Instagram selfies and WorldTour vultures – Mike Creed on the challenges facing the US youth scene

Go back a decade and the US racing scene was thriving. The Tour of California was at its peak, while the Tours of Utah, Alberta, and Missouri ensured that domestic male athletes had a decent enough calendar to build a season. There were several second-division teams with ambitions of WorldTour status, and the pathways for emerging US talent were plentiful.

Fast forward to 2023 and the outlook is very different. All of those major races have disappeared, along with the teams that raced them, and while gravel racing is booming and USA Cycling is fighting back with some strong junior programmes, the criterium scene is as fragmented as ever and the stage racing opportunities are nowhere to be seen. If you’re a U23 or junior American with a dream of racing at the highest level in Europe, your chances of making it are slim.

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Despite the impoverished situation, there is still a small but dedicated group who believe in reviving the domestic scene. Mike Creed is a former racer who made it to Europe at the tender age of 19 and raced alongside the likes of Lance Amstrong and George Hincapie at US Postal. His career ended on US soil and since 2017 he has run the U23 Aevolo Cycling squad out of Colorado Springs.

It’s a modest operation, with two full-time staff, a couple of loyal and dedicated crew, including Creed’s partner Caitlin Laroche Creed, and a private backer based on the East Coast. The team may not attract the fanfare that a squad like Hagens Berman Axeon does, but it has nevertheless provided chances to a number of promising young riders who have slipped through the cracks or not drawn instant attention from the WorldTour teams. 

In 2023, the team raced over 50 days in Europe, and in 2024 the squad will once again make the trip across the Atlantic for a heavy but rewarding programme.

“We’ve not done a huge amount of recruiting for next year because I wanted to give the guys on the team a full cycle of U23 space before they age out or sign for bigger teams,” Creed tells GCN from his home.

“If we were more professional in some ways, maybe I’d be a bit harsher with some of the guys but we’re a U23 team that doesn’t pay huge salaries, and I wanted to stay loyal to the guys. We’ve brought in three new riders, we’ve lost two, and we’ll probably pick up one or two more guest riders during the year.”

Ian Lopez de San Roman, a guest rider from this year with a gravel background, will return. Gavin Hlady, who was third on the final day of Redlands, will once again wear the iconic green and yellow kit, while a kid from Southern California named Alfredo Bueno has also joined the ranks.

“He’s mainly been racing crits but he’s 18 and he’s super ambitious. He more or less talked himself onto the team,” Creed says with a hint of admiration.

“We give offers to kids who aren’t in the spotlight right away – those who may be focused more on school or who just haven’t developed physically. Maybe they just really want it and that stands out for me. I want all our guys to fulfil their promise.”

It’s a battle that has become increasingly difficult in recent years. Aevolo has a Club status, which means they are lower on the pecking order when it comes to attracting talent. That’s not such a problem, given their remit is to pick up diamonds in the rough, but the challenges are becoming more stark as more and more WorldTour teams become increasingly determined and speculative with their youth recruitment policy. Back in 2017, Creed could have a relatively early trip to the talent supermarket, but, by the time he arrives at the store now, the shelves are almost empty.

“Our battles used to be with Axeon and you knew that because of their name and their reputation, it was always hard for us. But now with all the WorldTour devo teams, we’re being pushed further back down the line,” he says. “The competition for the U23 riders is becoming harder and harder because the bar is getting higher and higher. What we’re seeing now is teams in Europe taking long-shots on kids who have raced for one or two years

“It’s super cool that, from our perspective, we had a kid who is now on the U23 devo team for UAE but the only caveat is that you hope the teams reach out to directors to ask if the riders have the experience both physically and mentally or if the rider needs another year on a domestic programme.

“When you have Ineos, UAE, Jumbo and Bahrain doing speculative buying of juniors in order to stop them from signing with other teams, it changes everything. So initially, for next year, there was a rider who was going to another U23 team but was going to be paid by Ineos. Then the rider had an offer from another WorldTour team to go pro right away and Ineos had to match it. So they buy these kids on spec because it’s cheaper for them to give these kids $70,000 than to miss out on the new Remco Evenepoel. Buying him out of his contract will cost tens of millions so they instead buy half the junior field at $50K a piece. It’s wild.”

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On the ground struggles

If you’re not instantly snapped up by a WorldTour team or move to Europe on your own fruition and dime – and have reached your mid-20s – then the situation is almost dire, according to Creed.

The recent demise of the Human Powered Health men’s squad represented the crumbling of the last bridge for US riders above the U23 level who still had ambitions of racing at the highest level in Europe. In recent years, UnitedHealthcare, Smartstop, Hincapie Racing, and Exergy have all vanished. Unless you’re willing to shop yourself as a low-key crit racer or reinvent yourself as a gravel privateer, your career as a rider is all but over.

“It’s pretty bleak,” Creed says. “I believe that if you’re 27 and don’t know what you want to do with your life but post enough selfies on Instagram, can hold a wheel on a four-corner crit, there’s probably a team that will loan you a bike, a pair of shorts and let you sleep on a stranger’s couch. Then you can tell your family you’re a professional athlete. It’s rough here though in the US.”

There are shoots of promise, however. Aevolo Cycling has proved, along with Axeon, that young riders can succeed even if they’re passed over in the first round. USA Cycling, to their credit, are also investing heavily in programmes that will benefit young riders both on the track and on the road.

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If you’re a junior coming through the ranks now, there’s a much stronger chance that USA Cycling will be able to support you with a European race schedule.

“I know that USA Cycling are putting more money in juniors and creating a stronger national team, for both men and women. So if you’re a junior or first-year U23 the good news is that there are a lot of opportunities for you to go and race in Europe,” Creed says.

“It’s just that if you’re over the age of 26 or 27, the gravel market is already saturated with WorldTour dudes who don’t know what to do when they’re done. It means the crit market is the only one left for you.”

As for Aevolo Cycling, they’ll keep plugging away, too. There’s constant internal talk about moving into the Continental ranks but Club status allows the management to bring in guest riders, save cash on UCI fees, and still dovetail race calendars on both sides of the Atlantic.

Creed and his team will continue to scour the market and the domestic scene for fresh talent that hasn’t yet been identified, and even if that leads to just one or two success stories – such as Riley Sheehan, Scott McGill or, in the future, Alfredo Bueno – it will all have been worth it.

“What makes us cool is the fact that we’re not cool at all,” Creed says.

“I wish we were cool but the fact that we’re going into our seventh year and that we provide more race days in Europe than almost any American non-WorldTour team is really important. If you ask any of the riders who leave the team they’ll tell you that the level of service they experience is better than any team in America. And we do that with the smallest staff. So yeah, maybe we are cool.”