Watts Occurring Racing: Maindy Flyers to launch a junior team with Thomas and Rowe behind it
Maindy Flyers, the Cardiff club that produced Geraint Thomas and Luke Rowe, is setting up a junior team for 2027 with the pair's support. Chair Mike Richards explains how it will work, who is paying, and what developing riders 'the right way' means.
Maindy Flyers, the Cardiff club where Geraint Thomas and Luke Rowe learned to race, is setting up a junior team with the pair’s backing. Watts Occurring Racing, which takes its name from their podcast, will field six riders in 2027 on a programme of British and European racing. The six have been chosen and will be named at a launch planned for before Christmas.
The idea came from Mike Richards, chair of what he describes as the UK’s largest youth cycling club, who had been thinking about what happens to Maindy riders once they outgrow youth racing.
Rather than simply seeing them leave and go elsewhere, I started thinking about whether we could build that next step ourselves
“We’ve got a really strong youth club, but there comes a point where riders who want to race at a higher level need something more,” he says, in written answers to The British Continental. “Rather than simply seeing them leave and go elsewhere, I started thinking about whether we could build that next step ourselves.”
Richards put it to Rowe by text. “Luke was really supportive and he, Geraint Thomas and their agents at Rocket Sports offered to help us get it off the ground,” he says. The name followed. “It felt like the perfect fit. It already had that connection with Geraint and Luke, with Maindy and with Welsh cycling more generally.”
Luke Rowe presenting a farewell party for Geraint Thomasin Cardiff Castle in 2025. Image: Simon Wilkinson/SWpix.com
Rowe retired at the end of 2024 and is now a sports director at Decathlon CMA CGM. “When Mike first messaged me about the idea, I thought it was a great opportunity to help young riders make that step from youth into junior racing,” he says, in comments supplied through the team. “There’s a big jump at that age, particularly if you want to go and race in Europe.”
Thomas, who retired in 2025 and is now director of racing at Netcompany INEOS, points to the calendar as well as the club. “Maindy is where it all started for me, so it’s nice to be able to support something that gives the next generation of riders coming through the club another opportunity,” he says. “2027 is also a huge year for Welsh cycling with the Tour de France coming to Wales.” The third stage of the Tour’s Grand Départ runs from Welshpool to Cardiff on 4 July.
For six young riders, having that connection with two people who started out at Maindy themselves and went on to have the careers they’ve had is pretty special
Neither man will be involved in the day-to-day running of the team, and Richards is not asking them to be. “What we’re not going to do is put expectations on them about how often they need to be involved,” he says. If they can spend time with the riders, offer advice or simply be around occasionally, so much the better. “For six young riders, having that connection with two people who started out at Maindy themselves and went on to have the careers they’ve had is pretty special.”
Thomas’s job raises a question. Netcompany INEOS already has a junior partnership with camsmajaco, and Dylan Sage, another rider who came through Maindy, is in the WorldTour team’s Racing Academy. Richards says there is no formal link between Watts Occurring Racing and that pathway. “Geraint’s involvement with us comes from his longstanding connection with Maindy Flyers and his support for what we’re trying to build,” he says. camsmajaco, he adds, “have their own relationship with INEOS and we’re completely separate from that”.
The team is a Maindy Flyers creation and is part-funded by the club, but it has its own identity, sponsors, budget and race programme. Four of the six riders came through Maindy. Two did not, and that is by design. “We wanted to create a genuine next step for riders coming through Maindy, while also being able to bring in riders from outside the club when they’re right for the team,” Richards says.
Image: GBM Photography
Around 20 riders applied for the six places. The names are being held for the launch. Some of those chosen are on the Welsh national pathway, but results were only part of the selection. Attitude counted too: how applicants race, how they behave, and whether they are prepared to work for a teammate. “Ultimately, we weren’t just trying to pick the six strongest riders on paper,” Richards says. “We wanted the right six riders for this team.”
