Bob Lyons interview, part one: CAMS Alba’s next phase
Six new riders, two junior world champions among them, and a new headline sponsor: Alba’s manager explains how he picks a squad, why he wants his riders to make mistakes, and what CAMS’s money will pay for. The first part of a two-part interview.
Within ten days this month, three British women’s teams said they would close, DAS–Hutchinson’s Continental squad among them. CAMS Alba, by contrast, are heading in the other direction.
It has a new headline sponsor, twice as many directeurs sportifs, and a squad of 15 for 2027, every one of them British. Five years after the team started with a business plan, its manager, Bob Lyons, says: “We’re into the next phase.”
Being all British sets Alba apart from the rest of Britain’s UCI Continental teams. O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes and Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team, the two other British women’s teams expected to hold Continental licences in 2027, each raced with riders from eight countries this season. The INEOS Grenadiers Racing Academy, Britain’s only men’s Continental team, had riders from seven. Next season, CAMS Alba’s squad will be wholly from the United Kingdom.
Awen Roberts. Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
Awen Roberts, who has spent three seasons with CANYON//SRAM zondacrypto Generation, was the last of six new riders, named on 23 October to complete the 2027 squad. Before her came two junior world champions from Shibden Apex RT, the rider who finished 2026 at the top of The British Continental’s women’s rankings, the winner of the East Cleveland Classic and Sheffield Grand Prix, and Elena Day from Smurfit Westrock. Nine riders stay. Four who raced for Alba this season are not named, Kate Richardson among them.
Alba first raced in 2022 and has spent the past two seasons as Handsling Alba. Its new sponsor, CAMS, brings money to strengthen an operation whose workload Lyons says had become unsustainable. He spoke to The British Continental as the announcements were being prepared.
Not for the titles
Lyons welcomes the two juniors, but says their titles were not what persuaded him to sign them. “OK, they’ve won stuff, which is fantastic, but that’s not why,” he says.
Results alone are not the starting point. The selection process, Lyons says, “doesn’t change year on year”. “There’s a lot of work goes into understanding the rider: where are they trying to go, what do they want to do, how they’re going to do it,” he says. For the two juniors, that meant “a lot of discussion with GB coaches” as well as physiological reviews. “We’re looking at the person. How do they fit in?”
It’s still very important that we get the balance of the team right. We can’t have 15 of the same
Mabli Phillips and Phoebe Taylor, both 18, join from the closing Shibden Apex RT. Phillips won the British junior road race championship at Harrogate in July, adding the national hill climb championship at the weekend. The pair won the junior team pursuit at this year’s track world championships; Taylor also won the team pursuit and Madison junior world titles in 2025. Lyons calls them “two of the outstanding junior talents in Britain, with absolutely huge potential”, but they are still junior graduates, he says. “There’s a lot of development work to be done before they’re ready to be thrown into the WorldTour.”
Their ability is only part of the calculation. “It’s still very important that we get the balance of the team right,” he says. “We can’t have 15 of the same. It’s got to be people at different stages of development, different things that they bring to the team.”
Izzy Sharp. Image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
Phillips and Taylor make five Great Britain track riders in the squad, alongside Izzy Sharp, Grace Lister, and Maddie Leech. Their track and road programmes must fit together, especially with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics approaching. Lyons describes the relationship with the national coaches as informal but close. “Where are we best having them racing on the road? How do those training blocks fit?” he says. “So we have to have that relationship, otherwise things will get very confusing very quickly.”
A year to make the step
Awen Roberts arrives after three seasons with CANYON//SRAM zondacrypto Generation, a Women’s WorldTour development team. “Awen is another one of these riders that is a tremendous talent, but not quite ready for the WorldTour,” Lyons says. “The good thing is she recognises that, as did her team, and it’s a sensible place for her to come for a year of further development, to then make the final step.”
We’re about building bike riders, and it doesn’t have to be young bike riders
“She’s not had the best race programme, and if we can build on that, then she’s somebody who will step up, for sure,” he says.
He remembers Scott as “an exceptional junior”. “Now she’s very, very focused,” he says. “Still a lot of work to do, but she has the potential to make that step.”
Elena Day, 21, comes from Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team, having previously raced for Loughborough Lightning. Her cyclo-cross ambitions had been an obstacle to joining Alba earlier, because the team needs its riders ready for a road season that begins early in the year.
“We’re never going to say you can’t ride cross,” Lyons says. Anna Flynn, the British cyclo-cross champion, stays with Alba and will race some cyclo-cross this winter. Day has chosen not to. “And this year she has realised that if she wants to make it on the road, that’s got to be the focus,” he says. “That’s not any pressure from us.” Lyons had seen her potential a year earlier. “Her objectives didn’t quite fit with what would work with us, and that’s changed.”
