What does ‘ready’ look like? JAKROO Handsling and the unclear path to UCI status
The pathway to UCI Continental status exists, but for teams attempting to navigate it, the signals can feel unclear. In the first part of a two-part interview, JAKROO Handsling managers David Streule and Tony Poole discuss ambition, access and why — from their perspective — understanding readiness in British men’s road racing has been difficult.
When JAKROO Handsling gathered to launch its 2026 season earlier this month, the backdrop to the conversation was hard to ignore. In domestic men’s road racing, the top of the pyramid has rarely looked thinner.
On the women’s side, the UK now supports four UCI Continental teams. On the men’s side, however, there is just one: Ineos Grenadiers Racing Academy, a newly registered outfit that functions as a direct extension of Ineos Grenadiers’ WorldTour structure rather than an independent domestic project.
Last season, there were none at all. Following the closures of Saint Piran and Trinity Racing, British men’s cycling found itself without a single UCI Continental team — the end point of a decade-long contraction that saw the men’s scene shrink from six well-funded Continental squads to zero.
The consequences were visible. For the first time last year, there were no British Continental teams on the start line of the country’s flagship stage race, the Tour of Britain Men. The pathway between domestic elite racing and the international calendar looked not just narrow, but broken.
It is against that backdrop that this interview with co-managers David Streule and Tony Poole took place. Conducted at the team’s launch at the Roubaix Workshop in south west London, it forms Part 1 of a two-part conversation for The British Continental. This first instalment focuses on a question that has come to dominate discussion among domestic teams: what it actually takes to step up to UCI Continental level in the UK, and how teams are meant to understand when they are ready.
David Streule (left) and Tony Poole at the JAKROO Handsling team launch. Image: Mark James
JAKROO Handsling’s own attempts to explore that step came during a period of heightened instability. Last season also saw the closure of MUC-OFF-SRCT-Storck, the most successful men’s team of 2025, which folded after failing to secure sufficient backing — despite having ambitions of its own to progress.
For Streule and Poole, the tone of this year’s launch reflects a year in which they have learned not only how to run a team, but how difficult it can be to interpret readiness in British road racing.
“We’re not saying we should be there already,” Streule says. “What’s been hard is knowing what ‘ready’ actually means.”
We’re trying to plan responsibly. But planning is hard when you don’t know what the reference points are
Streule and Poole describe the process for stepping up to UCI Continental as opaque: a combination of formal UCI requirements, national federation oversight, and case-by-case judgement that can be difficult to interpret from the outside.
The team has not been rejected, nor has it formally applied for UCI Continental status. Instead, it finds itself in a more ambiguous position: close enough to be asking serious questions, but unsure how those questions are meant to be answered.
Poole is careful to frame that uncertainty as systemic rather than personal. “We’re trying to plan responsibly,” he says. “But planning is hard when you don’t know what the reference points are.”
The promise — and the noise
Last autumn, as British men’s domestic racing continued to contract, JAKROO Handsling found itself speaking publicly about the possibility of stepping up. At the time, the comments were read by some as an announcement of intent — or even inevitability — rather than as an exploration of what might come next.
When I spoke to Streule in November, just hours after the team’s then-title sponsor Raptor Bikes announced it was stepping away from sponsorship, he was notably composed. “I don’t think anything has massively changed,” he said. The organisation, he stressed, was not collapsing, nor scrambling. New partners were already in discussion.
He also shared back then that the team’s publicly-stated ambitions to step up to UCI Continental “was almost like trying to create the story and get people to come along, even though we knew we didn’t really have what we wanted.”
Dylan Belton-Owen and Tom Heal. Image: Mark James
It was a frank admission, framed by Streule as a consequence of operating in an environment where visibility is scarce and momentum fragile. To attract partners, teams are often required to signal aspiration before the supporting structures are fully formed.
“You’ve got to make some noise,” he said at the time, “and that was the way to make the noise and hope that you could bring some partners along for the ride.”
That dynamic — signalling ambition in order to secure the means to realise it — marked the beginning of a learning process: an attempt to understand not just whether progression was desirable, but what it would actually require.
What the team thought was required
As the possibility of progression became something the team began to examine seriously, the question shifted from whether to step up to what stepping up actually meant.
For Streule, the first realisation was that any assessment appeared to rest on more than a single financial threshold. “I think we’re made to believe a lot of it’s about money,” he says. “But it’s not all about money. It’s about what level of support you can provide to your riders.”
