Grant’s hoping for an ‘electric’ season with new team

AFTER departing Nukeproof SRAM Factory Racing, which folded last week, at the end of last season, Omagh’s Kelan Grant has his sights set on an exciting new opportunity in the world of e-bike racing after signing with a new team.

Having felt the end of his time with the Enduro World Series outfit may be limited when talks of budgets raised their heads several months ago, Grant admits he faced a nervous period before landing on his feet with the Germany’s Rotwild Schwalbe Gravity Team at the turn of the year.

“It was fairly stressful because you can very easily go unemployed in this game,” he admitted. “At the end of the day you truly are just a number so I’m pretty happy and these guys seem pretty happy to have me, so it could be a long-term deal.

“I got an offer a couple of months ago which came through about a month ago, which I’m super happy about. They are a big professional team, who are looking to do it properly so I’m very happy with it. I’m pretty stoked.”

The two-time Red Bull Fox Hunt winner will team up with Torben Drach and Helen Weber for the new season in May and he’s excited by the opportunity and the new experiences that lie ahead on bikes powered by both man and battery.

“It’s e-bike racing, which was another decision I had to make,” he explained. “Over the last couple of years it’s getting more prominent and more riders are joining and it’s a lot more professional and I have done some before which I have genuinely enjoyed.

“They are longer and harder days, you have a lot more climbing, the bikes are heavier, but I think that’s the way the sport is going. It’s going electric along with everything else and the market in Europe is 80% e-bikes, 20% normal bikes, so I think everyone will be leaning towards that over the next couple of years and teams will be changing to battery bikes.

“I thought it was a good opportunity so I just went for it.”

While it has been a mainly positive move for Grant, since joining forces with Rotwild Schwalbe Gravity, there has also been one massive down following his move after his shed burned to the ground with all his new machinery in it.

“[On Tuesday weeka go] my shed burned down and took everything with it!,” exclaimed the Rostrevor-based rider. “I hadn’t even some of the bikes out of their boxes yet and they’re gone.

“Thankfully [the team] are very good, they are sending me out some new bikes, and thankfully no-one was hurt.

“These things do happen and on this occasion it happened to us and it was a bit of a catastrophe but we were lucky too because the fire brigade said another couple of minutes and the house would have been up too.”

Grant will get his season underway with a team camp in April before the competitive side of things starts in May.