Brit Abroad

I remember waking up thinking, today is the day. Without doubt it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was 6am and I said bye to my girlfriend, my mum and my dog at the door. I’ve never lived away from home, let alone in another country.

Moving to France as a 19-year-old northerner from England, chasing the professional cycling dream left me with many questions in January. I didn’t speak any French, and this made life considerably harder.

The morning I left my hometown of Grimsby, I remember getting into the car with my dad. I remember doing that classic last little look back at the house. I took off my glasses, brought my pillow up to my face and started crying.

It’s funny because my dad and I had done this trip so many times over the years. When I was a junior, I was racing for a Belgian team. I’m from northern England, it’s a 9-hour drive to get there. I’d leave school early on the Friday, take the drive to Belgium, race Saturday or Sunday then get back late Sunday night in time for Monday morning class.

I’m the first cyclist in my family, my parents aren’t very sporty, so it was amazing for them to commit and support me at this level.

There were difficult parts to this story though. My dad isn’t a cyclist and doesn’t fully understand the sport, we’d get often get into disagreements in the car on the way home. He’d say, ‘’Why didn’t you get in the break’’ or ‘’Why didn’t you get on the podium?’’

If he said it to me directly after the race, I would just snap back at him then feel bad because he’s just driven me 9 hours for me to be grumpy back to him.

He hates the phrase “That’s bike racing.” After a race I’d be like, ‘’there was a crash, I missed the break, but that’s bike racing.’’ My dad hates that haha.

I was in the same age category as Remco Evenepoel so let’s just say nobody was winning that often when I was a junior

There is one result which stands out that made my parents and everyone at home proud. It was my first win in Europe, and I beat Remco at the Ster van Zuid Limburg prologue. I was 0.2 seconds faster and took yellow. Everyone at the race was like, who the hell are you?

I’m Joe Laverick, a kid from Grimsby, chasing a professional cycling dream.

I’d been a footballer since I was 5 years old. I have no idea where the love for cycling came from. My interest in cycling started around the age of 14. There was a big cycling-boom in the UK after The Tour de France and then London 2012 Olympics. Bradley Wiggins became a household name and inspired millions to get cycling.

I remember sitting in my bedroom back in early-2014. I was scrolling through the Evans Cycles website looking at road bikes. In the end I bought a Raleigh Revenio C1 with 8-speed Shimano Claris from a local shop. Quite an investment for a 14-year-old. In the early days, I would go out with the local club in the morning and do 60–70 miles. I’d get back around midday and then 2-hours later I’d be playing 90-minutes of football. It’s safe to say it got a bit much. I stopped playing football.

My parents originally thought cycling was a phase and honestly, I was really awful at it. I did a few closed circuit crits and each time I pinned a number on, I got lapped 3 or 4 times. On top of that, my TT times were horrendous. But, for some strange reason, I stuck with it.

I come from a pretty unsporty background. My mum’s never been sporty, but she’s always been super supportive, she’s really thrown herself into cycling. She even watches some bike racing now. It’s funny, we have a connected Amazon Kindle account and I have every cycling autobiography ever published, she’s read them all. She got Instagram to follow me and ended up following loads of pros, I swear she’s more up to date than I am on most stuff! Every now and then she’ll comment on how good a bike looks. It just makes me laugh.

I think it was hard on her when I left for France. I was the last kid leaving the nest after my sister left home a few years ago. While Dad and I took the 15hr drive for me to join Chambéry CF, the development squad to AG2R La Mondiale, mum flew over for that first weekend to get me settled into my new home.

I cried when I left mum and dad at airport security after that first weekend. Then, driving back to Chambéry, I pulled into a service station. I parked far away from all the other cars and went inside to the bathroom to get some tissues; I was in tears.  I rang my mentor to say I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I was pretty emotional.

He talked me through it and said there’s going to be worse days than this, but it will get better in the end. He’d been through it before, moving to a foreign country to pursue a professional career.

He told me, ‘’You’re here because you want to be. No one has forced you to come. You can go home at any time. But you don’t want that, do you?’’

There were a few days where I’d call home and question whether I’d done the right thing. It was January, so I couldn’t even get stuck into racing which would have been the perfect distraction.

At the end of day, I’m doing what I love. I’m in France by choice. It’s great life experience for a 19-year-old. Living in the Alps is ace. People would kill to be me. The more I do it, the easier it becomes. France has transferred from this strange country to my second home.

I did one race this year before COVID-19 hit. As it stands, I moved to France to do one race haha. My first race was cancelled due to the coronavirus, our management team looked at the calendar for any other race that was happening in France that weekend. We found one and immediately drove 5 hours to do an elite regional race. The team won it and I got fifth place.

Four days later I was back home in the UK. People say 2020 has been a strange year – yes, yes it has. But so far, I’ve seen the amount of sacrifice it takes to chase your dreams and as soon as COVID-19 is over, I’m ready to head back to France and take up the challenge.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. I couldn’t do any of this without the support of my parents and the people I have around me. It’s that simple.