Self-coached teenager comes out of retirement to win coveted Curlew Cup

It took courage to attack early in the rain-sodden 75-mile Curlew Cup at the weekend, but that’s exactly what Nicola Quaye did, and the strategy paid off for the teenage rider, who only returned to racing this season after taking the last four years off because she couldn’t be bothered with the training.

"I started riding again in August last year, and training from around October time," Quaye told Cycling Weekly. "But, like I've never had a coach. I've done it all myself."

Quaye might be self-trained and coached, but she went into the Curlew Cup with a game plan, which worked out better than even she could have imagined.

"I wanted to do a breakaway, because it was my last race of the season," she says. "The plan was, do it early, thinking they'll catch me and then I'll still have legs for the sprint… But I didn't need that."

The 360cycling rider made her move halfway around the first of three laps, before the route-defining climb of the Ryals. By the beginning of the second lap, the young Manx rider’s lead had grown to 90 seconds, but with Lily Martin (Loughborough Lightning) pulling hard, the peloton started reeling her in.

“My main goal was to just get back around to the finish line [to start the next lap],” recounts Quaye. “When I got there, I still had a reasonably big gap, so I thought maybe I can get round to do the Queen of the Mountain again… I'm not a particularly good climber, but I thought, if I could do it by myself, then I might stand a chance of getting it.

“And so I went around again, and they still hadn't caught me. I thought, ‘Oh, this is looking good’. But I was starting to tire at that point. With one lap to go, I went through and they told me the gap was closing. So I was like, ‘Do I sit up? Do I keep going?’”

Halfway around the final lap, she had some help in making that decision. Arabella Blackburn (Handsling Alba Development) bridged across to Quaye and the pair worked together to pull away, re-establishing a 90-second gap.

“We came to the last climb and I thought 'this is where she's going drop me',” says Quaye. “But luckily, I held onto her wheel the whole way up. I knew I'd be strong after the climb because that was the bit of the course that really suited me.

“So I just put in a nice long effort. We switched a few times, and then with 1.5km to go, I flicked my elbow and she didn't come through and I thought ‘I'm going to be leading this all the way to the finish now’.

In the end, Quaye beat Blackburn by a couple of metres, securing her first ever National A victory, and winning the Queen of the Ryals competition to boot. And it may just have reignited her desire to do more racing.

“I want to try a bit more circuit racing,” she tells me. “I definitely want to try a few more road races, but I think I'll be more selective with the ones I choose.”

And what made her take such a long break, at such a young age, I want to know?

“I started a full-time job as a nail technician, so I didn't have time to train,” she explains. “But then, when I was a youth, I never really trained. I always got good results, but I could never be bothered to do the training. So I felt like, once I got to a certain level, it was like… you've either got a train or not do it anymore. I finished 6th form, started a full-time job and I just gave it up.”

“But in August last year, I started getting an itch to do it again. So, I went out for a ride and… I mean, it wasn't a very successful ride by any means, but it just got me hooked again and I kept doing it.

“I like data, so the fact I could see my improvement kept me going. I don't have a coach. I've adapted my training to fit me perfectly. It's obviously worked out."