‘I feel very Catalan’ – Meet the lost Brit racing for Spain at the Tour de France
There are seven riders representing Great Britain at the Tour de France – but a Catalan debutant who could feature in the mountains has close ties to Lancashire
As the Tour de France heads into breakaway territory, theoretically giving lesser-known riders a chance of glory, Britain’s first stage winner of this year’s race could come from an unlikely source – of sorts.
Abel Balderstone, 26, is making his Tour debut for Spanish wildcard team Caja Rural-Seguros RGA just under a year after finishing 13th overall at the Vuelta a España.
His name is a mix of classic Catalan and English. Abel is a common name in Catalonia; Balderstone, meanwhile, has its origins in Lancashire, the English county where his father John Mark was born and raised – in the town of Lancaster, to be precise.
When John was 24, he moved to northern Spain to become an English teacher, met his wife and in 2000 she gave birth to Abel, their second son.
Balderstone, who has been racing with Caja Rural since 2022 and was the Spanish time trial champion in 2025, has been building a good reputation for himself in recent years, and could feature in the mountain days in the coming fortnight.
“I want to be a protagonist,” he tells Cycling Weekly. “I agree that this [second] week is more important, but UAE as a team are very strong and if they don’t want a breakaway to go, it won’t. We hope that they can give a little bit of margin for the breakaway.”
Should Balderstone achieve an unlikely victory, it will be held up as Spain’s first success of this edition of the race, but would also be partly claimed by the UK.
“In my childhood we went a lot to the UK, at least twice a year. Always at Christmas and in the summer, until I was 12 or 13 when my grandparents died,” Balderstone says.
His entire life, however, has been spent in Spain. “I feel very Catalan,” he says. “My mum is very Catalan and in the house we all speak Catalan. But my dad is still very English.
“He has traditions and ways of acting that come from his English roots. For example he has tea every morning and another tea at merendar – afternoon snack. He also cooks a lot of English dishes that we don’t eat in Spain.”
Balderstone is speaking to CW in Spanish, the language he’s most comfortable in alongside Catalan. “I understand English really well, and my dad and his family speak to me in English, but I don’t really use it myself,” he says.
“I find it difficult and it’s a little embarrassing to be honest. But I just don’t really get to use it, to practice it. When I do I have to think of the words in Catalan and then translate it into English to create the sentence so it takes time. But poco a poco – little by little.”
What he does know is how to pronounce his surname – unlike his Spanish compatriots. It’s Bawl-der-stun, rather than Bal-der-ston. “It’s true that in Spain people don’t say it correctly,” he laughs.
Balderstone came into the Tour as a possible GC option for Caja after his impressive performance at the Vuelta last year, but it was his teammate Alex Molenaar who was most prominent for the Spanish team in the first week – until he crashed out on stage five.
“It was a pretty positive week with Alex getting the polka dot jersey [on two] and being in two breakaways,” Balderstone says. “I knew going for the GC myself would be complicated, so attacking and going in the breakaways was my intention.”
He was in the break on stage three to Les Angles and wants to appear again. “There’s still a lot of the Tour to come so I’ll keep trying,” he adds. “But to get in the breaks you have to fight so hard and they take much longer to form. You notice once you’re here that it’s the hardest race that there is.”
In recent weeks, Spanish publication Marca has reported that Balderstone will move to UAE Team Emirates-XRG next season. The rider has a contract until the end of the 2027 season with Caja, but admitted that he would find it hard to turn down a move to the top-tier.
“I’ve been with Caja for four years, I’ve grown with them, and I’m very happy here, but I’ve always said that my dream is to go to the WorldTour, to learn and to grow as a person and a cyclist,” he says.
“I’m always open to speaking to WorldTour teams to see if there are options. There’s always conversation but it's up in the air.”
For now, the man who has roots in northern England is just focused on leaving his mark at his maiden Tour de France. “To be in the race means a lot. It’s something I dreamt about since I was a kid so it’s a dream come true to be here. It's a luxury – I’m lucky to be able to ride it.”