When asked whether British Cycling had asked the team to reach a specific funding level, Streule says the governing body gave them a broad set of expectations rather than a defined target, and said its level of engagement was sometimes lacking. “I think they didn’t engage excessively,” he says. “When they did, yes, the biggest hurdle we were given was the requirement for funding, both cash and VIK support.”
We’d like more of a dialogue with British Cycling to show that what we’re providing here probably is, or very close to being sufficient to allow us to apply for a Continental licence
Value in kind refers to non-cash support from partners — such as equipment, services or logistics — that reduces a team’s operating costs without increasing its cash budget.
What proved difficult, Streule suggests, was not the existence of requirements but how they were being assessed, and what levels of cash and VIK were required. In any case, British Cycling’s expectations, as he understood them, extended beyond the formal UCI minimums. “I’ve made it very clear to British Cycling we can do that tomorrow,” he says of the UCI bank guarantee. “That’s not the issue at all.”
It left him wanting more engagement. “We’d like more of a dialogue with British Cycling to show that what we’re providing here probably is, or very close to being sufficient to allow us to apply for a Continental licence,” he says.
David Streule. Image: Mark James
Asked directly whether the team felt clear about what was required in order to progress, Streule’s answer was blunt. “No, they have not made it clear to us,” he said.
Furthermore, Streule argues that British Cycling’s expectations are excessive. “I think their ideas of what’s required are excessive and there needs to be a discussion about what should be required in order to make it a level playing field between us and the teams on the continent.”
Why this matters in practice
If much of the discussion around UCI status can feel abstract, Streule and Poole describe its consequences as immediate and tangible. For teams operating at the top end of the domestic scene, the difference between holding a UCI Continental licence and not holding one shapes which races are realistically accessible.
There are UCI teams on the continent which are not funded to the extent that British Cycling would like us to be funded – it means that those teams automatically get a place ahead of us
Streule puts it bluntly. Without a licence, “we’re always at the bottom of the queue, always begging to get into the race,” he says, referring to applications for European events. Even when teams appear broadly comparable, he argues, licence status alone becomes decisive. “There are UCI teams on the continent which are not funded to the extent that British Cycling would like us to be funded,” he says, yet “it means that those teams automatically get a place ahead of us.”
The result, Streule suggests, is that access itself becomes the barrier. “When we’re trying to enter races on the continent to give our riders the experience they need to progress,” he says, “it means that those teams automatically get a place ahead of us.”
For Streule, this is not simply about racing abroad for its own sake. “It’s not all about money,” he says. “It’s about what level of support you can provide to your riders.” Without regular access to European racing, he argues, that support becomes harder to translate into progression.
Poole frames the same issue as a compounding problem rather than a single obstacle. “It’s not a linear track,” he says. “There’s many things that have to be levelled up in conjunction.” Among them, he lists “rider engagement, sponsor engagement or engagement with the regulating entities,” all of which depend, directly or indirectly, on meaningful race access.
For Streule, European racing also carries a commercial significance that extends beyond results. “We need some some space to actually sell to prospective sponsors,” he says, before settling on the phrase that best captures the problem: “a shop window.” Without that shop window, he suggests, it becomes harder to demonstrate value — for riders seeking progression and for sponsors considering investment.
The knock-on effects are felt domestically too. Reflecting on recruitment, Streule notes “a lot of riders wanted to join a British team,” he says, “but they also need to see the opportunities.” Reflecting on recruitment for 2026, he is clear about the counterfactual. “If we had been able to pull it off and get a Continental licence, there were probably three or four riders who would have joined our team rather than gone abroad.”
If we had been able to pull it off and get a Continental licence, there were probably three or four riders who would have joined our team rather than gone abroad
That outward flow, he suggests, is already happening. “So that just tells you that we’re losing talent from the country,” he says, before pausing on whether that should necessarily be framed as a problem. “Maybe they’re going and developing and becoming better than they would have been had they stayed here. Maybe it’s not a problem. I don’t know.”
Regardless, Streule sees consequences for the domestic scene. “I think it does have a knock-on effect,” he says, linking rider departures to thinner fields and reduced visibility. With fewer high-level riders racing in the UK, the commercial proposition weakens — not just for teams, but for the sport more broadly.
