It was on the final lap of the British National Championships road race in Huntingdon that Ruby Isaac realised she was about to become junior national champion.
“I heard the bell, and I could see that I had the gap,” Isaac remembered, wearing the green shirt of her team, Tofauti Everyone Active Majaco, on that rain-soaked Sunday in Cambridgeshire.
“I thought – I could hold this. I had the motorbike in front of me, and the other girl I was out in the front with was saying, ‘you’ve got 20 seconds, 23, 24’ and the time was going up…then I kind of believed I had it. It was when I hit the finishing straight, that’s when I knew – you’re the national champion.”
“It was a great win for Ruby,” said coach Dean Downing.
“It was unexpected, because the course was proper flat and Ruby does great at long, sustained climbs. So, training wise we weren’t preparing for it specifically, we’d been doing long sustained efforts indoors, with a bit of heat training but more so turbo training – long 30 minute x2 blocks several times a week,” Downing continued.
“So because it was so flat, we had no real expectations for Ruby other than to go and enjoy it and attack the race and see what happens. When she did get there, the team tactics were for Ruby to open up the race for other riders in her team, so it paid off massively because Ruby really enjoyed riding like that – attacking, no pressure. We’re all really proud of her.”
The summer splayed out for the young rider, the Tour du Valromey and UCI Nations Cup races, three months of riding before school started again in September: back to sociology; English language and criminology (“it might help for a future career” she teased, peering into a distant world beyond cycling). But, at the Watersley Nations Cup in the Netherlands, her plans were changed with a crash that sent her over her handlebars, breaking both wrists.
“And just like that my season has come to an end,” the 17-year old wrote in an Instagram post in July.
“I had some amazing opportunities coming up which sadly I have to miss, but I will be back stronger,” she continued, signing off her Instagram caption with her signature, “Ruby X”.
Now recouping on the sofa back at home, she’s looking back at her short – but action packed – career in this pause-moment. She’s been cycling now for 11 years, learning first from her grandmother, then quickly progressed onto rollers – her first set courtesy of her dad, Nick. And, like any seven year old faced with a monotonous task – she began to play.
“On rollers, you quickly just want to learn, like, no hands and everything. And then, with my dad’s help, I made my first video,” she remembered.
The videos came thick and fast – in one she shoots a basketball hoop backwards whilst pedalling upright, in another she lines up a DVD player a few feet in front of her wheel, and skilfully flicks a CD into it. But for Isaac’s favourite trick, she “skips” on the bike, waiting to find the right speed on the rollers before looping the rope under her wheels before finishing with an effortless hop off the rollers and out of the frame.
“The skipping was just very out there. We [had] never really seen anyone else do it. It took a long time to get the trick right, and many times falling off in the garden! So that was probably my favourite one.”
Not only is Isaac incredibly skilled on a bike – she has even led her own roller classes – she possesses a level of acute coordination and agility most of us can only dream of. But it has come with work – countless bike crashes in the garden, many missed pancakes (see: video of Isaac catching a flying pancake in a pan whilst balancing on the rollers) and, time and time again, the commitment to get back on the bike and try until she got it right.
Her videos soon clocked up tens of thousands of loyal viewers across YouTube and Instagram, leading to support from her first sponsor, Specialized, then Santini and Trek. She made videos interviewing Lizzie Deignan and the Australian Cycling Team, and hosted online fitness classes for kids. She even became the Tour de California’s roaming junior reporter, after Specialized flew her out to watch some of her heroes race. But Isaac’s main inspiration, she maintains, came from closer to home.
“Laura Kenny inspired me to learn to start riding a bike and get into cycling,” she said of the five time Olympic champion.
“I think the 2016 Olympics was coming up [when Isaac was getting into cycling] and obviously she [had won] all her gold medals at the 2012 one. So yeah, she inspired me a lot. And that’s what I’ve wanted to do for young girls, to just get more girls into cycling.”
From roller videos and international interviews with the pros to British National Champion – the teenager is now making her mark in the racing world. She’s put in the hours. And, only a few weeks after her crash, she’s already been back on the rollers, preparing for her return to racing, her memory of her recent win still strong in her mind.
“It’s ended early, but it’s been a very good year. If someone told me at the start of the year that I would become national champion and go to Nations Cups and get all these opportunities from my team to go to these races…I probably wouldn’t believe it.”
At home now, waiting for school to kick off again, Isaac is dreaming of the start line, of crowding at the beginning of a race yet to unfold. She had won on a course she’d thought wasn’t hers to win, and she’s still in disbelief. So what’s next for the young rider? We wait to see.