Another Lauren Dickson
Lily Martin, 20, arrives after a breakthrough season in British road racing. She won the Lancaster Grand Prix for Loughborough Lightning in July, finished top of our women’s rankings, and has ridden with Alba as a stagiaire since August. Lyons brought her in “just to get an experience this year before going into next year”.
Now he makes the comparison with Martin. “She’s another Lauren Dickson,” he says.
Dickson had plenty to learn about road racing, but did so quickly. “Lauren’s an unbelievably fast learner,” Lyons says. Martin is “unbelievably strong, massive engine, but lots of other things that we need to work on, which we do”.
One of the biggest challenges you often have with younger and less experienced riders is they’re petrified of making mistakes. Changing that mindset is a big challenge, because we want them to go and make mistakes
What Lyons wants from her, and from all his riders, is a willingness to risk making mistakes in races. “One of the biggest challenges you often have with younger and less experienced riders is they’re petrified of making mistakes, so they’ll ride in a safe manner,” he says. “When I say safe, I don’t mean not crashing.” He means avoiding decisions that might cost them a result. “Changing that mindset is a big challenge, because we want them to go and make mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the better, because you learn from them.”
Learning from those decisions is just as important. “You’ve then got to be able to self-reflect. You’ve got to be very open in debrief and take on board those learnings, and then implement it going forward,” he says. “And that’s what makes you a bike rider.” Dickson, he says, “was exceptional at that”.
A three-year project
That approach helps explain why Alba retains riders rather than expecting immediate results from them. Nine continue from the 2026 squad: Izzy Sharp, Maddie Leech, Mari Porton, Grace Lister, Anna Flynn, Arabella Blackburn, Beth Morrow, Maddie Cooper, and Holly Ramsey.
Image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
“People develop at a different rate, and it’s not all going to happen overnight. It’s not necessarily going to happen in a year,” Lyons says. “It could be a three-year project, for want of a better expression.”
He argues that female endurance athletes are “not at their peak at 18, 19 years old. It’s going to be late 20s.” His patience depends on riders continuing to progress. “So long as we are seeing development, progress, and a continued right mindset and a drive to get there, we’ll continue,” he says. “We’ll get the job finished.”
Leaving
The departure that stands out is Kate Richardson’s. The Scot won the Tour de Feminin and the British circuit race title in 2025, her first season with Alba. Lyons confirms she is moving on, but cannot yet say where. “We’re bound by confidentiality at the moment,” he says. “She’ll be very noticeable by her absence.”
She has ridden unbelievably well, and is an incredible rider
He calls her 2026 season “unbelievably consistently good”. “Kate’s results this season, when you just look at the results sheet, don’t reflect how well she’s ridden,” he says. “She has ridden unbelievably well, and is an incredible rider.”
Her season included ninth place at the Omloop van Borsele in April and fifth on the opening stage of the Bretagne Ladies Tour in May. In June she won the Tour of the Reservoir to stay top of the women’s National Road Series, and six days later was second at the City of London Nocturne. Lyons says injury problems disrupted the second half of her season, and she did not race after mid-July. “But she was outstanding this year,” he says.
Of the other three, Neah Evans is focusing on the track and the 2028 Olympics. “Neah wants to have a last go at the Olympics, at LA, and she just wants to go all in to see if she can do that,” Lyons says. That leaves no room for Alba’s road programme. “That’s a mutual discussion and agreement. That’s the right thing to do.”
Kate Richardson. Image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
Arianne Holland has been with the team from the start, five years ago. “She’ll still race her bike, but she’s stepping back from this level,” Lyons says. Amelia Tyler is also stepping back. “She still wants to race a bike, but she probably just wants to take a step back in level,” he says. “She has to be doing what’s right for her, and that’s great. But she is a very impressive young woman.”
More hands
Supporting riders through a programme of British and international racing requires money and staff. Lyons says Alba’s existing arrangements put too much work on too few people. The team’s new headline sponsor, CAMS, provides the budget to address that problem.
A cycling accident management company, CAMS backed the team that became DAS–Hutchinson from 2020 to 2022, and still sponsors the Women’s CiCLE Classic. Lyons describes a partner “who understands what we’ve done, understands what we want to do, understands the vision, understands the story, and buys into everything we’re about”.
The big difference going into next season, with a bigger budget, is we will have more staff
Lyons says rider support will continue: no salary, but bikes, equipment, and travel are covered, and the team arrives at races “several days in advance to prepare properly”. The extra budget is going principally towards staff. “The big difference going into next season, with a bigger budget, is we will have more staff,” he says.