Image: Mark James
British Cycling’s position
British Cycling disputes the suggestion that there is no pathway or guidance. In a statement provided to The British Continental, the governing body said it holds one-to-one meetings with every domestic team that expresses an interest in stepping up to UCI level.
“These meetings are used to run through expectations that British Cycling have for UCI teams, as well as the criteria and fees set out by the UCI,” British Cycling says, adding that because the UCI typically releases definitive information only once the registration process opens, guidance shared with teams is often based on the previous year’s documentation.
Viability is assessed on a case-by-case basis due to the differences in how individual teams operate and finance themselves – British Cycling
According to British Cycling, those discussions are designed to understand each team’s ambitions, structure and budget, including the balance between cash funding and value-in-kind support. “Viability is assessed on a case-by-case basis due to the differences in how individual teams operate and finance themselves,” the organisation said.
As a minimum, British Cycling says teams must be able to meet UCI and British Cycling fees, cover rider-related costs such as licences, kit and equipment, and fund travel and accommodation for riders and support staff across a full calendar of racing. Beyond that, it stressed that there is no single funding model. “Whilst some teams may have a large cash budget and little value in kind, others will have a lesser cash budget but certain value in kind that would offset the budget required,” British Cycling says.
Following those meetings, British Cycling says teams are provided with UCI guidance and a model contract incorporating both UCI minimum requirements and additional criteria applied by the governing body. At that point, it says, teams are “empowered to make an informed decision” about whether to proceed. For those that do, British Cycling says it offers bespoke support throughout the registration process.
In British Cycling’s account, discretion is not a weakness but a necessity. Fixed benchmarks, it suggests, would struggle to reflect the diversity of team structures operating in the domestic scene. What some teams experience as opacity is framed instead as flexibility — an approach intended to accommodate different operating models rather than impose a single template.
Tony Poole. Image: Mark James
An unresolved pathway
For all the discussion around budgets, licences and criteria, Streule and Poole are careful not to frame their experience as a confrontation. The emphasis, they insist, remains on learning and progression rather than entitlement.
We’re hoping to get UCI registration in next year, and we’re working hard on making sure that we have a professional structure that can deliver that
“To be frank, we’re still on that journey,” Poole says. “We’re hoping to get UCI registration in, you know, next year, and we’re working hard on making sure that we have a professional structure that can deliver that. We have a lot of work ahead of us to get there.”
What the team is trying to build, he adds, is “a UCI level team that is competing internationally and can give riders that visibility that they need to step up.”
For now, that leaves JAKROO Handsling focused on what it can control: professionalising its structure, supporting its riders, and continuing to build credibility through action rather than announcement. Progression, if and when it comes, will follow substance rather than anticipation.
Part 2 of this interview will focus on how JAKROO Handsling has responded in practice — its squad choices, development philosophy, what it believes it can offer riders right now, and its ambitions for 2026.
When JAKROO Handsling gathered to launch its 2026 season earlier this month, the backdrop to the conversation was hard to ignore. In domestic men’s road racing, the top of the pyramid has rarely looked thinner.
On the women’s side, the UK now supports four UCI Continental teams. On the men’s side, however, there is just one: Ineos Grenadiers Racing Academy, a newly registered outfit that functions as a direct extension of Ineos Grenadiers’ WorldTour structure rather than an independent domestic project.
Last season, there were none at all. Following the closures of Saint Piran and Trinity Racing, British men’s cycling found itself without a single UCI Continental team — the end point of a decade-long contraction that saw the men’s scene shrink from six well-funded Continental squads to zero.
The consequences were visible. For the first time last year, there were no British Continental teams on the start line of the country’s flagship stage race, the Tour of Britain Men. The pathway between domestic elite racing and the international calendar looked not just narrow, but broken.
It is against that backdrop that this interview with co-managers David Streule and Tony Poole took place. Conducted at the team’s launch at the Roubaix Workshop in south west London, it forms Part 1 of a two-part conversation for The British Continental. This first instalment focuses on a question that has come to dominate discussion among domestic teams: what it actually takes to step up to UCI Continental level in the UK, and how teams are meant to understand when they are ready.
JAKROO Handsling’s own attempts to explore that step came during a period of heightened instability. Last season also saw the closure of MUC-OFF-SRCT-Storck, the most successful men’s team of 2025, which folded after failing to secure sufficient backing — despite having ambitions of its own to progress.
