Mel Spath says she needs a big year to continue as a pro; seen here in action at the World Championships in Florence in September (Photo: Brendan Slattery)
By Gerard Cromwell
National road race champion, Mel Spath is looking forward to a move to Danish team Rutger next season after an eye-opening year racing stateside with Team Tibco.
“I’ll hopefully be racing more in Europe and won’t have to do as much travelling worldwide next season because I’m working as well and it will be easier if I don’t have to combine the two,” she said.
“Even last year (2013), though I was based in Ireland mostly; you don’t have to go to where you’re team is based if you’re in a big team because you’ll be doing international racing anyway.”
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“America was a really good experience. It was a very big step up for me because before that I’d only done local Irish racing and, I mean no offence, but it’s nothing in comparison.
“It’s a very big step up to racing internationally. I knew I was throwing myself into the deep end. There are a lot of very, very, strong women racing in America and they also focus a lot on criteriums.
“I had taken three weeks off my bike to finish my Phd here and went straight into crit racing. When I went over I had absolutely no experience in crit racing, especially their style of crit racing, which is eyeballs-out from the start.
“If you’re not in a good position from the start and you don’t know what you’re doing then you can forget about it. It took me a while to get my head around that.
“I got dropped in the first few races, which was so embarrassing. I had family there and they were like: ‘Why is she not winning? She’s the Irish champion, right?’
“Now, I enjoyed it, but it was super hard. In the beginning I was only meant to do one training camp and one race and then see from there. But I got to ride the World Cup in China and in Chong Ming Island and even more races.
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“The flights home just kept getting put back. It was a very steep learning curve but it was worth it and hopefully I can use what I learned last year, next season.”
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Although only road racing a few years, Spath says her 2014 season will decide whether she continues to pursue a professional career.
“Next year is my make it or break it year and I need to get some good results in international races,” she said.
“Because the team is a first year UCI team they don’t have very many big riders and don’t have any UCI points so we don’t get any automatic invites to UCI races.
“We just have to wait on wildcards and will only find out later on which races we are doing. I hope that I’ll get the chance to do some big races with my team and I think I will.”
Having finished second overall at the An Post Rás na mBan this year, level on time with winner and Ireland teammate Olivia Dillon, Spath hopes to ride the race with the Rutger squad next season and also hopes to show her face on the world stage.
“If I could get some top 10s or top 20s in big UCI races, I’d be happy. Last year, riding the world championships was a really good experience. I know what I need to do to be better next year.
“Hopefully the past year will have given me the experience that I need to ride in big races in Europe and hopefully I’ll be selected again.”
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