CLUB OF THE YEAR
The West Midlands club perfectly combines racing with community spirit
What links Johan Museeuw, Fabian Cancellara, Frank Vandenbroucke, Cadel Evans, and a group of youngsters in the West Midlands? The answer is to be found in those multi-coloured blocks that will be instantly recognisable to fans of professional road cycling of the 1990s and early 2000s: Mapei. Two decades on from the end of the superteam, the Italian building materials manufacturer’s relationship with cycle sport continues with Halesowen Cycling Club, Cycling Weekly’s club of the year for 2022.
Owing to sponsorship from Mapei UK, whose HQ is located in Halesowen, that kaleidoscopic kit now blends seamlessly with the royal purple of the Halesowen Academy, a race team for junior and U23 riders managed by cycling reporter William Fotheringham.
The team car might attract its share of excited photographs when it turns up to race in Belgium, but this is no pastiche. It is a serious pathway for talented young riders in the West Midlands and one exemplified by Tomos Pattinson, double junior hill-climb champion and fourth in the Junior Tour of Wales.
“It’s a really good set-up,” says Pattinson, who began racing with the club at the age of 11. “Will organises all the rides and puts on loads of races, and even sent us to Ireland and Belgium to race. It was so relaxed but we were still Cycling Weekly racing competitively. I think I’ve learnt a lot about how to work together in junior racing. As it’s gone on, with other people in the academy, we just work and fit in really well together.”
The academy is the centrepiece of what is an unashamedly an old-school cycling club. Club chair Dave Viner, a prolific domestic racer himself, returned to Halesowen in 2008 with the aim of supporting a road racing scene that he had watched decline. The following year saw the creation of the racing team and the first edition of the Halesowen Road Race, both of which continue to this day. The men’s and women’s event comprise two of seven different road events promoted by the club, along with 16 days of track league at the Manor Abbey velodrome in Halesowen, plus cyclo-cross events across the region. Racing is in the Halesowen DNA.
Traditional club
“I think it’s fair to say we are very much a traditional cycling club,” says Viner. “We make no bones about being heavily involved in racing, from youth riders upwards, but we also have the gold run, silver run and bronze ride for people who don’t want to race. For me racing is so important because it’s so difficult to get enough events for young riders. But pastime, leisure, it’s all so important.”
