Mel Spath's breakthrough year last year has opened the door for her to the US pro scene (Photo: Larry Rosa Photography)
By Caroline Martinez
Melanie Spath has been living her dream for the past few weeks, racing with pro US-based team TIBCO. The national road race champion has already ridden two stage races in California and will ride a few more UCI events before returning home to defend her national title in June.
“I'm really happy to have the chance to ride with team TIBCO this year. I feel like I'm throwing myself in the deep end, but I couldn’t imagine a better way to improve and learn from such an established and experienced team; it’s a massive opportunity”
TIBCO is a world class team, not only on the US scene but worldwide, with riders from the USA, New Zealand, Canada, Germany and now Ireland. Although Spath admits to being a bit apprehensive about joining such a successful and experienced squad, she has managed to fit right in with her new teammates.
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“All of the team members have been very welcoming, everyone is professional and getting on well. Most of my teammates are very experienced and accomplished, so I was afraid that I wouldn't fit in because I’m a lot less experienced, but my teammates are super nice and positive and give a lot of encouragement. They made me feel part of the team from the start.”
On her first day racing as a pro she finished best of her team in her speciality, a hill climb TT, at the San Dimas stage race in southern California. She placed 13th in a field of 78 pro women that included Irish TT champion Olivia Dillon.
Spath acknowledges there is a massive step up in standard from the domestic scene in Ireland.
“Here you are racing against top class racers, including (former) world champions and Olympic medallists, so the standard is a lot higher. It’s a whole new level of racing for me. The bunches here are also much bigger than in Ireland and there are a lot of strong riders.”
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“The roads are a lot bigger and less technical than in Ireland. I haven't raced on the mainland in Europe yet, but I’ve heard from the others that the standard of riders is comparable, though the style of racing is very different. The bunches in Europe are much larger again, the roads much smaller and more technical and there’s more fighting and less space in the European pelotons.”
One of the aspects of her game Spath is working hardest on is criterium racing - a staple of the American scene, in the shape of one-day events and in stage races.
“They even have a national crit series, and nearly every stage race includes a crit. So it's important to be able to do them well. The crit racing I’ve done so far in Ireland is just not comparable with regard to standard or bunch size and technicality of the course, so they were a bit of a shock for me. I'm still trying to master them. I've been signed up to do the Speedweek (nine days of crits in late April and early May) to improve my crit racing. I should be fine after that. I actually really like the excitement and full-on nature of crit racing and I think once I get my head around how to race them I could actually do well in them too.”
Between races and training camps every TIBCO rider is free to go home, but for Spath getting home for a week on the salary of a neo pro is out of the question.
“I'm very lucky that my husband (Polygon Sweet Nice rider Ryan Sherlock) has relations in California who have kindly agreed to host me outside of racing and training camps. Everyone on the team has their own personal coach and our DS gives us our race schedule once he knows our relative strengths and weaknesses. We then feed that information back to our personal coaches.”
“We have a lot of international riders on the team, so most team members live far from each other and we don't get to ride that much together outside of camp and races. That’s why the riding we do at team camp is so important for us as a team; for bonding and to learn about each other as riders. We usually get our roster for about two months at a time, so that we can prepare appropriately.”
Spath will stay in North America for a little longer, having been selected to take part Speedweek (27th of April to 5th of May) in the US, the Chrono Gatineau (18th of May) and the Grand Prix Cycliste Gatineau (20th of May) in Quebec.
As for living so far away from husband Sherlock, who will be racing primarily on the Asian circuit, she says: “We're racing on opposite sides of the world, but we will still be coming back to Ireland between racing trips and we'll both be back in June for the national championships. I'm sure it won't be easy to be apart for long stretches of time and I know I'll miss him, but at least modern technology helps to stay in touch.”
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