By Shane Stokes
Competition between two bike companies has influenced the direction of Irish road race champion Imogen Cotter’s career, with the 28 year signing for the UCI-registered Plantur Pura outfit for 2022. The squad is the women’s arm of the Alpecin-Fenix team and will have a strong programme of racing next season.
Cotter was competing with the Belgian Keukens Redant squad this year and was also signed up to Movistar’s eRacing team, which contested online events. She had hoped to continue with another wing of the latter squad next season but when that fell through, the bike supplier to Movistar stepped in to keep her on board.
“It is quite a long story. Basically, Movistar were going to set up a gravel team for 2021, but things fell through last minute,” Cotter told stickybottle.
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“They realised it wasn’t going to happen. I was contacted by a Spanish team called Massi-Tactic so I said to Movistar that I need to know what you are doing, because I’ve had an offer.
“The team were going to be riding Massi bikes and wearing Tactic kit. I was pretty keen to go down to them, the real draw for me was that they had an apartment down in Girona. I was thinking, ‘okay, this will work out well for me, because I want to base myself there.’”
However Cotter said that when Canyon heard about the change, they put her in contact with Plantur Pura directeur sportif Heidi Van De Vijver in order to ensure she remained on their bikes.
“I had already worked with Heidi,” said Cotter. “She kind of spotted me from the team that I was with in 2020 and invited me to be a stagiaire at Ciclotel, where she was DS there.”
Van De Vijver’s move to Plantur Pura now sees Cotter get a contract there. She said that immediately before her appearance at the Rouleur Live show she realised that the contract came with an unexpected benefit.
“It’s worked out for the best because the team are actually going to be paying me. There wouldn’t have been a wage at Massi-Tactic. I only found out before I was going on stage (at Rouleur Live).
"I got an email with my contract that I will actually get a living wage each
month, which is just like… I'm still in shock about it. Like, I actually can't believe I'll be getting money to cycle. It is amazing.”
Cotter is a former runner who took up cycling in 2017 thanks to a Cycling Ireland talent transfer ID programme. She initially found the going tough, as she told Stickybottle recently, but encouragement and guidance from people such as her uncle, the 1981 Rás Tailteann winner Jamie McGahan, helped her to persist.
She continued to improve and reached an important milestone on October 2nd, beating Megan Armitage (Team Rupelcleaning - Champion Lubricants) and Linda Kelly (Barrow Wheelers) to win the women’s national road race championships.
Asked if that win was important in securing the contract with the new team, she said that may have contributed to it. “It never hurts, does it?” she said.
“But I think I can take a lot of confidence as well in the fact that Heidi had already spotted me last year. It’s not just like, oh, I’m getting it because of the Canyon bike or because of the national jersey. I know that I showed potential last year and she had spotted that and invited me to come to Ciclotel. So I know that they see potential in me.”
Cotter has a strong social media following but was glad to hear that the contract was not related to that.
“I was on the phone with Philip Roodhooft, who's the Alpecin Fenix manager—Alpecin-Fenix and Plantar-Pura are like the same thing - and he said to me:
"‘I don't want you thinking that we would offer your spot on this just because you have a lot of followers, because we've had girls with a lot of followers come to us and say, ‘I want to ride on your team,’ and I have turned them away. You need to have results and you've shown that you've got the results as well as having you know, obviously the social media know how. But you’ve also just shown that you can ride a bike.’
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“He said that when I got to wear the climbers jersey at the Tour de la Semois in Belgium, you don't just get that for nothing. You work hard for that. He really made me feel good about coming to the team. And he really made me feel like there's a lot of opportunity to grow there.
"Obviously they've got a really good road racing calendar, but they want to do some gravel racing as well. Which is great for me, because I did the gravel racing with Canyon and Movistar in Girona. Also, like Alpecin Fenix, the women’s team is quite involved in the eRacing side of things. They would also want me to do some eRacing for them.
“So it worked out really well, actually, for me to be able to go to that team. Because it’s basically the stuff that I'm doing now, but in a professional setup. It works out well.”
Cotter was complementary about the squad she raced for in 2021, saying that it helped her develop.
“My current team Keukens Redant is an amazing team. It has been such a great place for me to grow as a cyclist,” she said. “To be able to make mistakes and to learn without heavy pressure on me, to enter big races without huge expectations on my back - these experiences have helped me grow into the rider I am today.
"Having a more laid-back, family-style approach to the team has made me feel at home, and I knew that as long as I had done my best, they would never put pressure on me to get a certain result.
“What I’ve picked up on over the last couple of months is that I’ve really thrived when I’ve been in a team environment like with Cycling Ireland, where there is a bit more pressure and a feeling that you have an important role to play within the team.
"If you don’t help your team-mate to be in a certain position at a certain point, you haven’t done your job. Knowing I’ve had a job and someone is relying on me gave me that extra push to make sure I was always working to be in the right place.
"Otherwise I can find myself drifting back through the peloton and just passively taking part in a race, rather than actively playing a role. And I know that since I’ve had that with the Cycling Ireland setup, it makes me a different rider.
“I’m looking forward to working with Heidi Van De Vijver, the DS with Plantur-Pura. She’s so brilliant, and she knows so much about racing. I’m just looking forward to learning everything from her and being able to follow what she tells me to do. And also the other girls on the team are really experienced riders. So I’ll just be throwing myself in the deep end again, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what I can do.”
It felt like a great match
Cotter has already referred to her strong social media following. She got a different type of exposure last week when she was on stage with Fabian Cancellara at Rouleur Live. She said that she had never spoken on stage before and was feeling a bit nervous beforehand. Given that Cancellara loves the limelight, that helped take the pressure off.
“Once I got on, I was fine,” she said. “And I was on with Fabian Cancellara as well, so he kind of put the whole thing at ease. I barely had a chance to say anything. I felt like he just was talking, and I was very happy to interject.”
She is currently in the off season, taking time to recharge after a lot of racing. She spent time this month training in Mallorca, and hopes to be based there over the winter months. She’ll ideally then move to Girona and spent a lot of time there next year, training in the Catalan countryside and travelling to races when required.
She hopes to be busy with the team. “There are 19 riders on Plantur-Pura, but a lot of them would be mainly cyclocross riders. In terms of racing, the team does all of the Classics. I'll be doing all of them…well, if I'm selected.
They do all the Classics, they will be doing the Tour of Norway, they do races in Spain as well. So it's, you know, it's a real step up. And a really professional environment. I got such a good feeling when I was on the phone with them. It just felt like a great match.”
Aside from the move itself, she is excited by a couple of aspects. Firstly, she is motivated by the fact that her efforts will be recognised with a wage. Women’s cycling is still developing and many teams don’t offer salaries. Being in a position where she will get paid is something that she believes will help her really knuckle down.
“Maybe when I haven’t been getting paid, I’ve been…well, not holding back a bit, but you would be thinking, ‘oh, will I take this risk? Where should I be? What should I do here?’ Whereas now, it is your job. You have to step up to the mark. I’m actually looking forward to having that kind of…well, pressure is the wrong word, but I’m looking forward to having that…that goal, I suppose, of knowing, ‘hey, I’m getting paid to do this. So let’s go, let’s do it.’”
She’s also fired up by the thoughts of doing flat kermesse races, something she has had her fill of by now. “I'm sick of that,” she stated. “I've done that for the last two years. I want to throw myself into races where it is hilly, it is tough, it suits me. And I can show how good I am instead of like, finishing in a bunch sprint in 40th spot.”
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