Sami Sauri is the Spanish cyclist-filmmaker who built an entire cycling career outside the World Tour ladder — alley-cat racing in Barcelona, the Red Hook Crit, LA Sweat road racing, then long-distance gravel and adventure rides for Komoot, Velocio and Thereabouts. Her work matters because it is the cleanest example of how a non-pro can make cycling their life through storytelling, photography and adventure rides without ever signing a WorldTour contract. For amateurs who love the sport but don't want to chase a results career, she is the model.
01Sami Sauri rode 280km on Route 66 at 31kph average — coming from fixed-gear racing, no big training block, just said yes to the trip with the Thereabouts guys and figured it out.
02Her cycling arc: 11 years ago Barcelona fixed-gear hipster (yellow bike, pink front wheel, no brakes), then alley-cat races, then Red Hook crit (nearly died first time, never trained before), then LA Sweat road racing, then adventure filmmaking.
03The "Roadman" name as gender-neutral framing — Anthony explains it's a marker of respect that he wants to apply to riders regardless of gender. Future plan: branch into Roadman / Roadwoman editions.
04You don't need a WorldTour contract to make cycling your life. Sami has built a career on adventure, filmmaking and storytelling that bypasses the WorldTour ladder entirely — and gives her cycling without the brutal travel calendar.
05The film with Velocio takes Sami to a remote Atlantic island with a surfboard strapped to her bike. Cycling photographs that look like cycling; this one is "carry a surfboard on a bike" cool.
Sami Sauri rode 280 kilometers in a single day on Route 66 at 31 km/h average, mostly on highway because the old road doesn't exist anymore. She did it coming from fixed gear racing. No grand plan, no training block designed for it. Just said yes and figured it out.
Key Takeaways
The thing Sauri keeps coming back to is that the barrier to starting isn't fitness or kit. She did her first 200k ever on the Route 66 trip. The Trans Labrador Highway was 680 kilometers of rocky gravel with professional cyclists including Gus Morton and Jacob Rathy, and she was producing the film at the same time. Nobody handed her an easy entry point. She just went. Her advice: start small, do flat roads if that's what you have, get comfortable with your gear before you worry about upgrading it.
The W Camps she's building in Girona for 2022 are built around the same idea. No minimum bike price, no minimum fitness level. She watched the women's camp culture develop in the US and couldn't find anything like it in Europe, so she started putting one together herself. The gravel scene has got this right in a way road racing hasn't. You can show up on a bad bike in the wrong kit and nobody's sending you home.
You Might Also Like
If the gravel and adventure side of cycling interests you, the episode on gravel's first super team goes into how that world is professionalising fast. And if you want the other end of the spectrum, the Pogacar episode covers what it actually looks like when someone builds a career the traditional way.
CLAIMS FROM THIS EPISODE
Each tagged with the strength of evidence behind it.
ANECDOTE
Sami Sauri rode 280 kilometres in a single day on Route 66 at an average speed of approximately 31 km/h, primarily on highway because the original Route 66 alignment is no longer fully extant.
Source: Sami Sauri first-person account
ANECDOTE
Sauri's competitive cycling background is in fixed-gear alley-cat racing and Red Hook Crit — disciplines structurally distinct from traditional road cycling pathways but providing the bike-handling and stamina foundation she applied to long-form adventure cycling.
Source: Sami Sauri career account
OPINION
Anthony Walsh applies the term "Roadman" as a gender-neutral marker of respect for cyclists who complete genuinely difficult challenges, with future plans to branch the brand into "Roadman" and "Roadwoman" editions as audience scale supports the split.
Source: Anthony Walsh, on the Roadman Cycling Podcast
OPINION
Career models for full-time cycling participation outside the WorldTour pathway — including adventure filmmaking, sponsored content, and brand collaborations — have grown structurally enough to support riders like Sauri working with Velocio and similar female-led brands.
