She has been racing for most of her life, but Hannah Barnes finds it hard to quantify exactly how long she has been a professional cyclist.
“I never really know what pro is,” she told CyclingTips. “The first year I was paid was 2014.”
That first pro year was with US-based team UnitedHealthcare at the start of a prolific few seasons that would see Barnes win a stage and the youth classification at the Women’s Tour, form an integral part of Lizzie Deignan’s world championship win in Richmond, placing seventh herself, become national champion, and win a stage of the Giro Rosa.
With a career spanning the best part of a decade, Barnes has had a front-row seat to see the immense change within women’s cycling during this time. After her two years with UnitedHealthcare, she spent six seasons racing with Canyo-SRAM alongside her sister, Alice, before moving to Uno-X last year to take up a road captain role.
“I’d say I’ve been pretty lucky to do this in the generation I am,” she said. “Maybe it would have been better in five years’ time. I think this sport is going to just take off. If you listen around the peloton for people’s salaries now compared to 10 years ago when I started out, it’s unreal. It’s so good.”
Of course, there are still some improvements to be made: “I think prize money still has a little bit of a way to go. Especially when we’ve got a men’s race and a women’s race and you open the booklet up and you’re just like, ‘ah, the guys are getting like 35 grand more than us,’ but I think teams are doing what they can, which is really good.”
The future of women’s cycling is bright, but Barnes’s future within it looks less like striving for individual success and more like working for her teammates and passing on her extensive knowledge to the next generation.
“My goals have changed quite a bit from what they would have been previously. But I think I just want to go into the race and I like being part of the team plan. I’ve done it for so many years now, I know what’s going to happen in the races now, it’s pretty predictable. So I like using that,” she explained.
“Also the riders are so young. They come to me quite a bit for advice and I quite like that. My goal is just to help them. I’ve been known to calm people down. So that’s my strength, which I quite like. But I’ve not really got any huge result goals. That’s not really where I am now.
“As long as I’m satisfied with the job I’ve done and know that I’ve helped when someone gets on the podium or wins a race then that’s good for me.”
In part, her slowing down comes from a frustrating hip injury that is yet to yield a diagnosis. “I’ve had it for like two years now. No one really knows what’s going on,” she says. “I’ve kind of wrapped my head around it.”
Despite her extensive experience, she does admit to finding some of the tactics in women’s racing frustrating at times.
“There’s still things that infuriate me like when we were in UAE and there’s echelons and it’s in the gutter, but no one really thinks ‘I’m going to start a new echelon now,’” she says. “If you watch the men’s racing, there is an echelon and there’s another echelon and there’s another echelon, but we’re just like one huge long line.”
“Stuff like that I just don’t really get. It’s just different, it’s so aggressive. Like there’s stages in UAE where in a men’s race if you’re watching it, you’re like ‘that’s never going to split.’ But for us, it’s like 5 km of wind and it’s just like ‘boom, split.’
For many, the unpredictability and aggressive nature of racing in the women’s peloton is what makes it so exciting to watch, but for a rider or a director, it can make coming up with a plan challenging.
“It’s pretty interesting, I’ve known a few directors that have come from the men’s peloton to direct a women’s race and they’ve just been like ‘I just don’t know anything. There’s no breakaway. How have we just done 160 km and there’s not been a breakaway?’” she says.
“There are times when I’m just like, ‘I don’t understand why this team doesn’t let that breakaway go. Because then their job is just to ride the front. But if they keep jumping on these breaks, they’re just wearing each other out.’ I just watch it sometimes and I’m like, ‘oh, I don’t know who’s planning this.’”
Still, there are some patterns within the chaos and Barnes says she gets it right often enough.
“I do quite like trying to figure out what’s going to happen in the race,” she says. “There are a few times, I’ve got it bang-on and I’ve been so proud of myself. I’m like, ‘this is going to happen’ and they’re like ‘no, it’s not going to happen’ and it does. But because I’ve been in the peloton so long, I know the riders super well. I know what they’ll do or can do. So I think it’s just… I quite like that it’s like a puzzle.”
The obvious way to put that knowledge to use would be to take up a DS role after retirement, but before I’ve even finished asking the question Barnes is shaking her head emphatically.
“I think for me, once I finish bike racing it will be hard for me to be in a bike race again, like in the car,” she said.
What is it that makes the idea so unappealing?
“I wouldn’t say I’ve fallen out of love with it, but it doesn’t excite me as much as it used to. I can’t remember the last time I put a bike race on the telly. I just haven’t watched it in ages. So I don’t know. I’ve got to try and figure out what I’m going to do next along with the coaching,” she said.
“I’m just trying to figure it out. It will come.”
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