“You have no idea how big this is for Scottish cycling”: building the Mennock Pass
A four-year-old in the back seat, a patch of tarmac, and a stage race that was never meant to become all-consuming. Liam White on building Scotland's biggest road race — the budgets, the volunteers, the recces, and the question of how much further it can go.
It’s a Monday evening, and I’m driving down an empty country lane with my four-year-old daughter in the back seat, who is dictating the tunes for the next couple of hours. The weekend was occupied with racing and then recovering from the Gralloch UCI gravel race, and so tonight is really the only chance I have to get this done. Now and again I stop the car, get out and scratch my head while staring at a patch of tarmac. Lillie questions what Daddy is doing and, from her perspective, probably wonders if I’m feeling alright. All while my wife and two younger daughters are at home patiently waiting for us to get back.
Course inspections are just one of a number of seemingly endless jobs that I find myself doing to try and deliver what has somewhat unexpectedly become one of Scotland’s biggest domestic road racing events. I usually define my own identity starting with being a dad and husband, followed by, interchangeably, a lawyer and bike racer. Since the launch of the Mennock Pass stage race last year, however, “race organiser” is quickly becoming a big part of who I am and what I do.
We had delivered a couple of decent TTs, a few handy road races, so how much harder could a national-level stage race really be?
The Mennock came about from nothing more than aspirational conversations amongst friends- a small team at Torvelo Racing who just loved racing bikes and had the audacity to dream of something bigger. After all, we had delivered a couple of decent TTs, a few handy road races, so how much harder could a national-level stage race really be? I put myself forward for the job, probably with little thought for the long-term consequences.
Liam White. Image: supplied
I had been road racing for a few years by this point, and had at least one small taste of stage racing thanks to the “Falling Leaves” stage race in the north of Scotland, which has appeared in both the national and regional calendars over the years. When we started talking about whether a national stage race was something we could do, I was immediately taken back to feelings of building excitement and anticipation across a season. I remember as a new racer I loved the feeling that every week of training, or road race I finished, was a tick in the box towards preparation for the “big one”. I immediately knew I wanted to deliver that same excitement that riders build a season around as a showcase event for the domestic calendar.
With a select few of the Torvelo squad committed to the idea, we set about finding a collection of circuits that would provide a genuinely “epic” stage on which the best riders would do battle, but equally try to keep the terrain just right so that it could potentially be won by anyone determined enough to do so. With the Mennock Pass selected as the centre to this showpiece, the harsh reality of a serious amount of work and admin that comes with a new event came to the fore.
When I realised how passionate I was to deliver this event to the standard I had in mind, it quickly became all-consuming, and I soon lost track of the hours I was putting in
Having said that, I genuinely didn’t think that pulling this off was going to become as all-consuming as it did. I had a busy job in a big law firm and, coupled with the fact I had two young kids at home at that time, I just didn’t see this as being much more than 30 minutes here and there to keep the wheels turning. The reality of organising these events, however, is that they seem to always start from a place of passion. So when I realised how passionate I was to deliver this event to the standard I had in mind, it quickly became all-consuming, and I soon lost track of the hours I was putting in.
Image: McCart Media
When you are running four races in one weekend, everything just takes that extra level of commitment to get it done. There were nights where I was getting home from the office and, after putting the kids to bed, I would sit down to look at the budgets or write another sponsor email. There were even moments of true frustration when we had the second stage rejected by the police. Post-Covid, there was no budget or appetite for them to provide traffic management like they used to, and we either needed to find a few thousand pounds to pay for private contractors, or find another route.
In the end, we got there with the help of some shared passion from the team at Scottish Cycling to quickly turn around another brand-new course risk assessment. I think the point is, though, that there really was no glamour in this part of the process.
We delivered a race with a story that would be spoken about well into the off-season. A commissaire told me the sight of the peloton descending the Pass on that opening lap was like something out of the Tour
However, the outcome was, with no hint of irony, incredible. After an unbelievable race which came down to the wire and saw the GC decided with a sprint for bonus seconds on the summit finish, we delivered a race with a story that would be spoken about well into the off-season. A commissaire told me the sight of the peloton descending the Pass on that opening lap was like something out of the Tour. A relative of a rider took me to one side at HQ after the podium awards and, while looking me straight in the eye, said: “you have no idea how big this is for Scottish cycling.”
Image: McCart Media
One of Scotland’s current top racers told me last week that this race could easily be a national series event, or even a British championship course. Plenty of riders have also told me this season that the Mennock will be their ‘A’ race. While I still have my own aspirations and goals as a very amateur road/track/gravel/everything-else racer, keeping this race going now feels like a more important goal than anything I’ll be on the start line of.
