Two years ago, Rob Scott was ranked as one of the best domestic racers in the UK. The Halifax-based rider won the National Road Series, taking victory at the Lancaster GP and Manx International Road Race in 2022 on the way.
However, just a handful of months later, it looked like he may have to permanently give it all up. After a lot of soul searching last winter, Scott turned to working as an electrician in order to make ends meet, as it appeared that he would be forced to give up racing his bike for a living.
Scott’s team AT85 Pro Cycling suddenly folded which left him scrambling for a ride for the next year. Fortunately, he landed a spot on Cross Team Legendre, a team based in France. But that was short lived after his new squad also suddenly folded with very short notice.
"I've always done a little bit of part time work [as an electrician] over the last few years," Scott explains. "Basically over this last coming winter, I thought this is probably it now cycling at a good level. So I've just been working pretty much all winter doing this. We do a lot of work on BT telephone exchanges. I'm still working to be fully qualified.
"I think when you're looking long term, you obviously can't do this forever. But I realised over the winter that I don't think I would have been happy at all to just pack in racing."
Tekkerz lifeline
Fortunately for Scott, a phone call with Alec Briggs, the rider behind the Tekkerz CC team has led to a racing lifeline after a spell away from the action. After Cross Team Legendre collapsed at short notice, Scott headed to Belgium to race a series of kermesses, in which he took five victories, before contacting Briggs.
"I really struggled to find anywhere last winter," he says. "I spoke to a few Continental teams over in Europe. And I just found myself weighing it all up, thinking is it really worth it? Because you're not getting paid very much out of it. It's one of those decisions where you have to think about how you're going to benefit from it."
"I looked at my options, and I reached out to Alec and spoke to him about things," Scott adds. "I said that I will be working quite a bit, but we just spoke about the logistics of training for predominantly circuit races, crits, with the time on my hands. I think it's something that's totally achievable really, to be at the level that I have been before in the crits.
"I don't think you have to be doing 20 hours a week training to be good in the crits, you just need to do the right stuff and know how to race them."
Happy again
Scott explains that balancing training with full time work is tough going, but he will make his return to British racing at the Lincoln Grand Prix on Sunday.
"It's a bit later in the season to start racing," he says. "I would have started at the CiCLE classic but that got cancelled. I've never started racing this late before, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
"I have no idea how Lincoln is going to go. I think you always get pulled into a false sense of security when you're just training on your own. You start to think you might be actually going quite well. And then you turn up to a race and you get absolutely hammered."
Scott says he’s fully confident that balancing full time work alongside racing is achievable and says there are plenty of other riders in the UK in a similar position.
"I think looking at the results for the East Cleveland Classic, there were at least like six or seven guys with full time jobs in the top 20. Damien Clayton is working full time now but he's still winning National B's every weekend.
"This is just great though really, I'm happy again."
Meanwhile Alec Briggs said that Scott might be "too good" for his new team.
"He deserves to be on a professional contract really," Briggs said. "If he goes out and smashes his stuff, and we put the limelight on him, and let him do his thing with his freedom, maybe some teams will take notice and go, 'ok, this guy's really good. We shouldn't have overlooked him before.' And then bang, he's back on a team, where he deserves to be."