Richards oversees the programme as club chair. The day-to-day running falls to the team manager, Deian Jones, who Richards says “will be doing all the hard work really”. The coach is Matt Rowe of Rowe & King, Luke’s elder brother and the husband of Dani Rowe, the 2012 Olympic team pursuit champion. Supporting him as training lead is Gethin Price, a Maindy Flyer from the age of six who still races and is in the final year of a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Bath. His father is the club’s head coach and his mother its treasurer. Part of Price’s job will be bringing the six together for regular team training days, while riders on the Welsh pathway will continue to be coached through Beicio Cymru.
“We don’t want to be a team where six riders put the same jersey on, turn up at a race and then ride as six individuals,” Richards says. “We want them training together, learning how each other races and genuinely wanting to work for one another.”
The team’s stated aim is “developing outstanding young riders the right way”, the kind of line that is easier to print than to define. Richards says a lot of time has gone into it “because we don’t want ‘developing riders the right way’ to just be a strapline”. What sits behind it is three words in a fixed order: Person, Performance and Perspective.
These are young people before they’re cyclists. They are still children really. We want them to enjoy what they’re doing, feel that they belong and know that their wellbeing will always come before performance
“These are young people before they’re cyclists. They are still children really,” he says. “We want them to enjoy what they’re doing, feel that they belong and know that their wellbeing will always come before performance.” Performance, in his telling, means development ahead of results. Perspective is the one he singles out. “One bad race or result, or even one season, doesn’t define a 16 or 17 year old rider.”
Alongside those sit three team values, Fun, Team and Professionalism, which shorten to an acronym every bike racer already knows. “Fun is deliberately first,” Richards says. None of it, he says, is meant to take the edge off. “We’re not trying to remove pressure or competition. This is bike racing and we want them to be competitive.”
The 2027 programme is built on British Cycling’s Junior Open National Road Series, with as much European racing on top as invitations, logistics and budget allow. The team is speaking to organisers in France, Belgium and the Netherlands and is also looking at the Junior Tour of Ireland. “We don’t want to go to Europe just so we can say we’ve raced there,” Richards says. “We want the riders to race often enough that they become comfortable in that environment, learn from it and hopefully become better bike racers because of it.”
Image: GBM Photography
Rowe puts it another way. “If we can help give these lads the opportunity to experience that level of racing, learn from it and develop together as a team, then it’s something well worth supporting,” he says. “Hopefully they’ll make plenty of mistakes along the way as well. We certainly did. That’s half the point of being a junior.”
European racing is expensive, and Richards is direct about who pays for it. “I didn’t want Watts Occurring to become a pay to ride team,” he says. Families will make a contribution, the size of which he does not give, but nobody is required to buy a team bike. The budget, drawn from Maindy Flyers and the team’s sponsors, is intended to cover race entries, accommodation and team travel. Everyone involved in running the team is a volunteer.
The main sponsor is Uprise Bikes, the Swansea-based retailer, which has put in money and is offering riders a bike and kit deal they are free to decline. “Without them, this wouldn’t be happening,” Richards says. Tyre Glider, another Welsh business, is also helping to finance the team, Waterton Motor Group is lending a team vehicle, and there is product support from Rapha, SunGod, Kask, Precision Fuel & Hydration and QUOC. “Ultimately, we want a rider’s place on the team to be based on their ability, attitude and potential, not on how much their parents can afford to spend,” he says.
The squad is all male for now. Richards says a junior women’s team is “absolutely something we’d like to do”, but the club has a numbers problem to address first. “Unfortunately, like lots of clubs, we don’t currently have the same number of girls coming through the Maindy pathway as boys,” he says. He also wants to prove the model before expanding it, and will not put a date on a women’s squad. “I’d rather do it properly when we’re ready than make a promise now that we might not be able to deliver.”
I’d like to finish 2027 with six noticeably better bike racers than we started with
He wants to win races, but that is not how he will judge the first year. “I’d like to finish 2027 with six noticeably better bike racers than we started with,” he says. “Most importantly, I want them still enjoying it.” In five years he would like the team to be “an established pathway that young riders genuinely aspire to be part of”.
