First through the door: Alex Foster and Cycling Sheffield’s new generation
Two seasons of injury and illness gave Alex Foster little to show for Dave Coulson’s patience. He takes an 11-point lead into Sunday’s U23 Open National Road Series finale, and tells Jack Beavis why he almost didn’t let himself hope for it.
“I’ll always be a bike racer,” Alex Foster declares as his interview with The British Continental draws to a close—the final question pointed to his future, his answer revealing just as much about the present.
In April the 21-year-old Cycling Sheffield rider announced himself to the domestic scene exactly as described on the roads of the Danum Trophy, emerging victorious after an epic battle from the flag drop to the finish line in the countryside to the west of Doncaster.
Arms raised in the finish line photo, for those not privy to his performance it would simply appear that Foster was the fastest from the select group which had been whittled down over the many laps around High Melton. However, the race was won as much by instinct as strength, Foster opening his effort some 600 metres earlier as he negated a late attack from JAKROO Handsling Racing’s Oliver Dawson before finding a final kick to surge past Dawson’s teammate Harrison Dainty as the line approached.
I feel I can say now I’ve given Dave a bit of return on his investment, finally
It was a finish that raised parallels with some of the most memorable the sport has seen in recent years, from Mark Cavendish’s sharp pursuit of Heinrich Haussler on the Via Roma in 2009, to Søren Wærenskjold’s 400-metre burst to outfox the other sprinters in Nevers in July—all three racing their way to the biggest wins of their careers at that point through brains as well as brawn. Each started, to varying degrees, as an outsider.
“I feel I can say now I’ve given Dave [Coulson] a bit of return on his investment, finally. He’s been bloody patient with me, and it’s all started to fall into place and click now,” Foster says, having backed up his maiden National B win with a stunning fourth place at the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix a month later, the previous two years spent under Coulson’s wing a mixture of injury, disappointment, and frustration.
Image: Emma Wilcock
“Cycling Sheffield was almost as local as a lot of Manchester teams,” Foster explains, having grown up riding on the boards of the National Cycling Centre, his position to the east of Manchester placing him only a short distance from the steel city and its cycling heritage, both old and new.
“It was definitely on my radar as a team that would be a great fit for me going into seniors,” he adds, his response to how he has found the last two and a half years simple but powerful, akin to his finishing kick.
It’s not designed to be a results factory, it’s more just a family with rider development
“Bloody loved it!” he says bluntly, searching for words to contextualise his enthusiasm.
“It’s an amazing team. It’s so closely knit—Dave nurtures these riders into doing well. It’s not designed to be a results factory, it’s more just a family with rider development.
“I’ve seen both the highs of 2024, when I first joined with the likes of Hartleys, Max Krasinski, and David Hird doing so well, and then the switch to the younger team where we were all quite inexperienced and kept picking up injuries, rocking up to French races that we’ve put hard work and money in, and only finishing with a couple of riders because we’ve all just either crashed out, injured, or didn’t even make it to the start line in the first place.” His first two years with the team were marred by illness and injury.
“It’s a shame I couldn’t spend as much time with the team in 2024 as I could have done, because I was out with a knee injury for most of the year, it just kept niggling throughout,” he explains, a bout of COVID-19 early in 2025 followed by surgery on a finger injury in July 2025 all but writing off his second campaign.
“I was playing catch up through most of the year,” he reflects, an eighth place in the Ilkley Grand Prix, where he formed part of an elite leading group through one of the most challenging hours of racing in the world, a sign of his potential before he came down in a crash only a week later at the Tour des Deux-Sèvres in France.
Image: Emma Wilcock
“When I woke up from surgery last July I had to come to terms with, you know, this is the end of [the] year.
“This year Lincoln was always the goal. It’s my favourite race. It suits me quite well, and just the atmosphere is incredible.”
With 2026 perhaps the most crucial year in his career so far, Foster’s target was a modest one—a top-15 finish a reflection of where he found himself heading into the season, even on a parcours that suits him.
Everyone’s just fighting for their absolute lives to be in the top 10 wheels into Michaelgate for the first two hours. It’s the closest thing to the Paterberg you can get in UK domestic racing
“It’s just got that aura,” he says of the race and its 13 ascents of the cobbled Michaelgate climb.
