THE BIGGER PICTURE

Typically, in the weeks and months after a rider wins their first grand tour, they’ll be revelling in the celebrations that come with their newfound fame, making the most of the press, media exposure and opportunities. It’s understandable: winning a grand tour is one of the hardest feats in cycling, and only 12 riders in the current peloton have ever done it. All at the same time as sorting a race programme for the next year. But Tao Geoghegan Hart, in the two THE BIG INTERVIEW and a half months since he won the Giro d’Italia in October, has been thinking less about what he’s going to do next on the road and more about something a bit different: how to revolutionise the cycling scene in the UK, to encourage more young people to take up the sport.

“I think cycling, and within that cycling in the UK, has a big problem,” he tells Procycling. We’ve been speaking about the Giro victory, how he won pink and how his life and outlook has - or rather, hasn’t - changed since. (When I ask if it’s sunk in yet that he’s a Giro d’Italia winner, he replies: “It’s one of those things, really.”)

Yet this is the subject that clearly matters most, and he talks about it at length. “It’s a difficult sport to access,” he says. “It’s not available to everyone and it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently and still developing how I’m going to work out the way I’m going to try and be a protagonist, and lower those barriers to entry, if you want to put it really economically and unromantically.

“For me,