So fast-forward to today, where I am now back home after the course recce for 2026, and I feel like I’m sitting at the next crest of a rollercoaster. The one that comes after the first exciting drop, and you’re about to dive back down at full speed all over again. I always set out with the ambition of finding out if this event would be sustainable, but now that I know this race actually matters to riders out there, the stakes feel even higher.
I have been around long enough, however, to have seen some great races come to life from the same passionate organisers, only for those races to burn out and drop from the calendar, sometimes never to return
That makes me proud of what we’ve achieved in a short time, but it also leaves me wondering just how far we push this. I am 34 years old and came to the sport relatively late when I started racing in 2018, so I don’t pretend to know it all. I have been around long enough, however, to have seen some great races come to life from the same passionate organisers, only for those races to burn out and drop from the calendar, sometimes never to return. At the time of writing, The British Continental has announced two cancellations in recent days for long-standing National B races, and we are only in May. Big events and big courses demand big levels of support, and that support is becoming harder to come by.
Today I’ve had a brief WhatsApp exchange with my teammate who looks after volunteer recruitment for the Mennock, and so far we have… eight responses. These road events only work as a result of the personal sacrifices of volunteers. I found myself doing this because it felt like the right and natural thing to do when I love bike racing so much, so I can only hope that others will share in the vision that I have for this great race.
It doesn’t seem out of reach for the Mennock to become something akin to Scotland’s answer to the Rás na mBan
This leads me to question where the Mennock really sits in the grand scheme of things. I’ve certainly thought to myself about whether this could transcend simply being the Scottish amateur calendar highlight, and one day be up there amongst the best of British racing. Is the answer more stages for a more “professional” looking race? Or do we just keep doing the same thing and make it a consistent performer each year? I can see a lot of parallels to some of the bigger stage races happening across the Irish Sea, and certainly it doesn’t seem out of reach for the Mennock to become something akin to Scotland’s answer to the Rás na mBan. I think the fact I have never raced the Rás myself, but understand its significance to the top racers in the UK and Ireland, shows that it has achieved something beyond an important date in the race calendar—it has developed its own dedicated, almost cult-style following. This is exactly what I think the Scottish racing scene in the Mennock could have to offer.
It all feels like it hangs in a perilous balance at the moment, and I can’t say for sure whether the Mennock will ultimately achieve the vision I might have for it. The demands of putting on this event are not going to get easier the bigger it gets. Although, I am at least optimistic that there are enough people who now see what a race like this can mean to people, and that alone should be motivation to help keep things going. My daughter Lillie might be accompanying me on a few more course recces yet.
Enter the open stage race here. Enter the women’s road race here. Entries close 7 June.
It’s a Monday evening, and I’m driving down an empty country lane with my four-year-old daughter in the back seat, who is dictating the tunes for the next couple of hours. The weekend was occupied with racing and then recovering from the Gralloch UCI gravel race, and so tonight is really the only chance I have to get this done. Now and again I stop the car, get out and scratch my head while staring at a patch of tarmac. Lillie questions what Daddy is doing and, from her perspective, probably wonders if I’m feeling alright. All while my wife and two younger daughters are at home patiently waiting for us to get back.
Course inspections are just one of a number of seemingly endless jobs that I find myself doing to try and deliver what has somewhat unexpectedly become one of Scotland’s biggest domestic road racing events. I usually define my own identity starting with being a dad and husband, followed by, interchangeably, a lawyer and bike racer. Since the launch of the Mennock Pass stage race last year, however, “race organiser” is quickly becoming a big part of who I am and what I do.
The Mennock came about from nothing more than aspirational conversations amongst friends- a small team at Torvelo Racing who just loved racing bikes and had the audacity to dream of something bigger. After all, we had delivered a couple of decent TTs, a few handy road races, so how much harder could a national-level stage race really be? I put myself forward for the job, probably with little thought for the long-term consequences.
I had been road racing for a few years by this point, and had at least one small taste of stage racing thanks to the “Falling Leaves” stage race in the north of Scotland, which has appeared in both the national and regional calendars over the years. When we started talking about whether a national stage race was something we could do, I was immediately taken back to feelings of building excitement and anticipation across a season. I remember as a new racer I loved the feeling that every week of training, or road race I finished, was a tick in the box towards preparation for the “big one”. I immediately knew I wanted to deliver that same excitement that riders build a season around as a showcase event for the domestic calendar.