“It’s so on from the get go. Everyone’s just fighting for their absolute lives to be in the top 10 wheels into Michaelgate for the first two hours. It’s the closest thing to the Paterberg you can get in UK domestic racing, the atmosphere is just incredible.”
Having made the selections throughout the early laps, Foster found himself in the second group on the road as the race neared its business end—the 21-year-old surrounded by some of the best riders in the National Road Series, a result still possible and, to a certain extent, in his own hands.
“It was a bit of a surprise, to be honest,” he reflects. “I was sort of… I knew I had to race it, because you can’t get a result by sitting in and getting round, because that’s no risk, no reward, isn’t it?
“I was following moves in that last couple of laps, seeing if I could break away the likes of Tom Martin—I knew if I could get in a move with them, then that would be a bit more of a guarantee of a top-10, but then if nothing really happened, so I sort of just thought, well, I don’t know how good my legs are compared to everyone else’s, but everyone else is bloody strong!”
Poised to sprint for fourth place, Foster made his way, instinctively, to the front of the group on the way into Michaelgate for the final time, pulling clear by the time he took the sharp left-hand bend two thirds of the way up, the rear wheel of Wheelbase CabTech Castelli’s Tom Armstrong visible as the cobbles continued under them.
Alex Foster (Cycling Sheffield). Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
“I absolutely emptied myself,” he says, his hopes that such a tactic would see him into the top 10 somewhat ignorant of his own strength in the final minutes of the Danum Trophy a month earlier—this time the likes of Rapha Cycling Club’s Matthew Bostock on the receiving end of his kick.
“It has upped the confidence a lot,” he reflects. “It’s a result I couldn’t even dream of at the start of the year, it’s a good one to have in the back pocket.
I almost didn’t want to get my hopes up too much for this year, just in case it was another year of injury and illness, because that would just devastate me
“I almost didn’t want to get my hopes up too much for this year, just in case it was another year of injury and illness, because that would just devastate me. But I always rock up on the start line in any race, just wanting to do as best I can in it, but I’m certainly pleased with how things are going so far.
“The season’s not done, and we’ve still got bike races to go and win, hopefully.”
Foster and his Cycling Sheffield teammates spent a week in Belgium in July, taking in a selection of the nation’s famous kermesses after this year’s Tour des Deux-Sèvres fell to the heatwave that took hold across Europe. Success abroad is very much part of the Cycling Sheffield DNA, with the likes of George Wood, Adam Mitchell, and James McKay now racing abroad at UCI level, and James Hartley, as reported by The British Continental, a rider on the lips of many in France’s competitive amateur scene—all of them beneficiaries of such trips in previous years.
Image: Joe Hudson
“They’re a good opportunity to impress the teams abroad, and getting on a team would be a great, if anything, life experience,” he says, acknowledging that, although a professional contract is the ultimate goal, such a prize remains in the distance. Neither of the targets he named when we spoke went his way. In Brittany in August, against an Elite Nationale field at L’Estivale Bretonne, he was Cycling Sheffield’s best finisher in 90th; at the North Yorkshire Grand Prix on 16 August, the day the National Road Series and the Rapha Super-League were settled, he abandoned.
“[I’ll] also be focusing on the [U23 Open National Road] Series,” he reveals, a competition he leads following his Danum Trophy triumph and a solid sixth place at the Stourbridge CC National U23 Road Race, and one he recognises as an important yardstick in his development as a rider. Fifteenth place at the Yorkshire U23 Classic on 2 August, on a day when many of his rivals were absent, was enough to extend his advantage to 11 points over his own teammate James Sawyers with one round to run.
It’d be great to get the overall in that, they’re a great opportunity to race people of your own age and sort of compare yourself to the other talent going through
“It’d be great to get the overall in that, they’re a great opportunity to race people of your own age and sort of compare yourself to the other talent going through our juniors and into the [seniors].”
Foster’s breakthrough has coincided with the emergence of his team’s latest generation. The 21-year-old, although thrust into the limelight as its spearhead, is keen to turn the attention back to the collective.
“If one rider does well, the whole team does well. That comes from being such a tightly knit unit,” he points out, explaining that his role in the set-up hasn’t changed—the team using their collective strength to provide the best opportunities for one another.
