Cycling Weekly | August 22, 2019 | 7Cullaigh will look to head
Movistar’s new Classics squad
“His numbers
were in the
upper third of
what you’d see at
WorldTour level”
went on their camp. I enjoyed it but they
already had 29 riders so it was always a
slim chance they’d sign me.”
But as 2019 rolled along he’d heard
nothing and admits that he was “a bit lost”.
“I hoped to find something still. At the back
end of January I didn’t know what I was
training for. I was going out on the bike and
it was freezing and cold I was like, ‘What is
this about?’” he said.
Looking back Cullaigh thinks slowing
down may have helped him as it’s easy to
over-train through the winter but that
doesn’t mean he didn’t have any regrets:
“Andrew [McQuaid, his agent] texted me
to say UAE weren’t going to sign me. Then
he texted a week later saying ‘I’ve given
you a week to go on the p*ss, now let's
make a plan’ – But I hadn’t. I thought, ‘I
should have taken advantage of that.’”
In 2019 Cullaigh has raced a truncated
calendar with Wiggins as he turned 23 in
April and doesn’t qualify for a lot of the
U23 team’s races. He once again won a
stage of Volta ao Alentejo, threw away a
win at the CiCLE Classic when he
celebrated too early and was in the mix in
the sprints at the Tour de Yorkshire.At the European Games he had word
from McQuaid that Movistar were
interested in him. “I spoke to Sebastian
Unzue [vice manager] on the phone and he
said they were interested. He said they
were really keen to build their Classics
squad and were keen to build it around a
younger rider and I was top of the list,”
Cullaigh said.
Cullaigh says he’d like to win Paris-
Roubaix one day, and that being on
Movistar would give him a better
opportunity to ride a full Classics season
than if he was on one of the Belgian
Classics powerhouse teams. “I can’t see me
riding a Grand tour in those first two years.
I’d like to do one in the first two years but
it’ll be hard in that team,” he said.>