Alba had two directeurs sportifs in 2026. Next year there will be “four, possibly five”. Its three mechanics were paid by the day; in 2027 it will retain two on that basis and employ a full-time, salaried head mechanic. “So that makes a massive difference,” he says. There will also be more soigneur support, and paid administrative staff to manage travel and logistics. Riders, he says, “will see a bit. They are getting more, but it’s sort of hidden in there in various things.”
The increased staff will also change Lyons’s own schedule. He attended every race in 2026, taking on several roles himself. “Between February and the end of September, I spent 24 days at home,” he says. “That’s not sustainable.” He still intends to go to plenty of races, but not all of them. “It needed to change this year, because there was no way I was going to do another year like this year.”
Image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
2028
More staff should also give Lyons time to work towards an ambition beyond the next season: moving Alba up from Continental to ProTeam status, a higher level of professional racing below the Women’s WorldTour.
A year ago he was targeting 2027. Lyons says the UCI requires everything for a ProTeam application to be in place by the preceding August, making a one-year process difficult. Alba has therefore adopted a two-year plan: another Continental season in 2027, with a view to moving up in 2028.
“There’s no guarantee. It’s all moving in the right direction. But whether we achieve that remains to be seen,” he says. He will not force the change before the team is ready. “If that means it gets delayed again, it gets delayed again. But everything has to be as I want it.”
Moving up would also change what the team is trying to achieve. Alba’s present programme is built around developing riders. A ProTeam, Lyons says, must place greater emphasis on winning races. “Going to Pro, you’re building the team differently, because it’s about building a winning team. It’s not focused on development, even though there’s still a development element in there,” he says. “So there’s an option, alongside ProConti, to have a development team as well.”
We’ve got something pretty special, and there’s still a ways to go
That is still a possibility rather than a settled plan. First comes the launch with CAMS, planned for December, and another year of developing the riders Lyons has brought together. Looking back at the team’s first five years, he takes some satisfaction from what it has achieved. “There was an element of scepticism about what we said we were going to do, but we’ve delivered that, well over and above as well, which is great,” he says.
“We’ve got something pretty special, and there’s still a ways to go.”
This is the first part of a two-part interview. In the second, Bob Lyons looks back at Alba’s 2026 season and discusses the state of British women’s racing.
Within ten days this month, three British women’s teams said they would close, DAS–Hutchinson’s Continental squad among them. CAMS Alba, by contrast, are heading in the other direction.
It has a new headline sponsor, twice as many directeurs sportifs, and a squad of 15 for 2027, every one of them British. Five years after the team started with a business plan, its manager, Bob Lyons, says: “We’re into the next phase.”
Being all British sets Alba apart from the rest of Britain’s UCI Continental teams. O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes and Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team, the two other British women’s teams expected to hold Continental licences in 2027, each raced with riders from eight countries this season. The INEOS Grenadiers Racing Academy, Britain’s only men’s Continental team, had riders from seven. Next season, CAMS Alba’s squad will be wholly from the United Kingdom.
Awen Roberts, who has spent three seasons with CANYON//SRAM zondacrypto Generation, was the last of six new riders, named on 23 October to complete the 2027 squad. Before her came two junior world champions from Shibden Apex RT, the rider who finished 2026 at the top of The British Continental’s women’s rankings, the winner of the East Cleveland Classic and Sheffield Grand Prix, and Elena Day from Smurfit Westrock. Nine riders stay. Four who raced for Alba this season are not named, Kate Richardson among them.
Alba first raced in 2022 and has spent the past two seasons as Handsling Alba. Its new sponsor, CAMS, brings money to strengthen an operation whose workload Lyons says had become unsustainable. He spoke to The British Continental as the announcements were being prepared.
Not for the titles
Lyons welcomes the two juniors, but says their titles were not what persuaded him to sign them. “OK, they’ve won stuff, which is fantastic, but that’s not why,” he says.
Results alone are not the starting point. The selection process, Lyons says, “doesn’t change year on year”. “There’s a lot of work goes into understanding the rider: where are they trying to go, what do they want to do, how they’re going to do it,” he says. For the two juniors, that meant “a lot of discussion with GB coaches” as well as physiological reviews. “We’re looking at the person. How do they fit in?”
