So You Wanna Go Pro?

Their Place at the Start of a Race. We’d Give Anything to Be in Their Carbon-fibre Shoes – Riding State-of-the-art Bikes, With Mechanics on Tap, and Fans Screaming Our Names as We Bullet Past Them. But Being Paid to Ride a Bike Is Not Always Moonshine and Roses...

- Jonathan Ancer

Pros live the dream. A world of champagne, cheek-kisses from podium babes, and masseuses. But behind the glitz and glamour there’s a world we don’t see – that’s where they worry about attacks and crashes, where they push their bodies to their absolute limit to stay with the bunch, and where they try to ignore the pain of brutal climbs. Riding at the sharp end of the field can be a vicious… cycle.

And that’s just racing. Pros train until their eyeballs bleed; spend long hours on their own, doing intervals; live out of suitcases, and languish in airports; suffer homesickness in foreign countries; and are frequently lost in translation.

If you ask them when they last ate pizza they’ll look at you blankly, and shake their heads. “Pizza? What’s pizza?”

While Froome, Sagan and Cavendish may swim in cash, most pros make only a modest living, and some barely make minimum wage (prompting the question: What do you call a professional cyclist who breaks up with his girlfriend? Homeless.)

So, why do they do it? Because it’s the dream, man. They are living the dream.

ASHLEIGH MOOLMAN-PASIO,

31, ROAD RIDER WITH CERVÉLO-BIGLA PRO CYCLING

ASHLEIGH MOOLMAN WAS STUDYING CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WHEN SHE MET CARL PASIO, A COMPETITIVE TRIATHLETE. He took her on a ride up the Knysna Heads; and she fell in love with him, and with competitive endurance sports.

Moolman-Pasio’s rise to the pro ranks was as fast as she was, and she soon broke through, into the world’s top-ranked female road riders.

“It was a dream,” she says now.