Three years at Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck, a cabinet of podiums, and a CV built on consistency. For 2026 the 24-year-old has moved to JAKROO Handsling. What he wants, finally, is to win.
At 24, Will Truelove speaks like a rider who has already learned to measure his words as carefully as his efforts. There’s a steadiness to him, a lack of flourish that mirrors the way he races: composed, methodical, rarely spectacular — but almost always there. When we meet in south-west London in February, at the JAKROO Handsling team launch, the season is yet to start, but there is already a clarity to how he talks about what he wants from it. In recent seasons, he has become one of the most reliable figures on the British domestic scene, a rider whose name crops up again and again in results lists, even if it is not always the one at the very top.
I still want to get a pro contract. That’s all I’ve been thinking about the last seven years. I don’t want to give up now
Ask Truelove how he would describe himself, and there is no attempt to inflate or mythologise. “From the outside? I think a bit of everything,” he says. “I can do crits pretty well, I can do roads pretty well… I’ve kind of gone away from just being a climber. I’m an all-rounder now.”
It is a simple label, but one that carries weight in British racing. Truelove’s evolution into an all-rounder has been deliberate, shaped as much by environment as ambition. Raised in Hereford, on the border of Wales, his formative miles were logged on quiet, unforgiving roads. “It’s probably the best place to train,” he says. “There’s plenty of hills — five to ten minutes, some fifteen-minute climbs — and it’s so quiet. Apart from the odd rain cloud and a bit of snow in the winter, it’s a perfect place.”
What those roads lack in glamour, they make up for in honesty. There are no long alpine climbs, no romantic notions of altitude camps or continental passes. Instead, Truelove has learned to ride through winter fog and persistent drizzle, to value repeatable power over aesthetic lightness, and to adapt his idea of what a successful rider should look like. Starting his under-23 years at the Wales Racing Academy, Truelove originally had designs on becoming a climber, but the realities of racing in the UK and Northern Europe has evolved that notion. “I’m no longer worried about weight,” he says. “I’m just focused on power. I think the Chris Froome era — you see that on the TV and you get an idea of what you should be. But the reality is you need a lot more punch in the UK.”
Image: Mark James
The podium problem
That adaptability has brought Truelove consistency — lots of it. Over the past two seasons, he has been equally comfortable in road races and criteriums, rarely anonymous, rarely out of position. He was a top-ten finisher 11 times at National A level in 2025 and stood on the podium three times, finishing a close second to Matt Bostock in the Rapha Super-League. But he hasn’t had a road race win since the PB Performance Espoirs Road Race in 2023. Consistency, as he has learned, does not always bring clarity.
I seemed to be fourth, third, second in most races, but I didn’t win one
“That is something that has been frustrating,” he admits. “Especially last season. I got a lot of podiums, a lot of fourth places. I seemed to be fourth, third, second in most races, but I didn’t win one.”
It is not a complaint, more an acknowledgement of an uncomfortable truth. Truelove has been good enough to be present, good enough to matter — but not yet decisive enough to turn proximity into victory. “I’ve got a good enough kick to be there,” he says. “Just the final bit — the bit that gets you into the winning position — that’s what I’m missing.”
For a while, that gap lingered quietly in the background. Early in the season, near-misses could be rationalised as part of a process. But as the results accumulated, so did the questions. “At the start of the year you think, ‘I’ve got room to build,'” he says. “But when you keep getting third and second, it’s like, OK — what else is needed?”
Rather than dwell on what hadn’t happened, Truelove turned inward. Over the winter, he made targeted changes: more gym work, more sprint training, a conscious effort to sharpen what had previously been good enough. “Just trying to adapt,” he says, in the tone of someone who would rather diagnose than dwell.
Domestic racing can be particularly cruel in this respect. It is entirely possible to spend months proving your level without landing the one result that changes how others see you. Truelove seems to understand that instinctively. He does not reach for excuses, nor does he disguise the frustration. He identifies the weakness, names it plainly, and goes away to work on it.
