Eeva Sarlin
We are fortunate here at Saddle Up to welcome Eeva to our team as a mentor for the riders we coach. Eeva brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to her role as a mentor. With a deep understanding of the cycling world, she will willingly share her expertise with aspiring cyclists. Eeva's insights include invaluable tips, training techniques, and strategies that can significantly enhance performance. Having encountered and overcome various challenges herself, Eeva serves as a valuable resource for navigating obstacles and avoiding common pitfalls.
Eeva was one of the first riders we ever coached. Working her way from skills session to becoming a national champion in Finland on the track and criterium as well as winning silver in the her first road race. We are fortunate to welcome Eeva to Saddle Up as a rider mentor. This was followed up with a couple of years racing at the highest level in Belgium for Multum Accountants UCI team.
Article Originally Featured in Cycling Weekly · 14 Feb 2019
How the British racing scene built a Finnish national champion in 12 months
When Eeva Sarlin moved to London she had never turned a pedal in anger. A bike loan and a lot of persuasion later and she was on the race circuit come 2017. By the end of 2018 she’d collected two National Championship titles in her home country, gaining a place in both the national and Olympic development teams. The now 28-year-old also holds Finnish titles in the omnium and criterium race.
Since joining London women’s club Velociposse in 2017, Sarlin’s goals have undergone a seismic shift, but the former track and field athlete doesn’t think she’d have got o! the start line without the support she found in the city. “I had a singlespeed which I used to commute to work. One man chased me in traffic and said, ‘You’re really fast for a woman, you should join our club.’
“When I heard about Velociposse, via Instagram, it was a culture I wanted to be a part of. Club coach Matt Butt lent Sarlin one of the Aventon track bikes donated to the Velociposse riders. “The first time I went to the Herne Hill velodrome women’s session there were some supergood women around me. I was so slow compared to everyone else, but they inspired me to feel I could go faster,” says Sarlin.
Herne Hill’s women’s sessions led to victories in the annual summer track league, and things went well when gears and brakes were added, too, Butt told us: “The first sign that Eeva had some potential was during her first [road] race in summer 2017. “No one was expecting her to ride away from the bunch to take fourth behind an earlier break. Two weeks later she took third place at the [2017] London Nocturne fixed.”
That winter, Sarlin set her sights on the women’s league at Lee Valley Velodrome. “Having that level of racing on an indoor velodrome was a real luxury, and that definitely helped me in the Finnish Nationals. Having women’s races made me more comfortable; I don’t think I’d have had the confidence to enter Lee Valley races if they were with the men,” she comments. Unfortunately, organiser Full Gas has since cancelled the women’s events for 2018- 2019, due to under-subscription.
What followed was a summer of consistent racing across the UK — crits as well as road races.
“The British system is great in that you can enter online and it’s very organised,” Sarlin says. “In London, it’s amazing that there are races happening all the time. When I got to Finland I realised how spoiled I’d been just with the sheer popularity of cycling in London.”
Sarlin says her favourite race weekend of 2018 was the London Nocturne double in her adopted home town — where she came fourth in the road crit and third in the fixed gear — followed by a win at the Cyclopark Team Series race the next day. “The Nocturne podium was late, and I had to get up early for Cyclopark on Sunday. I was so tired but then by the last lap I thought, ‘I can do this.’ I realised I was in pain but so was everyone else, I had nothing to lose.”
The one hurdle the then NGO worker, whose day job involved monitoring civilian casualties of war, came up against in the UK was the cost of racing. “The only issue I had was moving up in scale from crits to road races, which were expensive,” she says. To counter the expense of road racing in the UK, Sarlin moved briefly to Belgium where she could race for just €5 a go in pelotons as large as 100.
Then came the Nationals in Finland. “I really went there with no expectations. I wanted to see what it was like and hoped to be top 10. Then I came second in the road champs — to one of the best sprinters in the world. “For the crit race, I realised I had a chance. In the UK you have a lot of crits, so I’d had a lot of practice. I’d wanted to go for a solo breakaway, but in the end I won it in the sprint. It was amazing how quickly I went from wanting to ‘just see what it’s like’ to wanting to win.” “It all happened so quickly — going from [being] a chopper to being the top of my country. I had and still have massive impostor syndrome. However, it did kind of guarantee a place in the national team, and in a sense it made me want to give cycling a serious shot rather than keeping it as a side hobby.” With the 2019 season looming, Sarlin has downsized her career to part-time work, made herself a home a Majorca, and joined Belgian team Multum Accountants.
The big goal is in 2020 — and selection for the Finish national team at the Olympics. “Lotta Lepistö has enough UCI points to be selected, and there should be enough country points to have three or four riders to help her out. “To be one of them, I need to get good at racing UCI races, and collect UCI points. As with everything I’ve done so far, it feels like an unreal goal. But everyone around me is telling me I can do it and that I’ve got talent, and I’m starting to listen to them.”
Article Originally Featured in Cycling Weekly · 14 Feb 2019
