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- Name: Ayesha McGowan
- Age: 34
- Birthplace: Atlanta, Georgia
- Team: LIV Cycling
- Biggest achievement: Seventh of the sixth stage of the Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardèche.
You might know Ayesha McGowan as a professional cyclist from LIV Cycling. Or maybe you know her as the writer behind the well known blog A quick brown fox. Or maybe you know her for her advocacy for promoting diversity and inclusion in the world of cycling, whether it’s getting more POCs on bikes or making sure that they are able to climb the ranks.
She began her journey several years ago with the goal of becoming the first black female professional cyclist in the United States. After years of steady progress in the cycling rankings, in 2021 she officially joined the LIV Cycling WorldTour team as a satellite driver. More recently, she headed to her first European stage race, the Seven Day Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardèche, where she finished seventh in Stage 6.
Here, Ride a bike catches up with the 34-year-old as she resumes training for her next adventure.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ride a bike: In 2015, you had just started running, but you already knew you wanted to be the first black female pro in the United States. Six years later, you have succeeded. How did you get there?
Ayesha McGowan: I don’t think there is a neat, simple version of events, really. I think the main thing has been consistency and to continue to be in the moment, to move forward.
At what point did you say to yourself, “I’m really going to be able to go pro? “
It might sound strange, but I don’t feel like I never thought I could do it. I know I use broad terms sometimes, like saying it was a pipe dream and a ridiculous goal or whatever. But I don’t feel like I’ve ever felt that way. I was the one projecting what I felt the way other people probably thought about my plans.
But from the start, it was never “maybe this will workâ€. I was pretty confident that it would work, and I also felt like if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be because of me. I never felt like something I was doing was going to be the reason I couldn’t do it.
How did you feel when you took part in your first big European race in September?
I was really, really excited to be part of it. I wasn’t nervous, I just really wanted to run. I had spent so much time over the past two years training and being in my head, and I knew I had to go out and run. So the first day was amazing. And then the second day, I felt really nervous! And it was really weird. I finished the first day, it was not a spectacular race, but it was not bad either. Yet for some reason I got super nervous.
It wasn’t my first stage race, I’ve done most of the American stage races and at this point I know them pretty well. But the longest I did before that was five days and was nowhere near as much climbing. This one was rock climbing, and I do not consider myself a climber in any way. Every day we went up, up. Even the flat stages weren’t flat. Or, at least, we have a very different interpretation of what flat means. I think it was intimidating for me. To get there, I really wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to be blown out of the water because of the amount of climbing there was.
Every year I got better and better at climbing, so I felt more confident about this race. In general, I think when I started working with the coach that I have now, it made a huge difference. I noticed that I didn’t feel so deep on the climbing stages, even in a race like Redlands. The first year I did Redlands, I finished dead last on the last day, but I finished. And I wasn’t supposed to finish, that’s what everyone told me. “You never complete your first Redlands.” And I’m like, “Okay, guys, whatever.”
Other than rock climbing, how does racing compare to the national scene in the United States?
It seemed a bit more intense, but I think the hardest part about it is that the roads are just different. There are all these roundabouts and road furniture. We don’t really have that in the United States, so it was really cognitively draining. Like, I race, but I also try not to hit those random medians while people are screaming and stuff popping up all over the road. But because I have so much critical racing experience, it wasn’t as difficult as it could have been. I feel like if I had only done road races I would have had problems.
How was the LIV WorldTour team?
It’s a really cool team of runners. I was the only non-Dutch person, and they are all very experienced. I feel like they like to come out of the womb and start pedaling, it’s so ingrained in their culture. But they were all really nice, really helpful and encouraging. There could have been a lot of pressure in such a great team, but I feel like I did a really good job.
And you have a seventh place on the sixth stage, it’s huge!
Honestly, I feel like I could have done better. I found myself in a position to do well and then there was a lot of commotion just before the sprint, and I finished seventh.