Mabli Phillips and Phoebe Taylor, both 18, join from the closing Shibden Apex RT. Phillips won the British junior road race championship at Harrogate in July, adding the national hill climb championship at the weekend. The pair won the junior team pursuit at this year’s track world championships; Taylor also won the team pursuit and Madison junior world titles in 2025. Lyons calls them “two of the outstanding junior talents in Britain, with absolutely huge potential”, but they are still junior graduates, he says. “There’s a lot of development work to be done before they’re ready to be thrown into the WorldTour.”
Their ability is only part of the calculation. “It’s still very important that we get the balance of the team right,” he says. “We can’t have 15 of the same. It’s got to be people at different stages of development, different things that they bring to the team.”
Phillips and Taylor make five Great Britain track riders in the squad, alongside Izzy Sharp, Grace Lister, and Maddie Leech. Their track and road programmes must fit together, especially with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics approaching. Lyons describes the relationship with the national coaches as informal but close. “Where are we best having them racing on the road? How do those training blocks fit?” he says. “So we have to have that relationship, otherwise things will get very confusing very quickly.”
A year to make the step
Awen Roberts arrives after three seasons with CANYON//SRAM zondacrypto Generation, a Women’s WorldTour development team. “Awen is another one of these riders that is a tremendous talent, but not quite ready for the WorldTour,” Lyons says. “The good thing is she recognises that, as did her team, and it’s a sensible place for her to come for a year of further development, to then make the final step.”
“She’s not had the best race programme, and if we can build on that, then she’s somebody who will step up, for sure,” he says.
Katie Scott, 25 and the oldest of the new riders, won the East Cleveland Classic for Paralloy RT in April, joined DAS–Hutchinson within days, and won the Sheffield Grand Prix in July. “We’re about building bike riders, and it doesn’t have to be young bike riders,” Lyons says. “It has to be people where we see the potential that they can go all the way, and it ties in with their ambition.”
He remembers Scott as “an exceptional junior”. “Now she’s very, very focused,” he says. “Still a lot of work to do, but she has the potential to make that step.”
Elena Day, 21, comes from Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team, having previously raced for Loughborough Lightning. Her cyclo-cross ambitions had been an obstacle to joining Alba earlier, because the team needs its riders ready for a road season that begins early in the year.
“We’re never going to say you can’t ride cross,” Lyons says. Anna Flynn, the British cyclo-cross champion, stays with Alba and will race some cyclo-cross this winter. Day has chosen not to. “And this year she has realised that if she wants to make it on the road, that’s got to be the focus,” he says. “That’s not any pressure from us.” Lyons had seen her potential a year earlier. “Her objectives didn’t quite fit with what would work with us, and that’s changed.”
Another Lauren Dickson
Lily Martin, 20, arrives after a breakthrough season in British road racing. She won the Lancaster Grand Prix for Loughborough Lightning in July, finished top of our women’s rankings, and has ridden with Alba as a stagiaire since August. Lyons brought her in “just to get an experience this year before going into next year”.
Lyons has seen that combination of strength and inexperience before. Lauren Dickson came from triathlon and subsequently moved from Alba to the Women’s WorldTour with FDJ United–SUEZ. A year ago, Lyons said of her: “I’m not sure we’ll ever see the likes of her again.”
Now he makes the comparison with Martin. “She’s another Lauren Dickson,” he says.
Dickson had plenty to learn about road racing, but did so quickly. “Lauren’s an unbelievably fast learner,” Lyons says. Martin is “unbelievably strong, massive engine, but lots of other things that we need to work on, which we do”.
What Lyons wants from her, and from all his riders, is a willingness to risk making mistakes in races. “One of the biggest challenges you often have with younger and less experienced riders is they’re petrified of making mistakes, so they’ll ride in a safe manner,” he says. “When I say safe, I don’t mean not crashing.” He means avoiding decisions that might cost them a result. “Changing that mindset is a big challenge, because we want them to go and make mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the better, because you learn from them.”
Learning from those decisions is just as important. “You’ve then got to be able to self-reflect. You’ve got to be very open in debrief and take on board those learnings, and then implement it going forward,” he says. “And that’s what makes you a bike rider.” Dickson, he says, “was exceptional at that”.
A three-year project
That approach helps explain why Alba retains riders rather than expecting immediate results from them. Nine continue from the 2026 squad: Izzy Sharp, Maddie Leech, Mari Porton, Grace Lister, Anna Flynn, Arabella Blackburn, Beth Morrow, Maddie Cooper, and Holly Ramsey.
“People develop at a different rate, and it’s not all going to happen overnight. It’s not necessarily going to happen in a year,” Lyons says. “It could be a three-year project, for want of a better expression.”
He argues that female endurance athletes are “not at their peak at 18, 19 years old. It’s going to be late 20s.” His patience depends on riders continuing to progress. “So long as we are seeing development, progress, and a continued right mindset and a drive to get there, we’ll continue,” he says. “We’ll get the job finished.”