“Dave’s success isn’t from one rider, it’s from watching us all develop into a team that can do well and can win from any angle and watch us develop into better bike racers.”
Foster remains the first of the team’s riders to have broken through, and has done so with aplomb on more than one occasion. He is on the startlist for Sunday’s Chas Messenger Trophy at Astwood in Buckinghamshire, the final round of the U23 Open National Road Series, where he leads the standings and his closest challenger is his own teammate. Two seasons of frustration have brought him to an afternoon in which the overall is his to lose.
“I’ll always be a bike racer,” Alex Foster declares as his interview with The British Continental draws to a close—the final question pointed to his future, his answer revealing just as much about the present.
In April the 21-year-old Cycling Sheffield rider announced himself to the domestic scene exactly as described on the roads of the Danum Trophy, emerging victorious after an epic battle from the flag drop to the finish line in the countryside to the west of Doncaster.
Arms raised in the finish line photo, for those not privy to his performance it would simply appear that Foster was the fastest from the select group which had been whittled down over the many laps around High Melton. However, the race was won as much by instinct as strength, Foster opening his effort some 600 metres earlier as he negated a late attack from JAKROO Handsling Racing’s Oliver Dawson before finding a final kick to surge past Dawson’s teammate Harrison Dainty as the line approached.
It was a finish that raised parallels with some of the most memorable the sport has seen in recent years, from Mark Cavendish’s sharp pursuit of Heinrich Haussler on the Via Roma in 2009, to Søren Wærenskjold’s 400-metre burst to outfox the other sprinters in Nevers in July—all three racing their way to the biggest wins of their careers at that point through brains as well as brawn. Each started, to varying degrees, as an outsider.
“I feel I can say now I’ve given Dave [Coulson] a bit of return on his investment, finally. He’s been bloody patient with me, and it’s all started to fall into place and click now,” Foster says, having backed up his maiden National B win with a stunning fourth place at the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix a month later, the previous two years spent under Coulson’s wing a mixture of injury, disappointment, and frustration.
“Cycling Sheffield was almost as local as a lot of Manchester teams,” Foster explains, having grown up riding on the boards of the National Cycling Centre, his position to the east of Manchester placing him only a short distance from the steel city and its cycling heritage, both old and new.
“It was definitely on my radar as a team that would be a great fit for me going into seniors,” he adds, his response to how he has found the last two and a half years simple but powerful, akin to his finishing kick.
“Bloody loved it!” he says bluntly, searching for words to contextualise his enthusiasm.
“It’s an amazing team. It’s so closely knit—Dave nurtures these riders into doing well. It’s not designed to be a results factory, it’s more just a family with rider development.
“I’ve seen both the highs of 2024, when I first joined with the likes of Hartleys, Max Krasinski, and David Hird doing so well, and then the switch to the younger team where we were all quite inexperienced and kept picking up injuries, rocking up to French races that we’ve put hard work and money in, and only finishing with a couple of riders because we’ve all just either crashed out, injured, or didn’t even make it to the start line in the first place.” His first two years with the team were marred by illness and injury.
“It’s a shame I couldn’t spend as much time with the team in 2024 as I could have done, because I was out with a knee injury for most of the year, it just kept niggling throughout,” he explains, a bout of COVID-19 early in 2025 followed by surgery on a finger injury in July 2025 all but writing off his second campaign.
“I was playing catch up through most of the year,” he reflects, an eighth place in the Ilkley Grand Prix, where he formed part of an elite leading group through one of the most challenging hours of racing in the world, a sign of his potential before he came down in a crash only a week later at the Tour des Deux-Sèvres in France.
“When I woke up from surgery last July I had to come to terms with, you know, this is the end of [the] year.
“This year Lincoln was always the goal. It’s my favourite race. It suits me quite well, and just the atmosphere is incredible.”
With 2026 perhaps the most crucial year in his career so far, Foster’s target was a modest one—a top-15 finish a reflection of where he found himself heading into the season, even on a parcours that suits him.
“It’s just got that aura,” he says of the race and its 13 ascents of the cobbled Michaelgate climb.
“It’s so on from the get go. Everyone’s just fighting for their absolute lives to be in the top 10 wheels into Michaelgate for the first two hours. It’s the closest thing to the Paterberg you can get in UK domestic racing, the atmosphere is just incredible.”