Truelove after finishing third at the 2025 Witheridge Grand Prix. Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
The end of Muc-Off
If consistency defined Truelove’s value on the road, loyalty shaped his recent years off it. For three seasons he rode with Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck — the team that became a benchmark for what a shoestring domestic squad could achieve, and that folded at the end of 2025 as open National Road Series champions. In a scene where squads often feel provisional even when they are winning, simply remaining somewhere for that long says something.
When the team’s future began to look uncertain, Truelove was not blindsided. “I knew it was happening,” he says. “Obviously I’m pretty close with Adam. Knowing him the last three years, we’ve got a good relationship together. We were always talking and he always kept me updated how the team is going.”
He basically said we haven’t really got the money for next year but he’d keep trying
Those conversations, he explains — referring to SRCT manager Adam Ellis — were honest from the outset. “He basically said we haven’t really got the money for next year but he’d keep trying.”
There is no sense, in Truelove’s telling, of sudden collapse or dramatic fallout. He returns, too, not to hierarchy or status, but to something simpler. “I think he wanted to keep the team going for me because I’ve been there for the last three years,” he says. “It is a great environment.”
That phrase does a lot of work. Riders at this level spend much of their time moving through spaces that are temporary — borrowed team houses, short-term deals, annual resets. To describe a team simply as a “great environment” is, in its own understated way, a tribute. It suggests that what mattered was not merely race schedules or kit allocation, but the harder-to-define things that make uncertainty feel bearable: trust, familiarity, being valued.
Even as the financial reality became harder to ignore, Truelove did not rush to detach himself. “I kind of knew it was coming from a long way out,” he says. It is a line that captures the peculiar emotional rhythm of domestic cycling, where endings are often half-known before they are announced.
When it became clear that the team could not continue, Truelove began looking elsewhere. JAKROO Handsling Racing — the 2026 rebrand of Raptor Factory Racing, now under Promethean Sports management and with former SRCT sports director Phill Maddocks as DS — was already making moves. “I saw JAKROO and they were making moves and trying to make a proper good team this year,” he says. “So I jumped ship.”
The phrase is more blunt than the surrounding section, but even here he is careful. The sequence matters to him, not because he wants credit for leaving at the right time, but because he is alert to how easily narratives can harden in a small scene. “Unfortunately Muc-Off folded soon after I left,” he says. “I was kind of glad that it wasn’t for reasons because of me that they stopped.”
Image: Mark James
Staying put
For many riders in Truelove’s position, the next step is assumed rather than questioned. France, Belgium, Spain — for many domestic riders, the continent looms large as both proving ground and promise. Several of his former teammates went that way. Adam Howell is now at Bourg en Bresse Ain Cyclisme; Alex Beldon at Mayenne–V and B–Monbana; Ed Morgan at CC Villeneuve Saint-Germain. In British cycling, there is often an implied logic to the move: if you are serious, if you are ambitious, you leave. Truelove thought about it carefully. Then he decided not to follow.
I work three days a week as an insurance broker. It’s a nice job to have to keep the money to be able to race all year and fund other things in life
“I work three days a week as an insurance broker,” he says. “So that’s kind of like not tying me down. But it’s a nice job to have to keep the money to be able to race all year and fund other things in life.”
It is one of the most quietly revealing moments in the interview. There is no attempt to dress the decision up as idealistic or heroic. It is practical, and that practicality is precisely what gives it weight. Racing abroad would not mean stepping into certainty; it would mean letting go of what currently allows him to keep racing well. “If I went abroad, I would stop getting paid,” he says. “And some teams pay a little bit, but the level I’d be at if I moved to France now wouldn’t really pay much. I’d soon start chipping into my savings.”
There is no bitterness here — just pragmatism. He is not sneering at the continental route, nor claiming some superior purity in staying put. He is making an assessment of leverage, timing and risk. “I don’t think the move right now is probably the best idea,” he says. “I’d rather move to a better team.”
Underlying that judgement is a hard truth he does not avoid. “I didn’t have the standout result that a big team abroad wanted.”
Lesser riders might hide behind bad luck or vague talk of doors not opening. Truelove simply states the position as he sees it. He knows what his consistency has earned him, and what it has not. “So yeah,” he says, “I think staying in the UK was the most obvious option for me at the moment.”
