Daniel McLay

Daniel McLay
Personal information
McLay at the 2013 National Time Trial Championships
Full name	Daniel McLay
Born	(1992-01-03) 3 January 1992 Wellington, New Zealand
Height	1.87 m (6 ft 1 ¹⁄₂ in)
Weight	74 kg (163 lb; 11.7 st)
Team information
Current team	Bretagne-Séché Environnement
Discipline	Road and track
Role	Rider
Rider type	Endurance
Amateur team(s)
2008	Leicestershire Road Club
2009	Univega.co.uk
2011–2014	Omega Pharma-Lotto Davo
Professional team(s)
2015–	Bretagne-Séché Environnement
Infobox last updated on 1 February 2015

Daniel McLay (born 3 January 1992) is a British racing cyclist, competing in road, track and cyclo-cross. 2015 is the first year that he is a professional, racing for French pro-continental and 2014 Tour de France wildcard outfit Bretagne-Séché Environnement. Primarily a sprinter, McLay is also competent in the Flemish racing scene and has a particular affinity to the Northern Classics.

Biography

Born in Wellington, New Zealand, McLay moved to the UK as a young infant and was brought up in Leicester. McLay began cycling competitively at the age of six. Following his success as under 16 rider at the British National Track Championships, he represented Great Britain at the 2007 European Youth Olympic Festival,^[1] competing in the criterium and road race events.^[2] He says ^[3] that he was not very good at sports that require coordination as a school-boy and thus this fuelled his desire to continue competing in cycling.

McLay was selected to represent Britain at the Junior European Cyclo-cross Championships in 2008, where he finished last.^[4]

In 2009, McLay became a member of British Cycling's Olympic Academy.^[5] McLay went on to win the bronze medal in the Madison at the European Track Championships with partner Sam Harrison. He also represented Great Britain at the 2009 Junior UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships.

In 2010 he became World Champion in the Junior World Madison Track Championships (with Simon Yates))

In 2014 he won a stage of the Tour de l'Avenir, commonly coined as The Tour of the Future. He also came seventh in Tour of Britain stages, a strong showing given that sprinters such as Mark Cavendish, Marcel Kittel, Mark Renshaw and Adam Blyth were also competing. But, he says, seventh was not a representation of what he could have achieved.

He signed for the Bretagne-Séché Environnement professional continental team for the 2015 season.^[6] He won his first professional victory in Stage 3 of the 2015 La Tropicale Amissa Bongo.^[7] In the first UCI World Tour race of his career, the 2015 Paris–Nice, McLay came eighth in stage 5.^[8]