After writing for the esteemed PezCycling News for a good four years now, on and off, covering the Classics and the Grand Tours as part of my column, ‘Lee’s Lowdown’, I’ve now landed a weekly column which will run every Wednesday.
The first edition of the Lowdown, entitled A Glamorous Life looks at the reality of life as a pro, and is currently online. You can head over to PEZ by clicking on the image below.
Read about contractual wranglings, riders not getting paid, the mad cycling groupies we have to fight off and me autographing a baby.
Yes you read that correctly.
Also read about the rather fantastic and heartening clause in John Ebsen’s new contract, great stuff!
Great article! I’m actually reading Charly Wegelius’s book Domestique and find places in the book that are shocking to me. It really opens a person’s eyes to a little of that world. He did say that being on Mapei’s squad he was treated like royalty at times. I guess it depends on the level and the budget of the team?
thanks for the comment, much appreciated! yes and no, better funded teams obviously have more material perks but the ‘feel’ of a team is made by its members, and comes, really, from the management’s attitude and the leader(s). i don’t miss all that at all, on my teams, all of them, it was not much fun, apart from the racing itself which I loved. MTB is way more fun than road in my opinion, more of a sense of camaraderie.