For Streule and Poole, the tone of this year’s launch reflects a year in which they have learned not only how to run a team, but how difficult it can be to interpret readiness in British road racing.
“We’re not saying we should be there already,” Streule says. “What’s been hard is knowing what ‘ready’ actually means.”
Streule and Poole describe the process for stepping up to UCI Continental as opaque: a combination of formal UCI requirements, national federation oversight, and case-by-case judgement that can be difficult to interpret from the outside.
The team has not been rejected, nor has it formally applied for UCI Continental status. Instead, it finds itself in a more ambiguous position: close enough to be asking serious questions, but unsure how those questions are meant to be answered.
Poole is careful to frame that uncertainty as systemic rather than personal. “We’re trying to plan responsibly,” he says. “But planning is hard when you don’t know what the reference points are.”
The promise — and the noise
Last autumn, as British men’s domestic racing continued to contract, JAKROO Handsling found itself speaking publicly about the possibility of stepping up. At the time, the comments were read by some as an announcement of intent — or even inevitability — rather than as an exploration of what might come next.
When I spoke to Streule in November, just hours after the team’s then-title sponsor Raptor Bikes announced it was stepping away from sponsorship, he was notably composed. “I don’t think anything has massively changed,” he said. The organisation, he stressed, was not collapsing, nor scrambling. New partners were already in discussion.
He also shared back then that the team’s publicly-stated ambitions to step up to UCI Continental “was almost like trying to create the story and get people to come along, even though we knew we didn’t really have what we wanted.”
It was a frank admission, framed by Streule as a consequence of operating in an environment where visibility is scarce and momentum fragile. To attract partners, teams are often required to signal aspiration before the supporting structures are fully formed.
“You’ve got to make some noise,” he said at the time, “and that was the way to make the noise and hope that you could bring some partners along for the ride.”
That dynamic — signalling ambition in order to secure the means to realise it — marked the beginning of a learning process: an attempt to understand not just whether progression was desirable, but what it would actually require.
What the team thought was required
As the possibility of progression became something the team began to examine seriously, the question shifted from whether to step up to what stepping up actually meant.
For Streule, the first realisation was that any assessment appeared to rest on more than a single financial threshold. “I think we’re made to believe a lot of it’s about money,” he says. “But it’s not all about money. It’s about what level of support you can provide to your riders.”
When asked whether British Cycling had asked the team to reach a specific funding level, Streule says the governing body gave them a broad set of expectations rather than a defined target, and said its level of engagement was sometimes lacking. “I think they didn’t engage excessively,” he says. “When they did, yes, the biggest hurdle we were given was the requirement for funding, both cash and VIK support.”
Value in kind refers to non-cash support from partners — such as equipment, services or logistics — that reduces a team’s operating costs without increasing its cash budget.
What proved difficult, Streule suggests, was not the existence of requirements but how they were being assessed, and what levels of cash and VIK were required. In any case, British Cycling’s expectations, as he understood them, extended beyond the formal UCI minimums. “I’ve made it very clear to British Cycling we can do that tomorrow,” he says of the UCI bank guarantee. “That’s not the issue at all.”
It left him wanting more engagement. “We’d like more of a dialogue with British Cycling to show that what we’re providing here probably is, or very close to being sufficient to allow us to apply for a Continental licence,” he says.
Asked directly whether the team felt clear about what was required in order to progress, Streule’s answer was blunt. “No, they have not made it clear to us,” he said.
Furthermore, Streule argues that British Cycling’s expectations are excessive. “I think their ideas of what’s required are excessive and there needs to be a discussion about what should be required in order to make it a level playing field between us and the teams on the continent.”
Why this matters in practice
If much of the discussion around UCI status can feel abstract, Streule and Poole describe its consequences as immediate and tangible. For teams operating at the top end of the domestic scene, the difference between holding a UCI Continental licence and not holding one shapes which races are realistically accessible.
Streule puts it bluntly. Without a licence, “we’re always at the bottom of the queue, always begging to get into the race,” he says, referring to applications for European events. Even when teams appear broadly comparable, he argues, licence status alone becomes decisive. “There are UCI teams on the continent which are not funded to the extent that British Cycling would like us to be funded,” he says, yet “it means that those teams automatically get a place ahead of us.”
The result, Streule suggests, is that access itself becomes the barrier. “When we’re trying to enter races on the continent to give our riders the experience they need to progress,” he says, “it means that those teams automatically get a place ahead of us.”
