Claire Steels never really planned to ride in the Tour de France. The Lincolnshire-born rider didn’t even become a professional cyclist until 2020, yet now she is the leader of the Israel-Premier Tech Roland team, racing in this year’s Tour de France Femmes.
Steels is one of the peloton’s late bloomers. Her Spanish-based fitness company was doing well enough, but when she branched into duathlon, she fell for cycling. “I bought a bike to compete in duathlons in Mallorca,” she says. “But then I started training more on the bike and I realised how much I loved it. So I fell into cycling, really. Then last year I was at a point where I needed to make a decision on whether I was going to join a World Tour team, so I could afford to live off a cycling salary and stop work.”
