Its All Sport To Me Meets – Alice McWilliam from Hess Cycling Team

Quite often teams will change title sponsor, or start up anew during the off-season of cycling in preparation for the new year. That’s fairly commonplace and is usually announced long before so it isn’t huge news when it finally happens. Sometimes a team folds due to a lack of funding, and that can happen either at the end of the season or in dire circumstances mid-season.

By comparison however, it is rare that a team will start mid-season, yet this is precisely what has happened for the Hess Cycling Team. But who are they, and who rides for them?

The first time I noticed the team was their initial Instagram post on 5th April- obviously it’s not the first thing you’ll start with when starting a team, for instance you’d start with registering with the UCI (cycling’s governing body). Once registered you would probably already have management in place and riders in mind. However, the first real public proclamation of their existence was that 5th April post.

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It stated Riding the road together in search of success.. we are about sharing, supporting, sweating it out together but most of all smiling… Welcome to our team, the wheels are turning and the journey starts here

Tagged in the post were many of the riders who are on the team roster and more on them later. 

The only clues as to the team’s identity were the aforementioned riders and a potential link to “Hess Group International” – a private equity firm. It is this firm that is sponsoring the team. From what I have found, it’s a company with a deep history, it’s not like NextHash which had a very complicated history and ultimately led to the collapse of the Qhubeka-NextHash venture. 

This article had started out as an exploration by me of who the team is, what they represent and who’s behind it but that has become clear with the launch of their website, and the announcement of their riders.

There’s a mix of languages, cultures and countries in the smorgasbord of talent that is the Hess Cycling Team. The team includes Liv Wenzel, Layla Barthels and Maïté Barthels, all hailing from Luxembourg, as well as Txella Claret Bonmatí who is Basque, there’s a New Zealander – Charlotte Clarke, the Swiss Annika Liehner, Johanna Martini from Austria and Coline Raby from France.

Finally there’s also former Roland-Cogeas rider Rotem Gafinotz from Israel who brings with her Women’s World Tour experience, and last but by no means least, there’s Alice McWilliam of the UK, who I had a brief chat with regarding the new team and her motivations to joining it. 

Last year was a banner year in her career so far – she started with a second place at Lincoln GP (a highly prestigious race in the domestic scene), followed by fourth at the CiCle Classic in Melton Mowbray. She also came fifth on a stage of Lotto Belgium Tour and after that was a string of placings in races both in Britain and Belgium before she scored her first victory at this level by winning the Curlew Cup race – in so doing beating riders from teams who race as part of the Women’s World Tour (the highest level of road cycling). 

With such results comes interest from teams- one of those being Hess- but how does a rider narrow down their choices? For Alice there was discussions with teams early on in 2022, part of why she opted for Hess was “to be part of something new and help mould the team” and to “learn and develop her skills and race in Europe”. 

When we spoke she was due to start at the Gracia Orlová race where she came 57th in support of Coline, with a best stage result of 16th.

As Alice sums up in the lead-up to Gracia Orlová: “I had a minor setback with a couple of niggles and illness, so I’m probably a month behind in terms of racing capability. It’s exciting to get started and I think it will all fall into place. The first race I’ll be doing is Gracia and it will be a baptism of fire and it will give me a bit of race form for the Belgian races that suit me better”.

Alice adds: “Hess cycling team, what a cool project it is, it’s set up by Rolf Hess who’s super interested in women’s cycling and knows that it needs the support and the funding. It’s going to be a big project for a couple of years with lots of ambition, so it’s really cool to be a part something new and we can have the opportunity to help mould the team but yeah it’s definitely a step up from Bianchi.”

I’m looking forward to seeing how she fares this season, her time with the Hess project and the step up from the Bianchi-Morvelo team she was on for 2022. We’ll aim to touch base with her again at the end of the season, so keep your eyes peeled.