From 11th hour sports director to rest-day football, Joe Laverick discovers how to run a bike racing team on just £1,600 a year
Walking into the Rodos Palace hotel in Greece for the first time, I didn’t know what to expect. I’d agreed to come to race a block of UCI races in R hodes off the back of a handful of Instagram DMs. What followed over the next 10 days was perhaps the most fun I’ve ever had in and around a bike race – amix between a lads’ holiday and a bike racing team. “Noooo stress,” says Charlie Lacaille for what seems like the 100th time today. It’s the first week of March on the Greek island of R hodes and SN Vitae Bim Bam Coaching RT are opening their race season at the International Tour of R hodes.
You’d be forgiven for not knowing who SN Vitae Bim Bam Coaching RT are. Or, why are they in R hodes at all. They are a club team set up this season by 24-yearold Charlie Lacaille, who wants to do things differently. Most club teams’ first race would be a local closed-circuit crit, or maybe a National B road race. Lacaille chose three weeks of UCI road racing.
Why? “Two of my friends who raced cyclo-cross didn’t have a team for 2023, I coached them both and they asked me if I’d be keen on setting up a team and getting some custom skinsuits printed,” says Lacaille. “A couple of the other riders that I coach were without a team too, so I got them on board. After racing the Tour of Serbia last year with the Velo Schils team, I realised the UCI stuff is fun. From there, I started pinging out emails to every UCI race in the world that I thought we could get invited to and got more replies than I thought.”
At the time of writing, SN Vitae Bim Bam’s calendar is due to include races in R hodes, Uzbekistan, Hungary, Poland and of course, the UK. Quite an eclectic mix.
The club team’s budget for the year is a mere £1,600. It doesn’t take much knowledge of cycling teams to realise that a budget of that size won’t stretch to a full season of racing. How do they make it work?
That £1,600 was put straight into buying kit for the riders, and anything that was left over into minor expenses. The cost of going to any race is covered by riders themselves. With most UCI races not charging for entry, and often helping with travel or accommodation costs, it doesn’t work out as expensive as you’d first think.
“The team’s priority will always be to go to as many races as possible. Going to a training camp is cool, but I’d rather go to more UCI races because that’s what the riders want to do. Spending money on matching team tracksuits or whatever else isn’t really useful.
“Even having a bike sponsor is a hard one because most people have a