Leaving
The departure that stands out is Kate Richardson’s. The Scot won the Tour de Feminin and the British circuit race title in 2025, her first season with Alba. Lyons confirms she is moving on, but cannot yet say where. “We’re bound by confidentiality at the moment,” he says. “She’ll be very noticeable by her absence.”
He calls her 2026 season “unbelievably consistently good”. “Kate’s results this season, when you just look at the results sheet, don’t reflect how well she’s ridden,” he says. “She has ridden unbelievably well, and is an incredible rider.”
Her season included ninth place at the Omloop van Borsele in April and fifth on the opening stage of the Bretagne Ladies Tour in May. In June she won the Tour of the Reservoir to stay top of the women’s National Road Series, and six days later was second at the City of London Nocturne. Lyons says injury problems disrupted the second half of her season, and she did not race after mid-July. “But she was outstanding this year,” he says.
Of the other three, Neah Evans is focusing on the track and the 2028 Olympics. “Neah wants to have a last go at the Olympics, at LA, and she just wants to go all in to see if she can do that,” Lyons says. That leaves no room for Alba’s road programme. “That’s a mutual discussion and agreement. That’s the right thing to do.”
Arianne Holland has been with the team from the start, five years ago. “She’ll still race her bike, but she’s stepping back from this level,” Lyons says. Amelia Tyler is also stepping back. “She still wants to race a bike, but she probably just wants to take a step back in level,” he says. “She has to be doing what’s right for her, and that’s great. But she is a very impressive young woman.”
More hands
Supporting riders through a programme of British and international racing requires money and staff. Lyons says Alba’s existing arrangements put too much work on too few people. The team’s new headline sponsor, CAMS, provides the budget to address that problem.
A cycling accident management company, CAMS backed the team that became DAS–Hutchinson from 2020 to 2022, and still sponsors the Women’s CiCLE Classic. Lyons describes a partner “who understands what we’ve done, understands what we want to do, understands the vision, understands the story, and buys into everything we’re about”.
Lyons says rider support will continue: no salary, but bikes, equipment, and travel are covered, and the team arrives at races “several days in advance to prepare properly”. The extra budget is going principally towards staff. “The big difference going into next season, with a bigger budget, is we will have more staff,” he says.
Alba had two directeurs sportifs in 2026. Next year there will be “four, possibly five”. Its three mechanics were paid by the day; in 2027 it will retain two on that basis and employ a full-time, salaried head mechanic. “So that makes a massive difference,” he says. There will also be more soigneur support, and paid administrative staff to manage travel and logistics. Riders, he says, “will see a bit. They are getting more, but it’s sort of hidden in there in various things.”
The increased staff will also change Lyons’s own schedule. He attended every race in 2026, taking on several roles himself. “Between February and the end of September, I spent 24 days at home,” he says. “That’s not sustainable.” He still intends to go to plenty of races, but not all of them. “It needed to change this year, because there was no way I was going to do another year like this year.”
2028
More staff should also give Lyons time to work towards an ambition beyond the next season: moving Alba up from Continental to ProTeam status, a higher level of professional racing below the Women’s WorldTour.
A year ago he was targeting 2027. Lyons says the UCI requires everything for a ProTeam application to be in place by the preceding August, making a one-year process difficult. Alba has therefore adopted a two-year plan: another Continental season in 2027, with a view to moving up in 2028.
“There’s no guarantee. It’s all moving in the right direction. But whether we achieve that remains to be seen,” he says. He will not force the change before the team is ready. “If that means it gets delayed again, it gets delayed again. But everything has to be as I want it.”
Moving up would also change what the team is trying to achieve. Alba’s present programme is built around developing riders. A ProTeam, Lyons says, must place greater emphasis on winning races. “Going to Pro, you’re building the team differently, because it’s about building a winning team. It’s not focused on development, even though there’s still a development element in there,” he says. “So there’s an option, alongside ProConti, to have a development team as well.”
That is still a possibility rather than a settled plan. First comes the launch with CAMS, planned for December, and another year of developing the riders Lyons has brought together. Looking back at the team’s first five years, he takes some satisfaction from what it has achieved. “There was an element of scepticism about what we said we were going to do, but we’ve delivered that, well over and above as well, which is great,” he says.
“We’ve got something pretty special, and there’s still a ways to go.”
This is the first part of a two-part interview. In the second, Bob Lyons looks back at Alba’s 2026 season and discusses the state of British women’s racing.
Read our domestic women’s team guide here.
Featured image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
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