After years working in Business Management and Industrial Marketing, Angel Garcia realised it was not the path he wanted to follow until his retirement.
At weekends, the Spanish businessman had been swapping suit and tie for more casual attire and helping out in his friend’s bike shop. Gradually it dawned on him that this could be his next career. After all, he had met his wife when out mountain biking, and he spent all his spare time fixing his own bike or those of friends.
“I was a sales manager in a big corporation in Spain but I didn’t like it. I wanted to change my professional life.”
With his business experience drawing up commercial strategies and plans, he wasn’t going to launch himself blindly into a wild project with no foundation. He planned his career change very carefully.
Which is why, after more than two-and-a-half years in the USA working in bike shops in Denver, Colorado - and taking English lessons on the side - then three weeks’ intensive training at the famous Barnett Bicycle Institute in Colorado Springs, he is now at the UCI World Cycling Centre in Aigle, Switzerland on a two-month training course.
“I don’t want to be a normal mechanic, I want to be a very good mechanic,” he said. “The UCI World Cycling Centre is an excellent training ground. I need to practice and practice and practice.”
He gets plenty of that in the UCI WCC workshop under the supervision of Mechanics Manager Alex Roussel. “He has a different background than the other mechanics that have come for our course, but he is no less motivated,” observes Roussel.
With the European road season nearing its end and the UCI WCC trainees in Richmond for the UCI Road World Championships, the mechanics team in Aigle has been carrying out services on all the bikes in stock. The weekend before the athletes’ departure for Richmond, Angel Garcia accompanied the WCC team to a road race, and he will also work at the track competition Trois Jours d’Aigle, which takes place at the centre’s velodrome from October 1 to 3.
On leaving the UCI WCC at the end of October, Angel Garcia will undertake a week-long training course with USA Cycling in Colorado Springs, before returning home to Girona where he hopes to work for a professional team.
“Some professional teams are based there so there are good opportunities,” says the Spanish mechanic.
In its three years of existence, the UCI WCC’s Mechanics Development Programme has welcomed 13 mechanics from 11 countries and five continents. The programme will continue in 2016 and details of the course can be found on the UCI website.