growth in Europe, but that does not mean demand for Rapha’s road apparel in the region has collapsed or become insignificant.

We know the United States accounts for roughly 20 percent of Rapha’s business. It is reasonable to assume that South America, Africa, and Australia contribute relatively small shares of revenue, even when combined. That narrows the remaining revenue concentration to Europe and Asia. While Asia represents a growing opportunity, Europe remains the region where cycling participation, cultural relevance, and premium apparel adoption are strongest.

Europe is still where Rapha has its deepest brand equity. The company has the recognition, distribution, and credibility to maintain strong sales without the need for aggressive marketing spend or dramatic rebrands of its road collections.

The strategic play, then, is straightforward. Continue executing in Europe, protect market share, and use that steady cash flow to fund higher-risk, higher-upside bets elsewhere. Even as competition intensifies from brands like MAAP, Pas Normal Studios, and Velocio, Rapha’s scale and legacy still allow it to outperform these challengers in absolute revenue.

The risk here is complacency. Without some level of reinvestment, brand erosion in Europe is inevitable over the long term. But in the near to medium term, European road cycling apparel remains Rapha’s financial foundation, providing the stability required to support the broader strategic reset now underway.

Stars

With stars usually being the products or segments that brands focus their attention to spur growth, this section is pretty straightforward and has either been explicitly defined by Rapha or alluded to by recent strategic decisions.

U.S. enthusiast market and off-road disciplines

I want to caveat this segment by acknowledging that this remains a relatively narrow segment within the broader cycling market and one that ties closely to what I will discuss later in the question marks section. That said, the core idea is simple. The population of cycling enthusiasts in the United States, particularly within off road disciplines, represents a strong foothold from which Rapha can expand.

I have written about this extensively in previous editions of Built on Bikes, but off road cycling is currently the most effective channel for converting Americans into committed cyclists. These are people who ride consistently, invest in equipment, follow the sport, and often participate in racing or organized events. It is a developing market that requires meaningful investment to gain visibility and credibility, and while it may not immediately translate into mass volume sales, it is where long term loyalty is being built.

To date, Rapha has not been lagging in this segment. If anything, it has been one of the most visible premium brands in U.S. off road racing. Early signals of this strategy included sponsorships of athletes like Sarah Sturm, Keegan Swenson, and Colin Strickland. That investment only deepened over time with the formation of a dedicated off road team and significant marketing spend behind Lachlan Morton’s endurance projects, which helped redefine what modern cycling storytelling could look like.

More recently, Rapha has continued to reinforce this position through its partnership with USA Cycling, sponsorship of Kate Courtney and the She Sends Foundation, and the signing of Cam Jones, the 2025 Life Time Grand Prix overall winner. These are not reactive moves or attempts to regain relevance. They are the continuation of a long running strategy that has quietly positioned Rapha at the center of elite off road cycling in the United States.

Rapha is not trying to make up lost ground here. While brands like Pas Normal Studios and MAAP may have taken the lead in fashion forward aesthetics, Rapha arguably has deeper and more credible representation within U.S. off road cycling, both among professional athletes and engaged consumers. The brand is already embedded where influence matters most. If Rapha begins reinvesting more aggressively into sponsorship, product development, and targeted marketing within this segment, the upside could be significant. The groundwork has already been laid, and that is what makes this segment so strategically compelling.

Direct-to-consumer E-commerce

This star channel is not exclusive to the United States, but it remains critical to Rapha’s revised strategy for the American market.

Rapha has shuttered several clubhouses in the United States, but that does not mean it will stop selling to the customers who once shopped there. With much of the fixed cost associated with operating physical retail now removed, Rapha has the opportunity to reallocate capital toward strengthening its direct to consumer infrastructure and logistics.

Rather than having marketing dollars tied up in high rent locations in a handful of cities, Rapha can invest more heavily in digital acquisition and retention. Online advertising allows the brand to target cycling enthusiasts across the entire country, not just those within riding distance of a clubhouse. This significantly expands reach while improving efficiency.

At the same time, reinvesting in e-commerce, fulfillment, and customer experience reduces friction for American consumers who already view Rapha as a premium brand but may not have had consistent access to physical stores. If executed well, this shift does not weaken Rapha’s presence in the United States. It modernizes it

Question Marks

This is where the real question mark of this article comes from. There are two big question marks for Rapha in their new strategy.