With a select few of the Torvelo squad committed to the idea, we set about finding a collection of circuits that would provide a genuinely “epic” stage on which the best riders would do battle, but equally try to keep the terrain just right so that it could potentially be won by anyone determined enough to do so. With the Mennock Pass selected as the centre to this showpiece, the harsh reality of a serious amount of work and admin that comes with a new event came to the fore.
Having said that, I genuinely didn’t think that pulling this off was going to become as all-consuming as it did. I had a busy job in a big law firm and, coupled with the fact I had two young kids at home at that time, I just didn’t see this as being much more than 30 minutes here and there to keep the wheels turning. The reality of organising these events, however, is that they seem to always start from a place of passion. So when I realised how passionate I was to deliver this event to the standard I had in mind, it quickly became all-consuming, and I soon lost track of the hours I was putting in.
When you are running four races in one weekend, everything just takes that extra level of commitment to get it done. There were nights where I was getting home from the office and, after putting the kids to bed, I would sit down to look at the budgets or write another sponsor email. There were even moments of true frustration when we had the second stage rejected by the police. Post-Covid, there was no budget or appetite for them to provide traffic management like they used to, and we either needed to find a few thousand pounds to pay for private contractors, or find another route.
In the end, we got there with the help of some shared passion from the team at Scottish Cycling to quickly turn around another brand-new course risk assessment. I think the point is, though, that there really was no glamour in this part of the process.
However, the outcome was, with no hint of irony, incredible. After an unbelievable race which came down to the wire and saw the GC decided with a sprint for bonus seconds on the summit finish, we delivered a race with a story that would be spoken about well into the off-season. A commissaire told me the sight of the peloton descending the Pass on that opening lap was like something out of the Tour. A relative of a rider took me to one side at HQ after the podium awards and, while looking me straight in the eye, said: “you have no idea how big this is for Scottish cycling.”
One of Scotland’s current top racers told me last week that this race could easily be a national series event, or even a British championship course. Plenty of riders have also told me this season that the Mennock will be their ‘A’ race. While I still have my own aspirations and goals as a very amateur road/track/gravel/everything-else racer, keeping this race going now feels like a more important goal than anything I’ll be on the start line of.
So fast-forward to today, where I am now back home after the course recce for 2026, and I feel like I’m sitting at the next crest of a rollercoaster. The one that comes after the first exciting drop, and you’re about to dive back down at full speed all over again. I always set out with the ambition of finding out if this event would be sustainable, but now that I know this race actually matters to riders out there, the stakes feel even higher.
That makes me proud of what we’ve achieved in a short time, but it also leaves me wondering just how far we push this. I am 34 years old and came to the sport relatively late when I started racing in 2018, so I don’t pretend to know it all. I have been around long enough, however, to have seen some great races come to life from the same passionate organisers, only for those races to burn out and drop from the calendar, sometimes never to return. At the time of writing, The British Continental has announced two cancellations in recent days for long-standing National B races, and we are only in May. Big events and big courses demand big levels of support, and that support is becoming harder to come by.
Today I’ve had a brief WhatsApp exchange with my teammate who looks after volunteer recruitment for the Mennock, and so far we have… eight responses. These road events only work as a result of the personal sacrifices of volunteers. I found myself doing this because it felt like the right and natural thing to do when I love bike racing so much, so I can only hope that others will share in the vision that I have for this great race.
This leads me to question where the Mennock really sits in the grand scheme of things. I’ve certainly thought to myself about whether this could transcend simply being the Scottish amateur calendar highlight, and one day be up there amongst the best of British racing. Is the answer more stages for a more “professional” looking race? Or do we just keep doing the same thing and make it a consistent performer each year? I can see a lot of parallels to some of the bigger stage races happening across the Irish Sea, and certainly it doesn’t seem out of reach for the Mennock to become something akin to Scotland’s answer to the Rás na mBan. I think the fact I have never raced the Rás myself, but understand its significance to the top racers in the UK and Ireland, shows that it has achieved something beyond an important date in the race calendar—it has developed its own dedicated, almost cult-style following. This is exactly what I think the Scottish racing scene in the Mennock could have to offer.
It all feels like it hangs in a perilous balance at the moment, and I can’t say for sure whether the Mennock will ultimately achieve the vision I might have for it. The demands of putting on this event are not going to get easier the bigger it gets. Although, I am at least optimistic that there are enough people who now see what a race like this can mean to people, and that alone should be motivation to help keep things going. My daughter Lillie might be accompanying me on a few more course recces yet.
Enter the open stage race here. Enter the women’s road race here. Entries close 7 June.
Featured image: Corin Halliday
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