The missing rung: VC Londres launches a junior and under-23 women’s team
The south London club is recruiting a junior and under-23 women's squad for 2027. The man leading it spent the summer analysing British Cycling results to work out what happens to female youth riders once they leave youth racing.
VC Londres is building a junior and under-23 women’s race team for 2027. The Herne Hill club opened recruitment last month, is targeting a first intake of around 10 riders, and has set 31 October as the deadline for expressions of interest. Applications are open to riders outside the club as well as those already in it.
“When she reached junior level, VCL didn’t have a women’s team that could offer her the next step, so moving to another team was absolutely the right thing for her,” says Mark Unsworth, the team’s manager. He is talking about Aalia Clay.
Clay, 17, is the British junior time trial champion. She learned to race at Herne Hill and joined camsmajaco when she reached junior level. This month she took bronze in the junior women’s time trial at the world championships in Montréal, seven hundredths of a second clear of fourth place, and in June she became the first junior to win the women’s Ronde van Wymeswold overall.
We have more talented girls coming through behind Aalia, and we want them and their parents to have the same option
“That’s exactly the gap we’re closing,” Unsworth says. “We have more talented girls coming through behind Aalia, and we want them and their parents to have the same option, if it’s the right fit for them.”
Boys coming through the same club have had a step in between. Dylan Belton Owen came through VC Londres youth racing, moved into the junior men’s team at 16, and only then moved on to JAKROO Handsling Racing. There has never been a women’s equivalent. Girls who stayed got the club jersey and arranged the rest themselves.
Image: Mark James
Flora Perkins did exactly that. She came into the sport through the Herne Hill holiday clubs and raced both her junior seasons in VC Londres colours, winning the Banbury Star Women’s Road Race and the Watersley Challenge Juniors, finishing third in the national junior road race and 12th at the world championships, before signing for Le Col-Wahoo at 18. She rides for Fenix now. What she did not have, and what Clay went elsewhere to find, was a team.
The club has circled this before. A women’s team was planned for 2020, Perkins’ first junior season, and stopped by the pandemic. Since then the obstacle has been arithmetic: not enough junior women in the club to field a squad on their own. Running juniors and under-23s together solves the arithmetic. A member survey over the summer came back unanimous, Unsworth says, and five riders volunteered immediately.
You don’t simply put riders into the biggest races you can find; you build their experience and confidence step by step
What else has changed since 2020 is several seasons of running the junior men’s programme. “One of the biggest lessons has been that development needs to be progressive,” Unsworth says. “You don’t simply put riders into the biggest races you can find; you build their experience and confidence step by step.”
Asked whether the team is filling the gap where British junior women run out of places to go at under-23, Unsworth says the gap is real but misshapen: less a cliff at 18, in his phrase, than a slow squeeze.
“I analysed British Cycling results for about a hundred female youth riders from 2021 to this season. Most carry on racing past youth level, but how much they race roughly halves and just doesn’t recover.”
In his sample, the riders largely stay. Their racing is what disappears. Unsworth puts the cause in the calendar: “organisers put on women’s races when there are women to ride them, and right now there aren’t enough races for riders to keep developing. More women racing means more races, so every rider we can keep in the sport helps make the case.”
Image: Mark James
The squeeze shows in the calendar. British Cycling’s Junior Women’s National Road Series ran to three rounds in 2026 against eight in the junior open series, and one of those three existed only because London Academy took it on, embedding the round inside a National B race despite having no junior riders of its own. VC Londres is not the only club working on that stretch of the pathway: 360cycling added an under-23 women’s programme this season, and Simpson Nouvelles linked formally with the Liv CC–Halo Films juniors.
We’re a club development team, not a mini pro team
Unsworth is clear about what the team is not. “We’re a club development team, not a mini pro team,” he says. “There are no trial races, and the conversation is about where a rider starts, not whether she belongs here.” The squad will be built around the riders who come forward and what they want from the season, rather than recruited to a shape decided in advance.
It also stays inside the club. Riders get VC Londres and Herne Hill track and road sessions, including a long-standing weekly road-bike paceline session on the track that mixes experienced racers, developing riders and the occasional former member now racing professionally. “A team that only meets at races isn’t really a team,” Unsworth says.
For now, European racing means Belgium, and it has started already. A group of next year’s riders travelled with the club’s under-17 and under-15 girls this month. The 2027 plan is blocks built around kermesses, chosen for field size as much as for the racing: “fast from the gun, tight circuits, and fighting for position the whole way. Fields that size are quite rare in UK girls and women’s racing, and it’s a very effective way to learn.”
Beyond that, Unsworth is careful about what he promises. At target races the team intends to add support, which may include a directeur sportif, mechanical help and transport, but the shape of it is unsettled and budgets are still being worked through. The model will mirror the junior men’s programme, and the calendar will follow the riders who sign rather than the other way round. “The aim isn’t to replicate a professional team,” he says, “but to give developing riders the support, experience and opportunities they need to take the next step in their racing.” Applications have been steady since the announcement, though he gives no number.
His own background is 20 years in technology leadership. He organises the club’s youth stage race weekend, VCL Deux Jours, and has two daughters racing youth, so he knows what families are weighing up. Rather than appoint a single DS, the team will draw on a pool of volunteers, a model borrowed from other domestic squads. The mechanics come from the junior men’s programme, and a coaching lead is still to be named. Behind all of it sits a club Unsworth puts at around 600 members.