The broader U.S. cycling market

The broader American cycling market, beyond core enthusiasts, does not currently have a dominant apparel player. Once you look past people who view cycling as a serious form of exercise or competition, the majority of riders in the U.S. are commuters. That market is already being addressed successfully by e bike brands, helmet manufacturers, and accessories companies. Dedicated cycling apparel, however, has largely failed to penetrate it.

The reason is simple. Most Americans who use a bike as transportation are riding short distances and do not want to change clothes when they arrive. They wear normal street or work clothing, not performance oriented cycling kits. From the outside, it appears the apparel industry has either failed to crack this use case or has decided the margins are not worth the effort.

From a BCG Matrix perspective, this is where the risk becomes clear. Rapha’s lifestyle collections currently trail far behind its performance apparel in both sales and adoption. In today’s state, that category looks like a dog rather than a star. Pursuing the commuter and lifestyle market at scale would therefore require meaningful investment into a segment that has not yet proven it can drive growth for the brand.

Olympic and national partnerships

With their new focus on the United States, one of the most significant moves by Rapha was becoming the official apparel partner of USA Cycling. I’ve seen mixed reviews of the partnership, but it is far too soon to pass judgment because we don’t know the exact strategic reasoning behind the decision.

We know Rapha is prioritizing the United States, but who is this partnership actually targeting? It’s reasonable to assume that the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles play a role. Rapha, a British company, is likely hoping for a similar effect to what the 2012 London Olympics had on British cycling. After strong performances by the national team, Britain saw a noticeable increase in cycling participation and enthusiasm. Rapha didn’t supply Team GB’s kits at the time, but it’s hard to imagine that a similar moment in the U.S. wouldn’t result in a meaningful sales boost if they were.

I’m almost certain this is the question mark Rapha believes could become a star.

Framing the matrix

Overall, Rapha has plenty to work with as it begins its new American-focused strategy. It appears the company has already identified two major dogs in the business and eliminated them to free up significant capital to reinvest in stars and question marks. It is slightly concerning that there is only one major cash cow, but it is also the foundation on which Rapha’s entire empire is built. In the near term, it feels like a reliable base that should not require significant resources to continue generating steady revenue.

Rapha has also identified a clear star in the American enthusiast and off-road markets and has been investing in these segments for years. The brand is now well positioned to turn this star into a smaller but still meaningful cash cow. Finally, two major question marks loom over Rapha’s new strategy, bringing us back to the core question: does Rapha’s investment in the American enthusiast market represent a real opportunity to grow cycling in the United States?

Opportunity comes in all shapes and sizes

With all of that analysis behind us, I think I’m able to answer my overarching question about growth opportunities in American cycling. Rapha’s investment in the United States does signal a real opportunity to grow cycling domestically, but it falls short of a full cultural revolution. Ultimately, I think Rapha is focused on growing and reclaiming dominance among cycling enthusiasts.

I highly doubt the Olympics will spur more towns and cities to adopt bike-forward policies like Bentonville, Arkansas, but I do think it could result in the largest cultural shift in American cycling to date. It’s a narrower market, but with off-road and adventure-based cycling firmly on the rise in the United States, the Olympics could push more people to research cycling as a serious hobby. That, in turn, would lead them to discover entry points into these popular disciplines that Rapha is actively targeting. If those consumers have already seen Rapha on their screens being used by top athletes, trust will already be built in Rapha as a go-to brand.

It’s a long-term play, but if Rapha is able to reclaim its position as the dominant performance- and culture-driven brand it once was, this time rooted in the United States and alternative cycling disciplines, I think it will have created the foothold necessary to eventually break into the wider U.S. consumer market.

From a business perspective, this is the strongest Rapha has looked in years in terms of having a clear, concrete strategy to return to success. Out of all the markets and channels they could have pursued for growth, they chose the United States and alternative, emerging cycling disciplines as their primary focus.

I’m fully aware of my own bias given my desire to see professional cycling grow in the United States, but I do think Rapha’s reorganization lends real credibility to the idea that meaningful professional growth here is possible.

Ride and rip,

Kyle Dawes