'I wanted to make my own way' – British CX champion makes pro leap with new team

British national cyclo-cross champion Xan Crees remembers a moment this season when she got changed for a race in the back of a Vauxhall Corsa. Now, aged 24, she’s set to become a professional rider for the first time in her life.

With her new project, OGT p/b USE, Crees has recruited her own sponsors to allow her to pursue a full-time career in cycling. She will ride this coming cyclo-cross season as part of a “one-rider team”, though she hopes to recruit more team-mates within three years.

“For me, being a professional cyclist is obviously being paid to ride your bike,” Crees told Cycling Weekly at a launch event in London on Thursday. “While I’ve had equipment support and team support, I’ve never actually been paid to ride my bike.”

Crees’s maiden national championships win, in which she held off WorldTour talents Cat Ferguson (Movistar) and Imogen Wolff (Visma-Lease a Bike), cast her into the spotlight this January. At the time, she had been “threatening retirement”, she says, and was working three days a week at Hunt Bike Wheels, travelling over the weekend to events across Europe with Spectra Racing.

Though Crees still has the same job today, she expects she will swap to being a full-time cyclist in a “not-so-distant future”.

“We’re really missing a link for British professional cyclo-cross,” she said. “As a British rider, it’s really, really hard to make it as a professional rider, but I didn’t want to put my fate in someone else’s hands and let a team come to me. I wanted to make my own way, and this is how I was going to do it. I was going to force my way into being a professional cyclist.”

The idea to launch her own project came following a family bereavement late last year. “It put bike racing into perspective,” she said, “but it also gave me that ‘life’s too short’ [feeling].”

Crees then went on to win the national title at the start of 2025, a victory that proved a “huge kick” in growing her status, and gave her confidence to approach sponsors.

“If you’ve not done it before, asking someone for money is a really difficult concept,” she said. “You almost need to ask 1,000 people for one or two of them to say yes.”

Crees’s team this year will bear title sponsorship from energy bar brand OGT and cycling components manufacturer USE. Her employer, Hunt, will also provide her with wheels.

“The main focus will be on the UCI World Cup series,” she said of her calendar, which she expects to include around 30 races, beginning with the UK’s Hope Supercross series on 13 September.

“My three-year plan is ideally to have three riders [signed to OGT p/b USE],” Crees added. “We want this to really be their full-time job, with all the support they need. From there, if we could make it bigger, we would.”