LOOKING EAST
TIMOTHY JOHN TALKS TO HENRIETTA COLBORNE
From Lancaster to San Salvador, Flanders to Philadelphia, Poitiers to Chongming Island, Henrietta Colborne's 2026 season with the XDS China women’s team embodied the globetrotting nature of the professional cyclist. As a former Rayner Foundation rider accustomed to competing in Europe since her late teens, nothing in this expanded itinerary troubled her.
Instead, she embraced the opportunity presented by Foundation ambassador Tim Harris, a sports director with XDS China. She has not regretted the decision. Her experience proved a valuable asset to her teammates, 13 of whom are Chinese and, with some exceptions, were largely unfamiliar with European racing.
"I think with this team, it was a case of, 'Why wouldn't you?'" Colborne says of her opportunity with the Chinese-registered UCI Continental squad. "You get to a stage in your career where you've been doing the same races over and over again. Why wouldn't you do something different? It's a golden ticket."
For Colborne, cycling is life. When she is not racing, she works at The Bike Inn, a business she runs with her father, Jon Colborne, in Cumbria. In addition to selling road, mountain, gravel, and e-bikes, the shop is a recognised provider of high-quality training courses for mechanics, one of which will be auctioned at the Foundation's annual dinner at the Queens Hotel, Leeds, on Saturday November 7, 2026.
Tickets to ride
Except for the handful of professionals rostered for the Tour Down Under, few riders in Britain or Europe would contemplate starting their season in January. Colborne, however, rolled out before San Salvador's Palacio Nacional, once the seat of government and now a national museum, to start the seventh Tour El Salvador on January 17.
A busy, 11-day schedule offered varied terrain, from 25-kilometre climbs to flatter engagements on the country's Pacific coast. Colborne concluded her Central American sojourn with a creditable fifth place in the Grand Prix Oriente.
The Philadelphia Cycling Classic provided a very different experience. The urban race, much missed in North America, returned in August after a 10-year hiatus. Its parcours, like that of its celebrated predecessor, contained the Manayunk Wall: a 700-metre ramp with double-digit gradients. Colborne's succinct description speaks volumes - "a very, very hard race" - but the pain was balanced by pleasure.
"The support was absolutely phenomenal. It was one of the best races I'd ever been to. Something like 80,000 people came out to watch. The council and the whole city got behind it. They had a park area with an exhibition and held amateur races before the women’s and men’s races. At the far end of the circuit, there was a fog machine on the course. People came out with their deckchairs and made it an absolute hoot."
Fittingly, the team concluded its season in China at the Tour of Chongming Island, the final race on the UCI Women's WorldTour calendar, following the cancellation of the one-day women's Tour of Guangxi. Colborne proved herself even more adept at racing on wide Asian boulevards than her teammates and finished the three-day race as XDS China's highest-placed competitor with an impressive ninth place; not bad in an event with five Women’s World Teams on the start list and won by superstar Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime).
Belgium calling
For all of their enjoyable experiences outside of cycling's European heartlands, perhaps XDS China's most valuable block of racing came in the kermess races synonymous with Dutch and Belgian cycling. Here, Colborne's experience in the "feisty" business of full gas racing on narrow, twisting roads, roared on by huge crowds enjoying a carnival atmosphere in which bike racing is often only one part, proved invaluable.
"The kermess series was absolutely imperative. It taught the girls to fight on the bike. You can produce as many watts as you want, but you have to get yourself in a position to show the watts. It was a real progression," she reflects.
The racing and a house in Belgium large enough to accommodate 16 people combined to provide an accelerated education. Kermesses, hard, fast, and plentiful, were only one part of a broader immersion in Western culture.
"For many of the riders, it was the first time they'd been outside China. They have limited English. Google Translate is used quite a lot, but when you're in a bike race, you'd be amazed how much sign language and very basic English works!"
Born on a bike
Colborne's cycling journey is as adventurous as those of her Chinese teammates. Placed on the back of a tandem at nine years old by her father and told they were going on a touring holiday, she has barely stopped pedalling since.
