Team GB Olympics hero, 32, quits to take new job after ‘balancing life of elite athlete with my passion’
TEAM GB Olympics hero Dan Bigham has quit cycling to pursue his passion with a rival team.
Bigham has ridden for Team GB and the Ineos Grenadiers over the last few years and set the hour record in 2022.
He was also part of Team GB’s Men pursuit team that won silver at the Paris Games this summer.
Bigham, 32, now believes he has achieved everything he can on the bike so has decided to pursue a different passion.
He has quit the Ineos Grenadiers to take up a position as Head of Engineering at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, a rival pro cycling outfit.
Bora revealed they created the position just for Bigham, who will be joined at his new team by a colleague, Ineos’ Performance Scientist Jonny Wale.
Bigham said of his new role: “For the past decade, I have balanced the life of an elite athlete with my passion for advancing the sport of cycling through engineering.
“Having achieved nearly everything I dreamed of on the bike, I am now ready to fully dedicate myself to supporting the next generation of winners.
“The opportunity ahead of me at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is immense. No other team can match this level of combined knowledge, capability, and expertise across its network, and I am eager to leverage it to the fullest.”
Bigham previously worked as a performance engineer at Ineos but became disillusioned with his role and decided to quit before the Olympics.
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Ineos underwent big changes as Rod Ellingworth quit as Team Principal and Dr Scott Drawer coming in as performance director.
Bigham revealed a key reason behind his departure was a desire for greater autonomy, but denied a rift with Drawer.
He told The Telegraph: “It’s not particularly a me versus Scott thing at all.It’s more just how I see performance.
“How I want to do performance is not particularly aligned with how Ineos wanted to go about it. I wanted more autonomy, more ability to action my ideas. And I wasn’t really getting that at Ineos.
“I feel that a lot of performance we’re leaving on the table and that frustrates me because it’s clear as day we should be doing things a lot better.
“Let’s be honest, Ineos are not where they want to be, not where they need to be and the gap is not small.”