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Video: Getting ready for the Women's Tour with Matrix Vulpine's Jessie Walker

Biggest women's race ever in the UK looms for 19-year-old ...

Vulpine Matrix is one of the scrappy underdog teams in the Women’s Tour, up against international powerhouses like Marianne Vos’s Rabo Liv squad, Orica-GreenEdge and Wiggle-Honda.

One of just three elite British teams in the race, Vulpine Matrix is also the youngest. Four of the six riders in the Women’s Tour are still teenagers, though they have super-experienced and canny worlds cyclocross bronze medalist Helen Wyman as team leader to steer them right.

Sponsor Vulpine commissioned this little film about one of the youngsters, Jessie Walker, daughter of ex-pro Chris Walker. Only 19, the film shows her preparation for the Tour, including winning a race on her local roads of Yorkshire.

Vulpine boss Nick Hussey said: “This is a huge day for our young team, for women’s cycling in the UK and for women’s cycling Worldwide. I’m freaking out that I get to see the riders up against the best in the World. I hope they enjoy it as much I will!”

The Women’s Tour started in Oundle Northamptonshire this morning, and will take in five stages in the east of England, finishing in Bury St Edmunds on Sunday.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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3 comments

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mooleur | 10 years ago
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Ahah no way! I'm in that vid!

Psyched for Jessie, yesterday must've felt amazing! Hope she goes just as well today  4

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WolfieSmith | 10 years ago
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Top twenty? Good for Jessie.

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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She says in the video, she needs to work on her sprints, She was the first rider for Martix home on Stage 1...18th, still a bit of work required then  3

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