Older youth girls will train and ride alongside the juniors and under-23s before they are eligible for either, and if the right move for a rider turns out to be another team, he says VC Londres will back it.
“When they step up,” Unsworth says, “the team will already feel like theirs.”
VC Londres is building a junior and under-23 women’s race team for 2027. The Herne Hill club opened recruitment last month, is targeting a first intake of around 10 riders, and has set 31 October as the deadline for expressions of interest. Applications are open to riders outside the club as well as those already in it.
“When she reached junior level, VCL didn’t have a women’s team that could offer her the next step, so moving to another team was absolutely the right thing for her,” says Mark Unsworth, the team’s manager. He is talking about Aalia Clay.
Clay, 17, is the British junior time trial champion. She learned to race at Herne Hill and joined camsmajaco when she reached junior level. This month she took bronze in the junior women’s time trial at the world championships in Montréal, seven hundredths of a second clear of fourth place, and in June she became the first junior to win the women’s Ronde van Wymeswold overall.
“That’s exactly the gap we’re closing,” Unsworth says. “We have more talented girls coming through behind Aalia, and we want them and their parents to have the same option, if it’s the right fit for them.”
Boys coming through the same club have had a step in between. Dylan Belton Owen came through VC Londres youth racing, moved into the junior men’s team at 16, and only then moved on to JAKROO Handsling Racing. There has never been a women’s equivalent. Girls who stayed got the club jersey and arranged the rest themselves.
Flora Perkins did exactly that. She came into the sport through the Herne Hill holiday clubs and raced both her junior seasons in VC Londres colours, winning the Banbury Star Women’s Road Race and the Watersley Challenge Juniors, finishing third in the national junior road race and 12th at the world championships, before signing for Le Col-Wahoo at 18. She rides for Fenix now. What she did not have, and what Clay went elsewhere to find, was a team.
The club has circled this before. A women’s team was planned for 2020, Perkins’ first junior season, and stopped by the pandemic. Since then the obstacle has been arithmetic: not enough junior women in the club to field a squad on their own. Running juniors and under-23s together solves the arithmetic. A member survey over the summer came back unanimous, Unsworth says, and five riders volunteered immediately.
What else has changed since 2020 is several seasons of running the junior men’s programme. “One of the biggest lessons has been that development needs to be progressive,” Unsworth says. “You don’t simply put riders into the biggest races you can find; you build their experience and confidence step by step.”
Asked whether the team is filling the gap where British junior women run out of places to go at under-23, Unsworth says the gap is real but misshapen: less a cliff at 18, in his phrase, than a slow squeeze.
“I analysed British Cycling results for about a hundred female youth riders from 2021 to this season. Most carry on racing past youth level, but how much they race roughly halves and just doesn’t recover.”
In his sample, the riders largely stay. Their racing is what disappears. Unsworth puts the cause in the calendar: “organisers put on women’s races when there are women to ride them, and right now there aren’t enough races for riders to keep developing. More women racing means more races, so every rider we can keep in the sport helps make the case.”
The squeeze shows in the calendar. British Cycling’s Junior Women’s National Road Series ran to three rounds in 2026 against eight in the junior open series, and one of those three existed only because London Academy took it on, embedding the round inside a National B race despite having no junior riders of its own. VC Londres is not the only club working on that stretch of the pathway: 360cycling added an under-23 women’s programme this season, and Simpson Nouvelles linked formally with the Liv CC–Halo Films juniors.
Unsworth is clear about what the team is not. “We’re a club development team, not a mini pro team,” he says. “There are no trial races, and the conversation is about where a rider starts, not whether she belongs here.” The squad will be built around the riders who come forward and what they want from the season, rather than recruited to a shape decided in advance.
It also stays inside the club. Riders get VC Londres and Herne Hill track and road sessions, including a long-standing weekly road-bike paceline session on the track that mixes experienced racers, developing riders and the occasional former member now racing professionally. “A team that only meets at races isn’t really a team,” Unsworth says.
For now, European racing means Belgium, and it has started already. A group of next year’s riders travelled with the club’s under-17 and under-15 girls this month. The 2027 plan is blocks built around kermesses, chosen for field size as much as for the racing: “fast from the gun, tight circuits, and fighting for position the whole way. Fields that size are quite rare in UK girls and women’s racing, and it’s a very effective way to learn.”
Beyond that, Unsworth is careful about what he promises. At target races the team intends to add support, which may include a directeur sportif, mechanical help and transport, but the shape of it is unsettled and budgets are still being worked through. The model will mirror the junior men’s programme, and the calendar will follow the riders who sign rather than the other way round. “The aim isn’t to replicate a professional team,” he says, “but to give developing riders the support, experience and opportunities they need to take the next step in their racing.” Applications have been steady since the announcement, though he gives no number.
His own background is 20 years in technology leadership. He organises the club’s youth stage race weekend, VCL Deux Jours, and has two daughters racing youth, so he knows what families are weighing up. Rather than appoint a single DS, the team will draw on a pool of volunteers, a model borrowed from other domestic squads. The mechanics come from the junior men’s programme, and a coaching lead is still to be named. Behind all of it sits a club Unsworth puts at around 600 members.
Older youth girls will train and ride alongside the juniors and under-23s before they are eligible for either, and if the right move for a rider turns out to be another team, he says VC Londres will back it.
“When they step up,” Unsworth says, “the team will already feel like theirs.”
Applications can be made here.
Featured image: Mark James
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