The Man Behind EF Gone Racing | Harry Dowdney

Bonjour, ça fait longtemps. Apologies for the recent radio silence, I've had a rough couple of weeks. I've not felt myself on the bike. This led to make taking a COVID test (negative), blood tests, and an extended rest period. I'm starting to feel better in myself, so it's time to get back riding, and there's plenty more blogs to come! I hope you enjoy reading.

EF Gone Racing is one of the most successful video series to come out of cycling. It gives fans an insight into the protagonists of the sport. GCN’s Race Pass is arguably the next big thing in cycling media. With access to live racing and studio shows, it’s a platform developed for the cycling fan. There’s one man who’s behind the scenes in both. Harry Dowdney. A cycling fan, who stumbled into one of the most incredible jobs in the sport. I had a call with him to hear his story…

From the outside, Rapha has a reputation for pretentiousness, the exact quality that caused Harry to leave his previous job at an agency in Madrid. It’s clear that this reputation is wrong, and that Rapha has a place in his heart. Describing his years there, his voice lifts, and the use of superlatives goes up tenfold. Rapha is a cyclist’s dream employer. Take Wednesday mornings; employees can ride their bikes until lunchtime. There are group rides from every corner of London, across every discipline. The best thing? It’s actively encouraged by the boss.

The original concept for the EF Gone Racing came from one of Rapha’s Monday morning meetings. Each week, the whole company comes together to talk about bike racing. Simon Mottram, the Rapha Founder and CEO (''Mr Mottram'', as he is referred to by Dowdney) wants the whole company to be engaged in the sport. ‘’He’s the biggest cycling fan and geek you can ever imagine’’, Dowdney explains. It was out of these Monday morning meetings that ‘Rapha Race Radio’ was born, the pre-cursor to EF Gone Racing.

‘’How do you make a guy in IT or Finance give a shit about bike racing?’’, was Dowdney’s thoughts when he stood up in those Monday morning meetings. It was the brainwave that changed his career path. Seemingly out of nowhere, he went from an office based copywriter to working with his best mate travelling around Europe in a campervan. ‘’I didn’t have a clue what I was doing with filming, but I had the greatest experience of my life’’. Already in every fan’s dream, making a living while following the cycling circus from town to town, EF came along and it was about to get a whole lot better.

'’Extraordinary, incredible, a really really exciting time for us’’. Dowdney’s passion for EF Gone Racing, his baby, is palpable. He puts the success of the series down to the personalities on the EF Pro-Team. There's obvious camaraderie between the riders: ‘’Lachlan [Morton] Taylor [Phinney] and Alex Howes, are all mates which helps’’, he explains. Dowdney laughed off my suggestion that any of the filming had been set up, describing Phinney as ‘’the most fascinating person’’ and Morton ‘’as legitimately cool as he seems on camera’’.

He admitted that it was tough at times to get the ‘’old guard’’, to open up. While the aforementioned riders were easy to film, the older European pros are hardwired to not come out of their shell. This was one of the many challenges. Not being too intrusive with the riders while getting the story was a fine-line. Add in the minefield of rules around race broadcast rights, it was hardly a walk in the park.

Why can’t other teams replicate it? My question to Dowdney is met with the humility that’s seeping through the phone call. He shifts the chat onto OGE’s BackstagePass and how he ‘’fell in love’’ with Esteban Chaves’ character as well as his athletic ability. He makes it clear that Rapha weren’t the first to make behind the scenes content. He details that watching OGE led them to making a slogan which they applied to everything they did: ‘’Cycling with character - personality’’.

EF Gone Racing is engaging in a way that it doesn’t rely on big names. In fact, they purposely don’t pick the big name riders in the team. They pick the most engaging stories.

Going back to ‘Why can’t other teams replicate it?’, Dowdney believes that they simply don’t have the characters, ‘’it’s the riders that make the content’’. It’s a full-team effort though, ‘’just taking a videographer, doesn’t guarantee views, and it’s not cheap’’ was one of the key take-aways from the chat. Everyone has to be involved with the process and be 100% on board, or it simply doesn’t work.

After 5-years at Rapha, Dowdney left the dream job and moved over to GCN. Afraid of becoming stagnant, he wanted to push himself. After chatting to Si Richardson, he made the jump, principally to launch a new weekly show on the new GCN RacePass. When asked about the RacePass, his giddiness as a cycling fan comes out ‘’it’s an amazing proposition, it’s everything in one place, like the Eurosport player but 100% cycling focussed…We want to make the definitive weekly cycling show – the GCN fun alongside serious race analysis’’.

At a first look, they’ve started strong. The 50-minute weekly show that Dowdney is behind is like a cycling version of ‘Football Focus’ but better, much better. With guests, highlights, features and competitions. GCN RacePass has also got live-streams to pretty much every major bike race, as well as a whole bunch of written analysis. It’s game-changing, and for not that much money.

Closing out the interview, I’m going to end on the same question I ask everyone: If you could change one thing about cycling, what would it be?

Dowdney’s tone of voice shifted. From the childlike joy when talking about his experiences at Rapha, to the excitement of moving to GCN, his tone became more serious, and in a way, disappointed. ‘’The ASO’s blatant fobbing off of the women’s peloton – there should be a women’s Tour de France, no question, it’s not like they can’t afford it’’.

His frustration over women’s cycling is clear. It’s the elephant in the room. Through their new RacePass, GCN are covering more women’s racing than ever before. The tide is starting to turn. Take CyclingTips, they have a podcast devoted to women’s cycling. More coverage, however, is just the start, there needs to be more opportunities in the first place.

I would like to thank Harry for taking the time to chat with me. This is the first interview style piece I've ever tried to write, so apologies for the structure, I'm very much a learner. Keep your eye out over the next few weeks for more interviews coming up.

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