'They took me on a gamble' - meet the British cycling team fighting to make junior racing more accessible

“For any young cyclist dreaming of one day turning professional, competing in the [British] Junior National Series is the starting line on their journey to success,” Ned Boulting recites over a montage of junior riders flashing past fields, triumphantly crossing the finish line or crashing out track-side, head in hands.

The music turns dramatic: drums and electric guitars. “As they follow in the tyre tracks of their heroes, they must face gruelling courses, extreme physical and mental demands and the danger of racing on open roads,” Boulting continues.

“But for many young cyclists, the biggest challenge isn’t on the roads. It is the financial barriers of taking part at all.”

The trailer for Team PAU’s series of films charting the highs and lows of a summer of junior racing is suitably dramatic. It even pipped HSBC and P&O Cruises to a silver Lens Award for Best Documentary Style Video.

But the heart of the Team PAU series - and the heart of the team itself - is a determination to make cycling as accessible to as many children as possible.

The team’s precursor, Project PAU, was started three years ago out of a bike shop in Stoke, in the English Midlands, run by Paul Ball. As his own son got interested in cycling, Ball started to notice the realities of racing as a junior.

He saw kids racing with passion and commitment, but he also saw young riders with teams and many without, a whirlwind of hurried drop-offs and rushed runs back before school started the next day. He noticed the tired parents, and the absent ones too, whose children would never get the chance to compete due to one frustrating, heart-breaking block: finances.

“The first barrier that stood out to me was the financial side of it,” Ball told Cycling Weekly. “From the outset, you're talking a few thousand to buy a bike to race on. Then you start looking at the travel; just to get around the country is an expense.

“Having stood on the side and watched the races, there’s no real guidance,” he continued. “You see a kid rock up with mum and dad to a race, they do the race then they put the bike back in the car and go home. There’s no guidance for the child on how to become better. Some kids that have come to us with bikes that are too big; they just don’t work for them.”

And so Project PAU began, starting first as a series of online seminars kids could log onto and chat to a coach, learn how to set up their bikes and the world of racing and training. A year later, and the shop had assembled its first flesh-and-blood squad: eight kids from all over the UK, supported with bikes, coaches and race entries for 2025.

“They took me on a gamble,” one of the team’s first cohort, Huw Cressey-Rodgers said of the team. “It's incredibly hard in cycling, because a lot of the time it's who you know, that's just how it is. They say it’s all about results, but it's not always.”

Cressey-Rodgers’ frustration with elements of the race scene were clear, but so was his appreciation of the culture Team PAU has brought to the sport: he stresses, time and time again during our conversation, that everyone at Team PAU is really, really nice.

“I'm not going to be around the bush and say it's the fastest team out there. It's not,” Cressey-Rodgers continued. “If you look at some other teams, they’ve got some incredibly fast riders, but they're just not as friendly and not as nice. It's almost like they treat you as if you're 20 years old at 16. You've got to have a little bit of understanding, especially when a race goes badly.”

Rising Above: Team PAU Breaking Barriers in Cycling | Closing the Gap | Trailer - YouTube

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It’s not hard to imagine that a squad built by Ball and his team is an inspiring, supportive and ambitious one. Ball is a man who chases life’s fullest experiences: he built a business providing outdoor experiences for underprivileged kids, taking them out mountaineering and climbing and mountain biking; he’s a father to six children who spent his younger years backpacking Africa, South East Asia and living in Australia and New Zealand. Now he's got riders like Bradley Wiggins stepping in to support his junior race team.

I ask Ball what his dreams are for the team he’s helping build. He says they’re swapping some home races in favour of lining up more often in Belgium to give their riders more continental exposure. They’re also aiming to develop tighter links with sponsors, so the team is less financially dependent on the shop. He says too that developing a women’s team is at the forefront of their minds. But the mission Ball first began Team PAU with remains his driving force:

“Hopefully we inspire some young people to get on the bike,” he said. “I think if you want to inspire young people, it's not necessarily about showing the race, it's showing them the people that are involved, how racing affects those people, and what inspires them to get on a bike.”

Team Pau’s series of films, ‘Closing the Gap’ will go live on Thursday February 25.