Life During Lockdown: Phil Gaimon

Phil Gaimon, more than any other retired professional athlete, has redefined what it means to be a pro cyclist. Like a growing number of recovering American professional road racers, Phil migrated back to the US to make his living as a freelance privateer. But unlike those other folks, he has not hitched his wagon to gravel races or even any races. Phil has built a huge following, including a bunch of sponsors, using digital platforms. By aggressively targeting Strava KOMs and cranking out a steady stream of video content, he’s more relevant and well known now than when he raced on the World Tour for the Garmin (now EF Pro Cycling) Team. While Phil won pro races and even made the break in the legendary Paris-Roubaix race, his notoriety has grown many times over since those years in Europe. Any pro athlete could learn a lot from Phil’s smart use of media, as well as his commitment to non-profits like No Kid Hungry. He just set the record for Everesting (29,029′ of vertical in one ride), and you can follow Phil on YouTube, Instagram, Strava, and Twitter. If you can make it, try his Cookie Fondo here in LA in the fall. I asked him how he was getting along during the crisis.

Give me some highlights and lowlights from your first two months in lockdown mode.

Relative to the real problems in the world, COVID’s affect on me personally is so marginal that I don’t even feel that I have a right to complain. I have some sponsors who froze payments, event appearances are an important source of income for me and those have been cancelled, but my personal woes aren’t worth mentioning in a time of widespread illness and death. A bigger issue for me is fear for my loved ones (my grandpa is 93 and I can’t get him to stop going to the grocery store), fear for our society when I read the news, and just a general feeling of dread that surrounds everything right now. My “thing” of bike riding is still encouraged by government and health officials so I’ve been able to train as normal, which has been nice but also makes me feel guilty — like I’ve found a loophole in the stay-at-home exception for outdoor exercise that allows me to do my job and have my outlet to stay sane, while so many others can’t do theirs and have to suffer.

Obvious upsides are cleaner air, and fewer cars on the road to fight with has been a blessing. For my business, with pro cycling events cancelled, the content that I create is in higher demand as many people are stuck at home looking for cycling to watch. Professional cycling is notoriously slow to adapt and uncreative, which is why I ended up carving my own niche outside of that with a cycling YouTube show, and as Hunter S. Thompson said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” So I’ve been working twice as hard to create more and different video and social content, building my audience, connecting better the audience I’ve had, experimenting with ideas that were low on my list but suddenly in demand. For example I’ve been doing a few videos a week that are completely unedited, me talking at camera. They get fewer views than something produced, but the people who watch them like them a lot, and I like it too, like we’re just hanging out as friends with no agenda. At this point in my career my currency is my platform, which has grown a lot in the last couple months. A big part of my youtube content is also a charity component and that’s been a highlight for sure, which I’ll get to later here.

How have you grown personally and professionally during this disruption?

I think we all try to grow all the time, but yes. In the past I made 45 videos per year, and last year I had I think a total of 2.5m views. I’ve made 50 videos in the last two months and I’m up to almost 1m views/week, added thousands of new subscribers, etc. In the broader sense, zooming out and reassessing priorities and relationships, discovering what and who is really important to me as a lot of the noise disappeared.

Has your relationship with bicycles and your community changed as a result of having no live events or group rides on the schedule?

There are folks I haven’t seen for awhile but social media fills that gap pretty well. I think the group rides will feel normal whenever they resume. Our communities have all gotten smaller but we’ll spread out again I’m sure.

Can bicycles and athletes create positive change in the world during a crisis like this?

I always dedicate my summer to raising money for No Kid Hungry. This year my plans for a Tour of California were cancelled, so instead I made videos around a world record for climbing the equivalent of Mt. Everest on a bike. That campaign has gone great and will probably get me to my $100k fundraising goal 6 months earlier than expected. It’s been really encouraging to see how folks are willing to donate because times are so bad, when you’d think they’d be holding tighter to their money due to uncertainty. It’s a weird non sequitur where I say “here’s me doing something cool on a bike, now donate to feed kids,” but it’s a platform and it works and gives meaning to my bike riding that was always missing as a professional racer, where the level of competition is so high, you have to be one-dimensional and selfish. I used to have a lot of trouble winning a race and feeling good about it of course, but also grasping the meaninglessness of it.

I’ve always felt that bikes can save the world, from an environmental perspective, health, freedom, etc. Cycling was medicine for depression for me long before it was a competition or livelihood, and I think it has that potential for many more. All reports are that as outdoor exercise has been encouraged, low-end bike sales have skyrocketed. I hope that those folks stay on their bikes and we can see growth in cycling, happier streets, and healthier humans after this.