Image: Mark James
Missing the boat
At 24 – 23 when we spoke to him in February – Truelove occupies an awkward middle ground in modern cycling. He is no longer under-23, but he is far from old. Yet the sport has changed fast enough for those distinctions to carry different meanings than they once did.
“I think obviously the aspiration is to be a pro,” he says. “And looking at previous riders like Geraint Thomas, the older generation — they never made it Pro until 25, 26.” [Thomas in fact turned professional at 20, with Barloworld in 2007, though Truelove’s broader point stands: riders of that generation typically made the step up several years later than is now common.]
That comparison matters. It gives him a reference point outside the present rush. But he also knows the present has little patience for those older timelines. “The pressure’s kind of moved on to younger riders now,” he says, “and that seems to be the trend.”
What is striking is that he allows the implication to hang in the air without resisting it. “So it feels like I’ve kind of missed the boat of going WorldTour.”
It is a blunt line, and a revealing one. Many riders might think it but leave it unsaid. Truelove says it plainly, without self-pity and without performative bravado. He sounds neither crushed by the thought nor entirely at peace with it. Instead he does what he does elsewhere in the interview: he recalibrates.
If I can get to a Conti team next year and then work my way up, I think it’ll be a slower process than other guys moving straight from development teams to WorldTour
“If I can get to a Conti team next year and then work my way up,” he says, “I think it’ll be a slower process than other guys moving straight from development teams to WorldTour.”
Slower, then, but not abandoned. “I still want to get a pro contract. That’s all I’ve been thinking about the last seven years. I don’t want to give up now… if I can continue to make good progress, there’s no reason to stop.”
Image: Mark James
The older rider
At JAKROO, Truelove finds himself in a different position again. The team is young, stocked with riders still stepping up through the development pathway, and that changes his place within the group whether he actively seeks it or not.
“It’s odd,” he says. “Odd feeling being an older rider on this team. I’m usually the younger one.”
For much of his racing life, Truelove has still been one of those coming through, one of those learning by proximity and repetition. Suddenly, almost without noticing, he has become one of the riders others may look to.
“Hopefully I’ll pass on my experience a bit.”
Experience, at this level, is not abstract. It consists of the accumulated knowledge of seasons spent almost winning, of surviving team changes, of learning how British races unfold and how British teams function when money is short and expectations are high. “When I started, I didn’t really have an older guy to learn off,” he says. “We were all in it together.”
I need to use my experience to get results, but also help guide the other ones through
That memory seems to shape how he sees his role now. “I guess I’m one of them now,” he says. “I need to use my experience to get results, but also help guide the other ones through.”
It is a formulation that refuses the false distinction between leadership and ambition. Truelove is not there to become a road captain in place of being a competitor. He wants both: to deliver, and to help the team mature around him.
The transition has been eased by one familiar presence — Maddocks, whose arrival at JAKROO from Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck has given Truelove a point of continuity in the new environment. “If I’ve got any problems, I just talk to Phill… it feels a bit more homely.”
Home is not really the word of a rider obsessed by image. It is the word of someone who values continuity, who understands how much easier it is to settle into a new environment when at least one relationship comes with you.
Picture by Olly Hassell/SWpix.com – 27/07/2025 – Cycling – 2025 British Cycling Lloyds National Road Series – 2025 Witheridge Grand Prix – RD Johns Open Witheridge Grand Prix – William Truelove (MUC-OFF-SRCT-STORCK) finishes third
The hands in the air
For all the reflection and recalibration, Truelove’s ambitions for 2026 are straightforward.
“You want to start the season strong,” he says.
That does not mean treating every February race as destiny, but neither does it mean dismissing them. Early races establish rhythm, set mood, reveal whether winter changes have begun to bite. For a rider whose recent years have been defined by consistency more than payoff, even the opening events carry a certain symbolic weight.
When he turns to the bigger races, there is a little more texture. “Lincoln’s always the most prestigious race… if you can get that, then it’s got a bit of palmarès to it.”
It is a telling choice of word. Palmarès still matters to him, as it does to any rider who knows the difference between being respected and being remembered. Other races attract him for more specific reasons. “I like to win the CiCLE… the buzz of that is one I want to win.”