Having made the selections throughout the early laps, Foster found himself in the second group on the road as the race neared its business end—the 21-year-old surrounded by some of the best riders in the National Road Series, a result still possible and, to a certain extent, in his own hands.
“It was a bit of a surprise, to be honest,” he reflects. “I was sort of… I knew I had to race it, because you can’t get a result by sitting in and getting round, because that’s no risk, no reward, isn’t it?
“I was following moves in that last couple of laps, seeing if I could break away the likes of Tom Martin—I knew if I could get in a move with them, then that would be a bit more of a guarantee of a top-10, but then if nothing really happened, so I sort of just thought, well, I don’t know how good my legs are compared to everyone else’s, but everyone else is bloody strong!”
Poised to sprint for fourth place, Foster made his way, instinctively, to the front of the group on the way into Michaelgate for the final time, pulling clear by the time he took the sharp left-hand bend two thirds of the way up, the rear wheel of Wheelbase CabTech Castelli’s Tom Armstrong visible as the cobbles continued under them.
“I absolutely emptied myself,” he says, his hopes that such a tactic would see him into the top 10 somewhat ignorant of his own strength in the final minutes of the Danum Trophy a month earlier—this time the likes of Rapha Cycling Club’s Matthew Bostock on the receiving end of his kick.
“It has upped the confidence a lot,” he reflects. “It’s a result I couldn’t even dream of at the start of the year, it’s a good one to have in the back pocket.
“I almost didn’t want to get my hopes up too much for this year, just in case it was another year of injury and illness, because that would just devastate me. But I always rock up on the start line in any race, just wanting to do as best I can in it, but I’m certainly pleased with how things are going so far.
“The season’s not done, and we’ve still got bike races to go and win, hopefully.”
Foster and his Cycling Sheffield teammates spent a week in Belgium in July, taking in a selection of the nation’s famous kermesses after this year’s Tour des Deux-Sèvres fell to the heatwave that took hold across Europe. Success abroad is very much part of the Cycling Sheffield DNA, with the likes of George Wood, Adam Mitchell, and James McKay now racing abroad at UCI level, and James Hartley, as reported by The British Continental, a rider on the lips of many in France’s competitive amateur scene—all of them beneficiaries of such trips in previous years.
“They’re a good opportunity to impress the teams abroad, and getting on a team would be a great, if anything, life experience,” he says, acknowledging that, although a professional contract is the ultimate goal, such a prize remains in the distance. Neither of the targets he named when we spoke went his way. In Brittany in August, against an Elite Nationale field at L’Estivale Bretonne, he was Cycling Sheffield’s best finisher in 90th; at the North Yorkshire Grand Prix on 16 August, the day the National Road Series and the Rapha Super-League were settled, he abandoned.
“[I’ll] also be focusing on the [U23 Open National Road] Series,” he reveals, a competition he leads following his Danum Trophy triumph and a solid sixth place at the Stourbridge CC National U23 Road Race, and one he recognises as an important yardstick in his development as a rider. Fifteenth place at the Yorkshire U23 Classic on 2 August, on a day when many of his rivals were absent, was enough to extend his advantage to 11 points over his own teammate James Sawyers with one round to run.
“It’d be great to get the overall in that, they’re a great opportunity to race people of your own age and sort of compare yourself to the other talent going through our juniors and into the [seniors].”
Foster’s breakthrough has coincided with the emergence of his team’s latest generation. The 21-year-old, although thrust into the limelight as its spearhead, is keen to turn the attention back to the collective.
“If one rider does well, the whole team does well. That comes from being such a tightly knit unit,” he points out, explaining that his role in the set-up hasn’t changed—the team using their collective strength to provide the best opportunities for one another.
“Dave’s success isn’t from one rider, it’s from watching us all develop into a team that can do well and can win from any angle and watch us develop into better bike racers.”
Foster remains the first of the team’s riders to have broken through, and has done so with aplomb on more than one occasion. He is on the startlist for Sunday’s Chas Messenger Trophy at Astwood in Buckinghamshire, the final round of the U23 Open National Road Series, where he leads the standings and his closest challenger is his own teammate. Two seasons of frustration have brought him to an afternoon in which the overall is his to lose.
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