Team News: Saint Piran Cycling Teams

Saint Piran Pro Cycling has launched one of the most comprehensive mental health, wellbeing and lifestyle programmes in cycling, supporting its staff and riders both on and off the bike.

Team News: Saint Piran Cycling Teams

Saint Piran Pro Cycling launches innovative mental health partnership to transform rider well being

Saint Piran Pro Cycling has launched one of the most comprehensive mental health, wellbeing and lifestyle programmes in cycling, supporting its staff and riders both on and off the bike.

The South-West based road, track and off-road cycling group has joined forces with one of Ireland’s leading wellbeing coaching experts EDelia Group to deliver its potentially lifechanging programme. The partnership launched today (4th May), ensures all riders and staff in the Saint Piran family receive crucial support and one to one advice on lifestyle, career development and performance whenever they need it from up to 40 specialist advisors.

The pressures of professional bike racing can be incredibly challenging, with a thin line between success, failure and serious injury. The career of a cyclist can also be incredibly short or all consuming before it comes to an abrupt end. That brings pressure and often impacts on the professional’s long-term mental wellbeing, particularly given the young age of many in the sport. The Saint Piran/EDelia Group partnership has put in place support to tackle these issues before they escalate.

With EDelia’s passion for building resilience, particularly with young people, this partnership has opened the door to working with riders and staff in a number of key areas:
1. Building resilience to face challenges in every day life and performance
2. Understanding that managing mental wellbeing is a skill that can be learnt
3. Development as a leader on and off the bike
4. Equipping riders and staff for a life and career away from cycling

Richard Pascoe, founder and owner of Saint Piran Pro Cycling is a passionate advocate of mental health support: “There has long been a problem in professional cycling focusing on performance first and everything else second. It has caused untold damage to riders including bulimia and burnout. In cycling, we are working with the demographic that suffers most from poor wellbeing, young people. That is wrong. We have a responsibility to put the human being before performance – we want everyone working at Saint Piran to be the best person they can be first. EDelia is the perfect partner for us – they are incredibly passionate and share the same vision. Their work with young people and universities sets them apart – I am so excited about what can be achieved. I truly believe we can blow the doors of how riders are supported in our sport.”

Roger Kelleher, a partner in the Irish company said: “EDelia is delighted to be partnering with Saint Piran on the unique and groundbreaking high performance initiative. “Generally In life we overlook resilience and mental health management as a skill. Our focus is to work with people to acquire that skill and utilise it every day. It is an amazing skill to have to manage life’s ups and down, performing the best you can when you need to.”

Jenny Bolsom, Team Principal of the women’s Saint Piran teams said: “Cycling can be tough, whether riding for the social aspect, racing or working within the sport. It’s easy to focus on the physical aspect, train hard and expect to see results but these results can often be clouded by the elements that we all too often ignore. Mental health and the wellbeing of our staff and riders is a key element in the future successes of our teams across the entire Saint Piran platform.”

Steve Lampier, Sports Director of the men’s UCI Continental Team said: “Being a high performance sport, we sometimes focus solely on the physical, with nowhere near enough attention to the one thing that drives it all, the brain! Having EDelia group as a partner to care for the mental needs of riders and staff is a huge step in creating a better understanding of every single person in the organisation. Preparing themselves for the rigours of training and racing and also for unbiased mental health support pre, during and post career.”

This partnership goes to the core of Saint Piran’s approach to build a strong and sustainable platform – core to the South West team’s mantra – impact in racing, impact in cycling, impact in society. The wellbeing programme supports nearly 50 people in the Saint Piran family, with riders and staff from the:

• Men’s UCI Continental Team
• Women and men’s mountain bike Team
• Women’s Elite Road Team
• 05/03 development teams
• Bissoe Bike Hire Centre and bike shop in Redruth