My main goal is just actually win some races this year. And get my hands in the air
When asked directly what a successful season would look like, Truelove does not reach for abstractions. “The National Road and the National Circuit Series win.”
Then the answer narrows further, to the point he has been circling all interview. “My main goal is just actually win some races this year. And get my hands in the air.”
It is a simple way of putting it. No talk of process, no protective vagueness, no attempt to hide behind team goals or developmental rhetoric. He wants to win. Not eventually, not in theory, not as a reward for being patient. Now.
Then, finally, one last flicker of humour. “I’m going to work on my sprint. And then I’ll work on the celebration.”
At 24, Will Truelove speaks like a rider who has already learned to measure his words as carefully as his efforts. There’s a steadiness to him, a lack of flourish that mirrors the way he races: composed, methodical, rarely spectacular — but almost always there. When we meet in south-west London in February, at the JAKROO Handsling team launch, the season is yet to start, but there is already a clarity to how he talks about what he wants from it. In recent seasons, he has become one of the most reliable figures on the British domestic scene, a rider whose name crops up again and again in results lists, even if it is not always the one at the very top.
Ask Truelove how he would describe himself, and there is no attempt to inflate or mythologise. “From the outside? I think a bit of everything,” he says. “I can do crits pretty well, I can do roads pretty well… I’ve kind of gone away from just being a climber. I’m an all-rounder now.”
It is a simple label, but one that carries weight in British racing. Truelove’s evolution into an all-rounder has been deliberate, shaped as much by environment as ambition. Raised in Hereford, on the border of Wales, his formative miles were logged on quiet, unforgiving roads. “It’s probably the best place to train,” he says. “There’s plenty of hills — five to ten minutes, some fifteen-minute climbs — and it’s so quiet. Apart from the odd rain cloud and a bit of snow in the winter, it’s a perfect place.”
What those roads lack in glamour, they make up for in honesty. There are no long alpine climbs, no romantic notions of altitude camps or continental passes. Instead, Truelove has learned to ride through winter fog and persistent drizzle, to value repeatable power over aesthetic lightness, and to adapt his idea of what a successful rider should look like. Starting his under-23 years at the Wales Racing Academy, Truelove originally had designs on becoming a climber, but the realities of racing in the UK and Northern Europe has evolved that notion. “I’m no longer worried about weight,” he says. “I’m just focused on power. I think the Chris Froome era — you see that on the TV and you get an idea of what you should be. But the reality is you need a lot more punch in the UK.”
The podium problem
That adaptability has brought Truelove consistency — lots of it. Over the past two seasons, he has been equally comfortable in road races and criteriums, rarely anonymous, rarely out of position. He was a top-ten finisher 11 times at National A level in 2025 and stood on the podium three times, finishing a close second to Matt Bostock in the Rapha Super-League. But he hasn’t had a road race win since the PB Performance Espoirs Road Race in 2023. Consistency, as he has learned, does not always bring clarity.
“That is something that has been frustrating,” he admits. “Especially last season. I got a lot of podiums, a lot of fourth places. I seemed to be fourth, third, second in most races, but I didn’t win one.”
It is not a complaint, more an acknowledgement of an uncomfortable truth. Truelove has been good enough to be present, good enough to matter — but not yet decisive enough to turn proximity into victory. “I’ve got a good enough kick to be there,” he says. “Just the final bit — the bit that gets you into the winning position — that’s what I’m missing.”
For a while, that gap lingered quietly in the background. Early in the season, near-misses could be rationalised as part of a process. But as the results accumulated, so did the questions. “At the start of the year you think, ‘I’ve got room to build,'” he says. “But when you keep getting third and second, it’s like, OK — what else is needed?”
Rather than dwell on what hadn’t happened, Truelove turned inward. Over the winter, he made targeted changes: more gym work, more sprint training, a conscious effort to sharpen what had previously been good enough. “Just trying to adapt,” he says, in the tone of someone who would rather diagnose than dwell.
Domestic racing can be particularly cruel in this respect. It is entirely possible to spend months proving your level without landing the one result that changes how others see you. Truelove seems to understand that instinctively. He does not reach for excuses, nor does he disguise the frustration. He identifies the weakness, names it plainly, and goes away to work on it.