The family's move from Norfolk to Cumbria, following her father’s purchase of The Bike Inn, facilitated a solid club education with the Border City Wheelers and, latterly, the Beacon Wheelers, where her teammates included Mark Donovan (Pinarello-Q36.5) who next year will race for Visma-Lease a Bike.
Her potential, developed in national and regional road races and at the weekly Manchester track league, was recognised by British Cycling's Olympic Academy, with whom she earned a place as an under-16 and under-18. The clearest sign of her ambition, however, was her hunger to compete overseas.
Valuable experience
For Colborne, travel has always been a perk of the cyclist’s job, and European racing quickly became her metier. Other teenagers might have been daunted by the prospect of travelling alone to races abroad, but she saw only excitement and opportunity.
"I remember one time I did the Italian National Cups. I basically emailed the organiser and said, 'Have you got a mixed team I can join?' I took myself off and flew to Italy. I didn't know anyone. I had a hotel. The normal normal! You phone when you get there to say you're safe and then settle into the routine of pre-race riding and racing, so from quite a young age, I was independent in that respect."
A scholarship from Cycling Time-Trials allowed her to spend the summer of 2016 in The Netherlands. She guested for Isorex, including at the BeNe Ladies Tour, where she leveraged a loophole allowing juniors to compete if on holiday from school.
In 2017, she joined the Dutch club team, Swabo Ladies. Colborne is unequivocal about the importance of the Foundation’s support in the early phase of her European career. Asked if she could have raced abroad without Rayner funding, she replies in two words: “Absolutely not.”
“Their attitude was go there, live it, breathe it, do it,” she continues. “There was no other way. It enabled you to actually go and give it a shot.”
In 2018, she spent her first season as a professional with the Bizkaia Durango-Euskadi Murias team with whom she rode the women's Giro d'Italia. She followed her year in the mountainous Basque Country with a return to The Netherlands and Swabo, which had become a UCI Continental team and raced variously as Biehler Pro Cycling and GT Krush.
Last year, she spent a season with Belgium's Velopro-EGS Group-Alpha Motorhomes, for whom she raced the Classic Brugge-De Panne, the Tour de Feminin, and the Baloise Ladies Tour.
"I think that was a period that really consolidated me in European racing," she concludes. "It was another valuable experience that this year I could impart."
Inn keeper
This year, Colborne combined her international itinerary with XDS China with her duties at The Bike Inn. Our interview, which took place a day after she returned from China, was delayed while she installed a payroll system, demonstrating her versatility and the surprisingly complementary nature of her roles as bike racer and company director.
Her father bought the business and moved his family north from Kings Lynn when the previous owners retired. Having trained and taught at The Bike Inn, he had an insider's view of such a valuable offering. A varied client base now includes school leavers, career changers, including ex-services personnel, and mechanics already working in the bike industry, seeking to update their skills.
Colborne has a mechanic's qualification, as well as Level 3 coaching certifications from British Cycling and the Association of British Cycling Coaches (ABCC). She is as at home in the workshop or fitness studio as she is in the peloton at Women's World Tour events.
Her willingness to travel to far-flung destinations is the keenest example of the qualities that define Rayner Foundation riders, past and present. Readiness seems to be a characteristic inherited from her father.
"His parental attitude was, 'As long as you go to school so you have the grades to go to university, you can then go and cycle full-time, basically,’” she reflects. “But on the proviso that I picked up skills that would allow me to live anywhere in the world and earn a living, so if I got run over by a bus, I wouldn't be a burden on the state," she says.
Have bike, will travel
Bike racer, shop owner, globetrotter, and mentor to her Chinese teammates, Colborne embodies the qualities of Rayner riders past and present: ambition, resilience, and self-sufficiency. Confident travelling to far-flung destinations with little more than air tags and credit cards, she exemplifies the racing cyclist’s ‘have bike, will travel’ ethos.
It seems fitting that her association with the Foundation continues. With ambassador Tim Harris as a sports director, and rider liaison Joscelin Ryan an occasional supporter at kermesse races, two key figures from her time as a supported rider remain in her racing orbit. The Bike Inn's generous donation to the annual dinner's auction illustrates the close bonds that unite the charity's wider family.
ALL PHOTOS BY XDS PHOTOGRAPH
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