That note runs through what Thomas and Rowe say about the club that started them off. “At that age you’re not thinking about becoming a professional cyclist,” Thomas says. “You just love riding and racing your bike. That’s something I’d like these riders to keep.”
Rowe is less reverent. “We probably thought we knew everything at that age. We definitely didn’t,” he says. “Hopefully these six are a bit quicker learners than G and me.”
Maindy Flyers, the Cardiff club where Geraint Thomas and Luke Rowe learned to race, is setting up a junior team with the pair’s backing. Watts Occurring Racing, which takes its name from their podcast, will field six riders in 2027 on a programme of British and European racing. The six have been chosen and will be named at a launch planned for before Christmas.
The idea came from Mike Richards, chair of what he describes as the UK’s largest youth cycling club, who had been thinking about what happens to Maindy riders once they outgrow youth racing.
“We’ve got a really strong youth club, but there comes a point where riders who want to race at a higher level need something more,” he says, in written answers to The British Continental. “Rather than simply seeing them leave and go elsewhere, I started thinking about whether we could build that next step ourselves.”
Richards put it to Rowe by text. “Luke was really supportive and he, Geraint Thomas and their agents at Rocket Sports offered to help us get it off the ground,” he says. The name followed. “It felt like the perfect fit. It already had that connection with Geraint and Luke, with Maindy and with Welsh cycling more generally.”
Rowe retired at the end of 2024 and is now a sports director at Decathlon CMA CGM. “When Mike first messaged me about the idea, I thought it was a great opportunity to help young riders make that step from youth into junior racing,” he says, in comments supplied through the team. “There’s a big jump at that age, particularly if you want to go and race in Europe.”
Thomas, who retired in 2025 and is now director of racing at Netcompany INEOS, points to the calendar as well as the club. “Maindy is where it all started for me, so it’s nice to be able to support something that gives the next generation of riders coming through the club another opportunity,” he says. “2027 is also a huge year for Welsh cycling with the Tour de France coming to Wales.” The third stage of the Tour’s Grand Départ runs from Welshpool to Cardiff on 4 July.
Neither man will be involved in the day-to-day running of the team, and Richards is not asking them to be. “What we’re not going to do is put expectations on them about how often they need to be involved,” he says. If they can spend time with the riders, offer advice or simply be around occasionally, so much the better. “For six young riders, having that connection with two people who started out at Maindy themselves and went on to have the careers they’ve had is pretty special.”
Thomas’s job raises a question. Netcompany INEOS already has a junior partnership with camsmajaco, and Dylan Sage, another rider who came through Maindy, is in the WorldTour team’s Racing Academy. Richards says there is no formal link between Watts Occurring Racing and that pathway. “Geraint’s involvement with us comes from his longstanding connection with Maindy Flyers and his support for what we’re trying to build,” he says. camsmajaco, he adds, “have their own relationship with INEOS and we’re completely separate from that”.
The team is a Maindy Flyers creation and is part-funded by the club, but it has its own identity, sponsors, budget and race programme. Four of the six riders came through Maindy. Two did not, and that is by design. “We wanted to create a genuine next step for riders coming through Maindy, while also being able to bring in riders from outside the club when they’re right for the team,” Richards says.
Around 20 riders applied for the six places. The names are being held for the launch. Some of those chosen are on the Welsh national pathway, but results were only part of the selection. Attitude counted too: how applicants race, how they behave, and whether they are prepared to work for a teammate. “Ultimately, we weren’t just trying to pick the six strongest riders on paper,” Richards says. “We wanted the right six riders for this team.”
Richards oversees the programme as club chair. The day-to-day running falls to the team manager, Deian Jones, who Richards says “will be doing all the hard work really”. The coach is Matt Rowe of Rowe & King, Luke’s elder brother and the husband of Dani Rowe, the 2012 Olympic team pursuit champion. Supporting him as training lead is Gethin Price, a Maindy Flyer from the age of six who still races and is in the final year of a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Bath. His father is the club’s head coach and his mother its treasurer. Part of Price’s job will be bringing the six together for regular team training days, while riders on the Welsh pathway will continue to be coached through Beicio Cymru.
