Hamish Armitt was never meant to become a professional cyclist. He had raced bikes for fun as a child, but put it on hold in his teenage years, choosing instead to focus on running. Despite being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes aged 15, he became one of Britain’s best junior runners.
“When I was 17, I ran 14 minutes dead in the 5km, which was top five all-time at the time,” says the 22-year-old [Armitt remains the sixth-fastest UK under-20 of all time]. “I was very, very high-level at running. I won loads of Scottish titles all through the age groups.”
It was a trajectory that seemed to point straight to the Olympics. But years of underfuelling and the high-impact demands of running led to stress fractures in his feet and hips. “I realised my body couldn’t cope with all the running injuries,” he says. Forced to step away, he returned to the bike – and less than a year later, the Glaswegian signed his first professional contract.
No fewer than 12 Brits are taking their first steps into the pro ranks in 2025. A dozen new pros is a solid year by British standards, and includes four joining the men’s WorldTeam ranks: Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike), Bob Donaldson (Jayco-Alula), Oli Stockwell (Bahrain-Victorious), and Max Walker (EF Education-EasyPost). On the women’s side, Imogen Wolff has signed for Visma Lease a Bike, while Carys Lloyd and Cat Ferguson have both joined Movistar.
Armitt is among four Brits kicking off their pro careers at ProTeam level. He has signed for Novo Nordisk, a US-based UCI ProTeam made up of athletes with diabetes. Coming up through British Cycling’s talent system is the road more travelled for aspiring pros, but by no means the only one. While some young riders pen contracts as teenagers, others spend years racing abroad, passing through development teams into their early twenties.
Today, the number of Brits at cycling’s top level is roughly three times what it was 10 years ago, thanks to a network of different paths leading them there. Armitt’s, in particular, stands out as a case apart. The idea of a career in cycling only crossed his mind in the summer of 2023, when he stood roadside at the UCI World Championships in his home city of Glasgow. “I’d say that was the turning point,” he says, “but I was 21 at the time, and it’s quite a hard pathway when you’re that old.”
Alongside his running, Armitt had competed in triathlons, training between 10 and 20 hours a week on the bike. He took up bunch racing as a novice following the Glasgow Worlds, and began as a cat-four racer. “I was starting from scratch,” he says bluntly.
Soon, though, the events ticked by, Armitt collected more points, and he ended up joining a team, Project 1, who took him racing abroad. He admits that the step up was “a bit of a baptism of fire”. During one spring race in Italy, he threaded himself into the breakaway and attacked solo with 50km to go, eventually finishing 41st. “It was just stupid,” he remembers of the move, but where it failed in carrying him to victory, it succeeded in turning heads. “After that, I started getting loads and loads of attention from teams,” he says.
As a diabetic athlete, Novo Nordisk seemed a suitable home for Armitt. He reached out to the team himself, and was invited to a camp in July on the Franco-Italian border. “I did a test up the [Col de la] Madone, and I did 450 watts for 27 minutes. My 20-minute [power] is around 460,” he says. “Power-wise, I was a lot higher than most riders. But what I’m having to adapt to is I don’t have the experience of those guys, or the racecraft, or the efficiency.” These are areas he’s hoping to improve in his first season as a pro. “I’ve only been racing for a year,” he says. “I need to see how the next two years go, but I definitely want to progress into the WorldTour in the future, for sure.”
Carys Lloyd, four years Armitt’s junior, has already made it to the sport’s top level. Born on New Year’s Eve 2006, her first full day as an 18-year-old was also her first as a professional cyclist, the start date of a three-year deal with Movistar.
By virtue of her late birthday, she is the youngest rider across both the men’s and women’s WorldTours this season, and likely the youngest fully fledged pro cyclist ever. “I don’t think you can get younger than me, maybe by a few hours,” she smiles. “I looked up when Marianne Vos turned pro, and it was the year I was born. Technically, if you think about it in months, she’s been a pro longer than I’ve been alive. That’s quite scary, but it’s quite exciting at the same time.”
Lloyd was six years old when she began racing bikes. Unlike Armitt’s late awakening, though, she joined British Cycling’s regional school of racing as a teenager and later the national pathway as an under-16. “I did the endurance road and track programme,” she says.
Like Mark Cavendish and Laura Kenny, graduates of British Cycling’s academy before her, she split her time between the two disciplines, excelling particularly in the velodrome. In 2024, she won three gold medals at the Junior Track World Championships, and two at the Junior European Track Championships.
“The quality of riders we had in our year in Great Britain was really, really strong,” Lloyd says. The 18-year-old is one of three from her cohort who have leapt straight to the pro tier this year, alongside her Movistar teammate, junior road and time trial world champion Cat Ferguson, and Imogen Wolff, now of Visma-Lease a Bike.
“It’s quite crazy that two of my closest teammates have got a contract as well,” Lloyd says, “but I think it’s definitely that more juniors are getting signed early, and teams are starting to notice that you need to develop talent earlier, if you see it.”
Movistar picked up Lloyd so early, in fact, that she will need to take time out of racing in June to finish her A-levels. The teenager is studying maths, further maths and physics at sixth form in Maidstone. “[Movistar] have been really positive about school,” she says. “They said, ‘Just get your exams done, and then we can talk about racing.’ They were just really refreshing.”
Lloyd considers herself fortunate to have been part of the British Cycling academy. Only a handful of riders each year make the cut, and for those who don’t, or choose not to join, the path to the top can end up more winding, often with stints overseas. That was the case for six of the 12 British riders turning pro this year who were supported by the Rayner Foundation, a charity that gives grants to young Brits racing in Europe.
Oli Stockwell spent the last three years cutting his teeth in Italy with Cycling Team Friuli (CTF), an Italian feeder team of Bahrain Victorious, who he joined this season. “Rayner have been pretty amazing really, I think, for all the guys,” he says. “The advice they give you, you can’t beat it. Also, the cost side, they give a little bit, which for a lot of guys makes the difference. I know for me, when I first got to CTF, that probably made the difference.”
Born in Welwyn Garden City, Stockwell raced cyclo-cross and road as a child. He joined CTF when he was 20, relocating to Udine, 15 miles from the Slovenian border. The original plan was for him to turn pro last season, but an innocuous leg break on a training camp pushed his timeline back a year.
“[The team] were really good with me, and we kind of decided that it would be better to step back for a minute, to use a bit more time as an under-23 to develop and recover from the injury, and then step up later, which is now,” he says. “I feel like I’ve learned so much in the last three, four years [in the under-23 ranks].”
Now, like Lloyd, Armitt and the nine other Brits who have turned pro, Stockwell’s focus is on continuing to learn. Races are getting faster – the average men's WorldTour speed was 42.2kph (26.2mph) in 2024, the fastest in history – the best riders are breaking records with ease, and the level required to be competitive is higher than it's ever been.
The last Brit to win big in their first full season as pro was Josh Tarling, who claimed his first WorldTour victory at 19 years old at the Renewi Tour in 2023, weeks before becoming the European time trial champion. Might someone in this year’s cohort pull off a similar feat? The consensus, it’s clear, is that there’s no pressure to do so. “I think it will be a big step, but hopefully I’m ready,” says Stockwell. “I guess I’ll see.”
This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 23rd January 2025. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.