The end of Muc-Off
If consistency defined Truelove’s value on the road, loyalty shaped his recent years off it. For three seasons he rode with Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck — the team that became a benchmark for what a shoestring domestic squad could achieve, and that folded at the end of 2025 as open National Road Series champions. In a scene where squads often feel provisional even when they are winning, simply remaining somewhere for that long says something.
When the team’s future began to look uncertain, Truelove was not blindsided. “I knew it was happening,” he says. “Obviously I’m pretty close with Adam. Knowing him the last three years, we’ve got a good relationship together. We were always talking and he always kept me updated how the team is going.”
Those conversations, he explains — referring to SRCT manager Adam Ellis — were honest from the outset. “He basically said we haven’t really got the money for next year but he’d keep trying.”
There is no sense, in Truelove’s telling, of sudden collapse or dramatic fallout. He returns, too, not to hierarchy or status, but to something simpler. “I think he wanted to keep the team going for me because I’ve been there for the last three years,” he says. “It is a great environment.”
That phrase does a lot of work. Riders at this level spend much of their time moving through spaces that are temporary — borrowed team houses, short-term deals, annual resets. To describe a team simply as a “great environment” is, in its own understated way, a tribute. It suggests that what mattered was not merely race schedules or kit allocation, but the harder-to-define things that make uncertainty feel bearable: trust, familiarity, being valued.
Even as the financial reality became harder to ignore, Truelove did not rush to detach himself. “I kind of knew it was coming from a long way out,” he says. It is a line that captures the peculiar emotional rhythm of domestic cycling, where endings are often half-known before they are announced.
When it became clear that the team could not continue, Truelove began looking elsewhere. JAKROO Handsling Racing — the 2026 rebrand of Raptor Factory Racing, now under Promethean Sports management and with former SRCT sports director Phill Maddocks as DS — was already making moves. “I saw JAKROO and they were making moves and trying to make a proper good team this year,” he says. “So I jumped ship.”
The phrase is more blunt than the surrounding section, but even here he is careful. The sequence matters to him, not because he wants credit for leaving at the right time, but because he is alert to how easily narratives can harden in a small scene. “Unfortunately Muc-Off folded soon after I left,” he says. “I was kind of glad that it wasn’t for reasons because of me that they stopped.”
Staying put
For many riders in Truelove’s position, the next step is assumed rather than questioned. France, Belgium, Spain — for many domestic riders, the continent looms large as both proving ground and promise. Several of his former teammates went that way. Adam Howell is now at Bourg en Bresse Ain Cyclisme; Alex Beldon at Mayenne–V and B–Monbana; Ed Morgan at CC Villeneuve Saint-Germain. In British cycling, there is often an implied logic to the move: if you are serious, if you are ambitious, you leave. Truelove thought about it carefully. Then he decided not to follow.
“I work three days a week as an insurance broker,” he says. “So that’s kind of like not tying me down. But it’s a nice job to have to keep the money to be able to race all year and fund other things in life.”
It is one of the most quietly revealing moments in the interview. There is no attempt to dress the decision up as idealistic or heroic. It is practical, and that practicality is precisely what gives it weight. Racing abroad would not mean stepping into certainty; it would mean letting go of what currently allows him to keep racing well. “If I went abroad, I would stop getting paid,” he says. “And some teams pay a little bit, but the level I’d be at if I moved to France now wouldn’t really pay much. I’d soon start chipping into my savings.”
There is no bitterness here — just pragmatism. He is not sneering at the continental route, nor claiming some superior purity in staying put. He is making an assessment of leverage, timing and risk. “I don’t think the move right now is probably the best idea,” he says. “I’d rather move to a better team.”
Underlying that judgement is a hard truth he does not avoid. “I didn’t have the standout result that a big team abroad wanted.”
Lesser riders might hide behind bad luck or vague talk of doors not opening. Truelove simply states the position as he sees it. He knows what his consistency has earned him, and what it has not. “So yeah,” he says, “I think staying in the UK was the most obvious option for me at the moment.”
Missing the boat
At 24 – 23 when we spoke to him in February – Truelove occupies an awkward middle ground in modern cycling. He is no longer under-23, but he is far from old. Yet the sport has changed fast enough for those distinctions to carry different meanings than they once did.
