'I really started right at the bottom' – After being told she was 'too old', this rider got a pro contract and is now set to ride the Tour de France

When Frankie Hall received her first professional contract offer this February, she thought there was a mistake. “This stuff doesn’t happen to me,” she told herself. At 30 years old, she had heard again and again that she was too old to make it in cycling, and with little experience of top-tier racing, no team had been willing to take a gamble on her.

Her options, she figured, had run out. Then came the message: how did she fancy a two-year deal with a French ProTeam? “I thought it must be a typo,” she says. “Or maybe [the team manager] didn’t mean to message me.”

Double checking her French translation, Hall soon realised there was no ruse. She signed the contract, and as of last month, is now a fully fledged pro for the first time in her life with Mayenne Monbana My Pie, a second-tier team with an invite to the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

Her debut with the squad came at Milan-San Remo, where, despite crashing and finishing 131st, she found the day “surreal” – “It was probably one of the coolest experiences I’ve had on the bike,” she says. “I feel like a no one, and there are people shouting your name going up the climbs.”

It was never Hall’s childhood dream to become a pro cyclist. A former hockey player, she only turned to the bike for rehab after she suffered a knee injury while at university in Loughborough. “I really started right at the bottom,” she says, but her potential was strong, and within a handful of years, she was a staple of the British domestic scene, winning the Otley and Lancaster GPs for DAS-Hutchinson in 2024.

The following season, in a bid to gain more experience, she made the bold decision to drop down into cycling’s fourth tier. “I knew I would have the freedom as a club rider to guest ride for different teams and pick and choose my own calendar,” she explains.

In 2025, Hall rode for four teams across four continents. She began the year in Australia, then raced in Thailand and the USA, before returning to Europe in May for events in the UK, Italy and France. “I rinsed my savings,” she says, “and I was still working as well; I was coaching and working as a ride leader and guide.”

Through it all, she won twice, scored 15 top-10s, and tried to open discussions with pro teams. The response was always the same. “It was primarily an age thing,” says Hall, who turned 31 last weekend. “Both teams and agents would come back to me saying, ‘Your data is really good, but at your age, we expect more results’ or ‘You’re too old for what we’re looking for.’”

Undeterred, Hall opened 2026 in El Salvador with a victory in a one-day race – a big scalp at UCI level. Again, she reached out to teams, but this time was final: if she didn’t get a contract, she decided, she would “can the racing completely” and take up full-time office work.

Fortunately, Mayenne invited her in to do tests, and within days she was signed up to the team, moving to Girona, and starting a new life as a pro cyclist with her first WorldTour race. “It’s kind of crazy how much can change in a month,” she says.

After grafting so hard on her own, Hall now feels like a “princess” within a pro set-up. Her race calendar has all been planned out for her, and it’s “actually pretty mad”, she says; she’ll do De Brabantse Pijl, Amstel Gold Race, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, before making her Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta Femenina.

She’s then down to ride the Tour de France Femmes in August. “I’m one of the stronger climbers in the team, so it kind of makes sense that I do it,” she says.

“[The team] really believes in me, which is something I’ve never really felt before outside of my partner and my family… It’s a really special feeling.”

This interview first appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 9 April 2026. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.