For almost 100 years, cycle-ball has been dominated by Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Czechia. But a new nation aiming to break into that stranglehold is Great Britain.
This weekend, they will play in the UCI Indoor Cycling World Championships, their third appearance after 2022 and 2023. Competing in the B division, they are still a considerable way off being able to rival the top nations, but the story behind the rise of this youngest cycle-ball nation to date is remarkable
The beginnings of Young’s young starlets
It all started during the 2014 FIFA World Cup (football), when cycling coach and youth worker Felix Young started playing football on mountain bikes with his youth group in the city of Bath. It was just for fun, and the youngsters created videos that were posted on social media.
It was not long before Young discovered that the team ball game on bikes was an official competitive sport with a UCI World Championships. “And that's when I thought, ‘if there's no-one else in our country, maybe one day we could represent Britain at a World Cup.’ But the goal was not just to get the national jersey and go to the UCI Worlds, but to build up the sport here in the long term.”
Guidance from a development mentor
Another four years passed before the first contact was made with players from established cycle-ball clubs from the European mainland. Chief amongst them was Marco Wagner, a German Bundesliga player from Naurod and 2015 European Junior Champion. Wagner has been a development mentor for Great Britain since 2018, the year he discovered the Englishmen playing cycle-ball on their mountain bikes on Instagram. Just months later he travelled to Great Britain with three colleagues, and the four donated cycle-ball bikes from the Indoor Cycling Worldwide (ICWW) association. Their project German Bicycle Team goes England was born.
After the first rendezvous, Wagner was full of praise for British coach, not only for his enthusiasm and passion but also his big and concrete goals: league operations from 2019 and participation in the 2022 UCI World Championships.
Felix Young has since made it his mission to advance the sport in his country, including much of the financing, finding places to train, and improvising the necessary equipment, which is stored in his private garage.
Help from the cycle-ball and cycling communities
Even the Covid-19 pandemic did nothing to break the contact between the two nations. In 2022, multiple UCI World Champion Patrick Schnetzer from Austria arrived with his then new partner Stefan Feuerstein (RV Dornbirn) together with the German top team Marius Hermanns and Sven Holland-Moritz (RSC Schiefbahn). They held a multi-day workshop – with the implementation of the first unofficial British Championships –, which led to significant progress. Another highlight: the visit of the Global Cycling Network (GCN) team, with a video shoot for YouTube and its other channels. The clip picked up many clicks in a very short time and to date has received more than 87,000 views.
Team GB successfully cleared the first major hurdle by convincing its National Federation to participate in the UCI World Championships after some initial resistance.
There was still much work to be done. New cycle-ball nations must first establish themselves in the B division before being able to play for promotion to the top six nations.
With the green light from their Federation, Mark Percival (then 28) and Jenson Harris (17) were allowed to do pioneering work in 2022 and compete in the UCI title fights in Ghent, Belgium. A year later, they made a significant appearance at the home UCI World Championships in Glasgow, Scotland. The two tournaments were a sharp learning curve:
“In the first year, we didn't even know all the rules,” the pair recall, with a laugh.
Not just ‘Eddie the Eagle’, but worthy flag bearers
In 2024, it will again be Percival and Harris representing Great Britain in the B division. Their sporting goal: to improve their Championships record of six goals scored and 98 goals conceded from 11 games.
"We would like to be perceived, not only like ‘Eddie the Eagle [the first British ski jumper to compete in the Olympics, in 1988], but to be worthy flag bearers for a new sport in Great Britain," they say.
Meanwhile, team boss Felix Young invites interested children, young people and career changers to participate in British cycle-ball history. As well as the twice-weekly training in Bath, another group has been formed in Ipswich, on England’s east coast. They are working with the ICWW to procure bicycles and equipment for new players and teams.
“But you can also start with BMX and mountain bikes,” say Young, recalling the time his boys got the ball rolling back in 2014.