You’ve said several times on Instagram that you are ‘proud but not satisfied’. Has this been a bit of a mantra for you?
I feel like with everything I accomplish, every time I accomplish something new, I’m expected to be happy about it, and then I can be done. But if I get this far, how far can I go? Don’t get me wrong, I’m really happy to have finished seventh. But there are six other places I can try to get. I feel like with a little more experience it could be really cool to see what I can accomplish.
You also recently published a great article that started with, “I’m not here because I’m black. I am here AND I am black. I really believe that representation matters. I also believe that not everything is the symbolism that people think it is. Did you have a lot of reservations about this?
There is always this idea that there is no prejudice in bike racing, you just ride a bike and the best person wins. But what people often don’t understand is how hard I had to face just to be in this race, even to have the opportunity to be there to see if I could do well. There are so many other black athletes who never get a chance to show that they can do something, because they always run in their local scene, and they can’t get away with it, because the opportunities for them are not there. . So it’s a really frustrating concept for me, because most people think it’s that simple, and all you have to do is be quick, but it’s not that easy.
I have to imagine that you regularly face negativity on the internet – how do you deal with this emotionally and mentally while trying to be a cyclist, which is already mentally and emotionally taxing?
I think it’s a lot easier now than before, because I was spending a lot of time in the comments section responding to everyone, defending myself because I needed to, which is not all just not the right thing to do. I don’t do it that much anymore, but honestly I don’t regret doing it because I feel like at that time a lot of the conversations we’ve had since then had never happened. I have the impression that as a community we have made a lot of progress. My goal was to give people who were unsure the opportunity to learn something.
In the last seven years of trying to turn pro, what has been the most exciting moment for you?
I don’t feel like I’ve had any key moments with the race. But I was able to ride a tandem bike with my grandmother. This is my favorite time on the bike and probably always will be. I don’t feel like I will ever be able to overcome that.
What’s the next step on your agenda?
At the moment, I don’t have a contract. I feel like it was such a weird year because I couldn’t really run before the Ardèche. I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where I stopped worrying about the races, because either it’s going to work or it won’t. I feel like I’ve done all I can and just want to keep running because I love it.
But I feel like the goal of becoming a professional athlete I did. Put a check next to it. And when it comes to advocacy, I have some really cool projects that I’m working on, so I’m really excited about that.
Is there another message that you want to make sure gets broadcast?
These days, I try to convey the power of opportunity. And I mean a real opportunity, not people who are given things that look like opportunities, but aren’t. To give an example, let’s say someone gets a spot on a basketball team. But all they do in the team is sit on the bench and never play, they never show any signs of aptitude. If all you do is sit on the bench, what’s the point? Some people will say, “Oh, well, they train with the team and get better,†but if they never get to play, then what’s the point?
In my own experience, I have also seen people decide they were going to do things for me that I never asked them to do. As if I had a team manager who treated me really badly, who told me I was, “because that’s the way European teams treat riders.” I prepare you. But I never asked you to do that. It’s not something I wanted.
For me, I feel like the biggest change came when I had the actual resources I needed. I used to do these races, but my preparation was crap because I didn’t have a trainer. It took me years to get a time trial bike, and all of those stage races in America have a time trial. We need to start thinking about the things people really need, what are the tools to be successful? And that’s usually not just one thing. But right now it’s like we’ve given someone a bike, we’re done.
In 2015, you said to me: “Maybe I‘I’m a little crazy and confused as to why no other black woman has become a professional cyclist yet, and that‘it is probably because he‘It’s not a very glamorous career. But it still seems super fun. And if I can do it, I‘I will do it. I do not have any‘do not see why not!
Yeah, I didn’t have any gauge for that. My gauge was very blindly ambitious. It’s weird, because I’m also very anxious about every little thing. But for some reason, with big things, I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s really going to happen. There’s no way it won’t work. The little things that terrify me, but the big things are fun.
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