{"id":851710,"date":"2026-08-09T10:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T10:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/851710\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T10:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T10:48:12","slug":"the-american-cyclist-coaching-racers-while-doing-tour-de-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/851710\/","title":{"rendered":"The American Cyclist Coaching Racers While Doing Tour de France"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated August 9, 2026 04:38AM<\/p>\n

Natalie Quinn<\/a> was sobbing on top of Mont Ventoux Friday at the Tour de France Femmes<\/a>. Crying her heart out as her soigneur rubbed her back and consoled her.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t because the part-time cycling coach<\/a> had lost an important client either.<\/p>\n

She had fought with everything she had, crossing the line 126th and second-last, just over 40 minutes down on winner Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney.<\/p>\n

The main thing was, she finished inside the time cut and could continue in the sport\u2019s most prestigious race.<\/p>\n

Forced to race Ventoux on a 40-tooth chainring<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old from Utah suffered a mechanical problem at the bottom of the third-category climb preceding Ventoux<\/a> as the race was speeding up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to switch bikes, which is not ideal,\u201d she told Velo Saturday morning at the start of stage 8.\u00a0\u201cAnd then once we got to the bottom of the Ventoux, I realised the smallest front chainring I had on the spare bike was a 40. So I did Ventoux on a 40.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ouch.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just too much,\u201d she said. \u201cI felt pretty defeated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Out of office: sorry, am racing the Tour\u00a0
\n\"NatalieNatalie Quinn takes a moment to say hello. (Photo: Eduardo Saiz \/ Mayenne Monbana My Pie)<\/p>\n

As if making the time cut while racing for French squad Mayenne Monbana My Pie<\/a>, one of the smallest teams at the race, wasn\u2019t hard enough, she has to keep up with the demands of her online coaching business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team does pay me a salary, but it is helpful to supplement it with some side gigs,\u201d Quinn says. \u201cThe majority of my money right now does come from the team but I have a few athletes so it just helps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her other peloton peers probably don\u2019t have an out of office email that may well read: \u201cSorry for my lack of response this week, I\u2019m racing the Tour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Happily, she isn\u2019t getting any angry clients. \u201cLuckily, I don\u2019t have too many athletes right now and they are all pretty understanding of being in the Tour right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBesides a few texts here and there and me being like, \u2018yep, just go and do that\u2019, it hasn\u2019t been too much work.\u201d<\/p>\n

On one of the Tour\u2019s smallest teams
\n\"NatalieNatalie Quinn in team photo shoot mode\u00a0(Photo: Photo: Eduardo Saiz \/ Mayenne Monbana My Pie))<\/p>\n

It has been a fight for Quinn just to get to the Tour de France Femmes.<\/p>\n

After the former U23 US champion turned pro with EF Education-Oatly<\/a> in 2024, she joined Hess in 2025 and things got \u201ca little dicey\u201d.<\/p>\n

That is putting it kindly. Translation: the team had funding and UCI registration problems and failed to pay riders before collapsing mid-season. the team collapsed months later.<\/p>\n

Then she joined US outfit Cynisca, although the team did not have money in its budget to pay her and went \u201con hiatus\u201d at the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Emailing teams to find a lifeline<\/p>\n

\u201cI was emailing every team I could get an address for with my resume, and then Mayenne was interested,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

After phone calls around last year\u2019s Maryland Cycling Classic, where she finished sixth, they signed up Quinn.<\/p>\n

Who are the sponsors of this pleasingly alliterative team? Mayenne is a north-western French county, Monbana a chocolatier and My Pie (rather self-explanatorily) provides hot baked goods.<\/p>\n

They are low-budget underdogs up against WorldTour giants. A decent analogy is visible every morning in the Tour de France Femmes start zone, their campervan dwarfed by the team buses of bigger teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re pretty stoked in general. After yesterday, there was a little disappointment just in how hard the race has been,\u201d Quinn said of the team\u2019s mood.<\/p>\n

No water but Jayco saves the day
\n\"\"Quinn on the way to a top-30 finish in the race\u2019s time-trial, finshing in Dijon. (Photo by Tim de Waele\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going okay. Stage six and seven were pretty hard for me. I think the heat is just a big factor,\u201d Quinn reflected about her race. \u201cAnd one of the things with being on a smaller team is we don\u2019t have as many people to be on the feed zones. So we don\u2019t have as much access to cold water.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike yesterday [stage 6], I was in a group and luckily [Liv-Alula] Jayco was willing to share all their water with me,\u201d she says, laughing.<\/p>\n

Quinn was pleased with her stage four TT to Dijon, where she finished 28th.<\/p>\n

She has also had days in the front group, as well as a few enduring bad luck with crashes and mechanical issues sending her backwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can be surviving and also be enjoying it. I think that\u2019s kind of what I tried to do this whole Tour,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Going native<\/p>\n

She currently lives in Toulouse, a city in the south-west of France. The language spoken by most of her teammates is coming along \u201cun petit peu\u201d \u2013 a little bit \u2013 she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf the time, I\u2019m like, \u2018if something really important happens, one of my teammates will be like, \u2018Natalie, do you understand?\u2019 And I\u2019ll be like, \u2018no.\u2019<\/p>\n

Quinn has one more day of intensive French speaking and suffering in Nice until she can call herself a Tour de France Femmes finisher.<\/p>\n

She will be able to celebrate by the Mediterranean with her mother, who has been following the race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Updated August 9, 2026 04:38AM Natalie Quinn was sobbing on top of Mont Ventoux Friday at the Tour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,54263,82,296175,296176,130296,114079,54267],"class_list":["post-851710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-parent_category-road","tag-sports","tag-tag-mayenne-monbana-my-pie","tag-tag-natalie-quinn","tag-tag-tour-de-france-femmes","tag-tag-womens-cycling","tag-type-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}