EF Education-EasyPost’s head DS, Charly Wegelius, says the job is all about tactics, communication and ‘51% ownership of decision making’
Words James Witts Photography Harry Talbot
Team players
‘I remember early on, Allan Peiper said to me, “You can do your work perfectly and get the worst outcome and be considered the most incompetent sports director around. Or you can do it all wrong and win a race.” He was right.’
Despite the data-driven decisions that dominate modern road cycling, EF Education-EasyPost’s head DS, Charly Wegelius, has been around long enough to know that there are few things that you can fully control in the world of WorldTour racing. ‘Still, if you ask me the most satisfying aspect of my job, I wouldn’t say victory. It’s the situations where a rider might not have the vision to follow a certain tactic, but you persuade them, and it pays off.’
Born in Finland, educated in York
Wegelius was born in Espoo, Finland, to his Finnish father – Harald Wegelius, a former banker who was also his country’s most successful show jumper – and his English mother, Elizabeth Jane Murray.
‘She met my father in Ireland in the 1960s and lived in Finland for 15 years, albeit they divorced when I was young.
I ended up going to school in York, but basically flitted between the two countries,’ Wegelius says.
That’s why, when he had the chance to compete at the 1999 European Road Championships, aged 20, he represented Great Britain. He won a silver medal in the under-23 time-trial at that event, and also raced professionally between 2000 and 2011. Now he, his wife and three children are based in Italy, but he spends long periods in Finland and still calls it home
‘We’re reserved people and you have to work hard to break through socially. But if you get a Finn as a friend it’s a real friend for life. It’s a highly organised and highly functioning society.’
Just the kind of attributes that any team looks for in a directeur sportif. Wegelius has been a DS at EF Education since 2012, with the last six years as head DS. It also helps that the Finns are renowned as rally drivers – Finland is second only to France in terms of World Rally Championship wins. Wegelius reckons he has racked up tens if not hundreds of thousan