For Streule, this is not simply about racing abroad for its own sake. “It’s not all about money,” he says. “It’s about what level of support you can provide to your riders.” Without regular access to European racing, he argues, that support becomes harder to translate into progression.
Poole frames the same issue as a compounding problem rather than a single obstacle. “It’s not a linear track,” he says. “There’s many things that have to be levelled up in conjunction.” Among them, he lists “rider engagement, sponsor engagement or engagement with the regulating entities,” all of which depend, directly or indirectly, on meaningful race access.
For Streule, European racing also carries a commercial significance that extends beyond results. “We need some some space to actually sell to prospective sponsors,” he says, before settling on the phrase that best captures the problem: “a shop window.” Without that shop window, he suggests, it becomes harder to demonstrate value — for riders seeking progression and for sponsors considering investment.
The knock-on effects are felt domestically too. Reflecting on recruitment, Streule notes “a lot of riders wanted to join a British team,” he says, “but they also need to see the opportunities.” Reflecting on recruitment for 2026, he is clear about the counterfactual. “If we had been able to pull it off and get a Continental licence, there were probably three or four riders who would have joined our team rather than gone abroad.”
That outward flow, he suggests, is already happening. “So that just tells you that we’re losing talent from the country,” he says, before pausing on whether that should necessarily be framed as a problem. “Maybe they’re going and developing and becoming better than they would have been had they stayed here. Maybe it’s not a problem. I don’t know.”
Regardless, Streule sees consequences for the domestic scene. “I think it does have a knock-on effect,” he says, linking rider departures to thinner fields and reduced visibility. With fewer high-level riders racing in the UK, the commercial proposition weakens — not just for teams, but for the sport more broadly.
British Cycling’s position
British Cycling disputes the suggestion that there is no pathway or guidance. In a statement provided to The British Continental, the governing body said it holds one-to-one meetings with every domestic team that expresses an interest in stepping up to UCI level.
“These meetings are used to run through expectations that British Cycling have for UCI teams, as well as the criteria and fees set out by the UCI,” British Cycling says, adding that because the UCI typically releases definitive information only once the registration process opens, guidance shared with teams is often based on the previous year’s documentation.
According to British Cycling, those discussions are designed to understand each team’s ambitions, structure and budget, including the balance between cash funding and value-in-kind support. “Viability is assessed on a case-by-case basis due to the differences in how individual teams operate and finance themselves,” the organisation said.
As a minimum, British Cycling says teams must be able to meet UCI and British Cycling fees, cover rider-related costs such as licences, kit and equipment, and fund travel and accommodation for riders and support staff across a full calendar of racing. Beyond that, it stressed that there is no single funding model. “Whilst some teams may have a large cash budget and little value in kind, others will have a lesser cash budget but certain value in kind that would offset the budget required,” British Cycling says.
Following those meetings, British Cycling says teams are provided with UCI guidance and a model contract incorporating both UCI minimum requirements and additional criteria applied by the governing body. At that point, it says, teams are “empowered to make an informed decision” about whether to proceed. For those that do, British Cycling says it offers bespoke support throughout the registration process.
In British Cycling’s account, discretion is not a weakness but a necessity. Fixed benchmarks, it suggests, would struggle to reflect the diversity of team structures operating in the domestic scene. What some teams experience as opacity is framed instead as flexibility — an approach intended to accommodate different operating models rather than impose a single template.
An unresolved pathway
For all the discussion around budgets, licences and criteria, Streule and Poole are careful not to frame their experience as a confrontation. The emphasis, they insist, remains on learning and progression rather than entitlement.
“To be frank, we’re still on that journey,” Poole says. “We’re hoping to get UCI registration in, you know, next year, and we’re working hard on making sure that we have a professional structure that can deliver that. We have a lot of work ahead of us to get there.”
What the team is trying to build, he adds, is “a UCI level team that is competing internationally and can give riders that visibility that they need to step up.”
For now, that leaves JAKROO Handsling focused on what it can control: professionalising its structure, supporting its riders, and continuing to build credibility through action rather than announcement. Progression, if and when it comes, will follow substance rather than anticipation.
Part 2 of this interview will focus on how JAKROO Handsling has responded in practice — its squad choices, development philosophy, what it believes it can offer riders right now, and its ambitions for 2026.
Featured image: Mark James
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