“We don’t want to be a team where six riders put the same jersey on, turn up at a race and then ride as six individuals,” Richards says. “We want them training together, learning how each other races and genuinely wanting to work for one another.”
The team’s stated aim is “developing outstanding young riders the right way”, the kind of line that is easier to print than to define. Richards says a lot of time has gone into it “because we don’t want ‘developing riders the right way’ to just be a strapline”. What sits behind it is three words in a fixed order: Person, Performance and Perspective.
“These are young people before they’re cyclists. They are still children really,” he says. “We want them to enjoy what they’re doing, feel that they belong and know that their wellbeing will always come before performance.” Performance, in his telling, means development ahead of results. Perspective is the one he singles out. “One bad race or result, or even one season, doesn’t define a 16 or 17 year old rider.”
Alongside those sit three team values, Fun, Team and Professionalism, which shorten to an acronym every bike racer already knows. “Fun is deliberately first,” Richards says. None of it, he says, is meant to take the edge off. “We’re not trying to remove pressure or competition. This is bike racing and we want them to be competitive.”
The 2027 programme is built on British Cycling’s Junior Open National Road Series, with as much European racing on top as invitations, logistics and budget allow. The team is speaking to organisers in France, Belgium and the Netherlands and is also looking at the Junior Tour of Ireland. “We don’t want to go to Europe just so we can say we’ve raced there,” Richards says. “We want the riders to race often enough that they become comfortable in that environment, learn from it and hopefully become better bike racers because of it.”
Rowe puts it another way. “If we can help give these lads the opportunity to experience that level of racing, learn from it and develop together as a team, then it’s something well worth supporting,” he says. “Hopefully they’ll make plenty of mistakes along the way as well. We certainly did. That’s half the point of being a junior.”
European racing is expensive, and Richards is direct about who pays for it. “I didn’t want Watts Occurring to become a pay to ride team,” he says. Families will make a contribution, the size of which he does not give, but nobody is required to buy a team bike. The budget, drawn from Maindy Flyers and the team’s sponsors, is intended to cover race entries, accommodation and team travel. Everyone involved in running the team is a volunteer.
The main sponsor is Uprise Bikes, the Swansea-based retailer, which has put in money and is offering riders a bike and kit deal they are free to decline. “Without them, this wouldn’t be happening,” Richards says. Tyre Glider, another Welsh business, is also helping to finance the team, Waterton Motor Group is lending a team vehicle, and there is product support from Rapha, SunGod, Kask, Precision Fuel & Hydration and QUOC. “Ultimately, we want a rider’s place on the team to be based on their ability, attitude and potential, not on how much their parents can afford to spend,” he says.
The squad is all male for now. Richards says a junior women’s team is “absolutely something we’d like to do”, but the club has a numbers problem to address first. “Unfortunately, like lots of clubs, we don’t currently have the same number of girls coming through the Maindy pathway as boys,” he says. He also wants to prove the model before expanding it, and will not put a date on a women’s squad. “I’d rather do it properly when we’re ready than make a promise now that we might not be able to deliver.”
He wants to win races, but that is not how he will judge the first year. “I’d like to finish 2027 with six noticeably better bike racers than we started with,” he says. “Most importantly, I want them still enjoying it.” In five years he would like the team to be “an established pathway that young riders genuinely aspire to be part of”.
That note runs through what Thomas and Rowe say about the club that started them off. “At that age you’re not thinking about becoming a professional cyclist,” Thomas says. “You just love riding and racing your bike. That’s something I’d like these riders to keep.”
Rowe is less reverent. “We probably thought we knew everything at that age. We definitely didn’t,” he says. “Hopefully these six are a bit quicker learners than G and me.”
Featured image: Maindy Flyers
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