“I think obviously the aspiration is to be a pro,” he says. “And looking at previous riders like Geraint Thomas, the older generation — they never made it Pro until 25, 26.” [Thomas in fact turned professional at 20, with Barloworld in 2007, though Truelove’s broader point stands: riders of that generation typically made the step up several years later than is now common.]
That comparison matters. It gives him a reference point outside the present rush. But he also knows the present has little patience for those older timelines. “The pressure’s kind of moved on to younger riders now,” he says, “and that seems to be the trend.”
What is striking is that he allows the implication to hang in the air without resisting it. “So it feels like I’ve kind of missed the boat of going WorldTour.”
It is a blunt line, and a revealing one. Many riders might think it but leave it unsaid. Truelove says it plainly, without self-pity and without performative bravado. He sounds neither crushed by the thought nor entirely at peace with it. Instead he does what he does elsewhere in the interview: he recalibrates.
“If I can get to a Conti team next year and then work my way up,” he says, “I think it’ll be a slower process than other guys moving straight from development teams to WorldTour.”
Slower, then, but not abandoned. “I still want to get a pro contract. That’s all I’ve been thinking about the last seven years. I don’t want to give up now… if I can continue to make good progress, there’s no reason to stop.”
The older rider
At JAKROO, Truelove finds himself in a different position again. The team is young, stocked with riders still stepping up through the development pathway, and that changes his place within the group whether he actively seeks it or not.
“It’s odd,” he says. “Odd feeling being an older rider on this team. I’m usually the younger one.”
For much of his racing life, Truelove has still been one of those coming through, one of those learning by proximity and repetition. Suddenly, almost without noticing, he has become one of the riders others may look to.
“Hopefully I’ll pass on my experience a bit.”
Experience, at this level, is not abstract. It consists of the accumulated knowledge of seasons spent almost winning, of surviving team changes, of learning how British races unfold and how British teams function when money is short and expectations are high. “When I started, I didn’t really have an older guy to learn off,” he says. “We were all in it together.”
That memory seems to shape how he sees his role now. “I guess I’m one of them now,” he says. “I need to use my experience to get results, but also help guide the other ones through.”
It is a formulation that refuses the false distinction between leadership and ambition. Truelove is not there to become a road captain in place of being a competitor. He wants both: to deliver, and to help the team mature around him.
The transition has been eased by one familiar presence — Maddocks, whose arrival at JAKROO from Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck has given Truelove a point of continuity in the new environment. “If I’ve got any problems, I just talk to Phill… it feels a bit more homely.”
Home is not really the word of a rider obsessed by image. It is the word of someone who values continuity, who understands how much easier it is to settle into a new environment when at least one relationship comes with you.
The hands in the air
For all the reflection and recalibration, Truelove’s ambitions for 2026 are straightforward.
“You want to start the season strong,” he says.
That does not mean treating every February race as destiny, but neither does it mean dismissing them. Early races establish rhythm, set mood, reveal whether winter changes have begun to bite. For a rider whose recent years have been defined by consistency more than payoff, even the opening events carry a certain symbolic weight.
When he turns to the bigger races, there is a little more texture. “Lincoln’s always the most prestigious race… if you can get that, then it’s got a bit of palmarès to it.”
It is a telling choice of word. Palmarès still matters to him, as it does to any rider who knows the difference between being respected and being remembered. Other races attract him for more specific reasons. “I like to win the CiCLE… the buzz of that is one I want to win.”
When asked directly what a successful season would look like, Truelove does not reach for abstractions. “The National Road and the National Circuit Series win.”
Then the answer narrows further, to the point he has been circling all interview. “My main goal is just actually win some races this year. And get my hands in the air.”
It is a simple way of putting it. No talk of process, no protective vagueness, no attempt to hide behind team goals or developmental rhetoric. He wants to win. Not eventually, not in theory, not as a reward for being patient. Now.
Then, finally, one last flicker of humour. “I’m going to work on my sprint. And then I’ll work on the celebration.”
Use code TBC10 at 4Endurance.co.uk for 10% off your order.
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