Source: Anthony Walsh and Sami Sauri discussion
KEY QUOTES
“i never recommend to start with a route 66 that's for sure after i came i was coming from like fixed gear racing like super short and track and and i throw myself into rex's 66 uh and and i remember doing even a photo of like the first 200k in my life on that trip”
“i was the only woman into six men so it was pretty hard to handle at the end of the trip i felt like very uh sort of uh let's say it was the only time in my life i actually felt that i was a woman there you know and i was like just working full there for them um because i was also producing which is the hardest part of a film”
“if you're with a couple you can have and you do a big trip like that like i'm saying like a month trip it's not like a litter you need to really communicate properly and you need to really understand each other very well if if you do not do not even like do not even try it because it's gonna go like hell”
Roadman is it's a gender neutral term for i'm using i'm trying to make it a gender neutral term and it's like a a term you can use to somebody as like america respect ten seconds more ten seconds more push ups four shots four shots push ups the goal is to ride 200 kilometers getting that average speed up sammy sorry welcome to the road man cycling podcast thank you nice to be here today did i get the pronunciation on your name correct yeah very correct yeah i i don't i don't work on that that sort of professionalism doesn't happen by accident yes sorry um yeah i mean i'm super pleased to be in this podcast today and uh and i have to talk to you um i just have a quick question girlfriend why is it called road man and not road warming oh this is starting off as a tough podcast road man is it's a gender neutral term where i'm using i'm trying to make it a gender neutral term and it's like a term you can use to somebody as like a marker respect so some of the stuff you've done some of your crazy adventures you'd get to the end of me and say okay now you're a road man so that's kind of the idea so it's because it's in a sort of infancy as well what we will do is probably branch and have romantic vision and then road woman division at some point but for now we're using it as gender neutral because we have a nice mix like behind the podcast is our coaching company and i'd say we're 50 50 male female in the coaching company as well so we do try and keep that gender mix and we heard our first full-time staffer as well who is a woman as well so we're super happy with that that's interesting okay that was my like main question i was just thinking about it the other day i was like before i forget and we go on the road and and to talking about adventure unless it's yeah uh somebody your instagram page is just it's so cool if anyone doesn't follow you on instagram i'll get it i'll link it up in the description and stuff below but it's just such a cool instagram page it just makes me want to ride my bike and explore and make movies and tell stories and go surf and it just looks like everyone's life looks amazing on instagram but your life looks extra amazing on instagram thank you thank you i mean it was not planned i promise it's just it comes along uh you know naturally so yeah i don't know what to say to that it seems like uh researching the podcast and i followed you for a little bit i'll get into it a little bit when i kind of came across you but it seems like you've had a very changeable relationship with the bike from you know trying racing filmmaking and now would it be fair to say the bike is nearly like a tool for adventure for you yeah totally like that i mean i started let's call it street fixing or like street cruising you know like a fixed gear bike uh 11 years ago mini handlebar no brakes go crazy up and down barcelona real hipster i really like my bike was yellow and then started to be pink and blue and all these things like with head three like pink wheels on the front and um and then after that i yes i just it's a bike like messenger this is called distinctive ally cats um which it was like a fun race let's say uh but it started to get serious and then i tried as well like some crates and it actually went well so i got my first sponsor and and it was just like uh like a buckle like you naturally got integrated into this new world for me um and it it yeah i i loved it i raced it red hook and i can't remember two 2000 something for the first time which i nearly died red hooks looks so crazy the first the first time i did it was new york straight into the like the biggest one and i remember doing three laps on um on qualifications and i went out and i was coughing and i was completely right and i was like why i'm like this i don't understand it's because i've never trained before i never did an alpha before so um but yeah from there i mean i i use the bike as exactly as to move around and to you know to sort of travel um obviously i would to as well be this like professional cyclist i also even went to berlin which was a bit more strict for me and it's what i needed on that time and sign up for a um american team called l.a sweat um and then just like you know after that i got the opportunity to go and see and explore route 66 with the thereabout guys and and i was like this is opportunity one from never so i have to go and do it and uh and from there i saw the bike as exactly as a tool of adventure and a tool even for work and for exploring basically in another way so everything sort of switch it i wanted to compete because i kind of like it and gravel is fun and you know dk and all these things are really cool but i don't know i like i i like to just exploring the bike takes me to everywhere it's i've have so many yet most of the guests on the podcast are world tour guys or and or world tour girls and uh when i started out cycling i suppose that's what i gravitated towards starting to think okay well i have to try and you know as we take cat up go from cat 43 to two to one okay now i'm one now i gotta go elite amateur somewhere and then i gotta get a pro contract and because in my head i loved cycling so much and the only way to make cycling like my whole life was i taught at the time was to get a world tour contract and i think well that's the only way you can get paid from cycling but as you i'm not sure if this is a developing area or my awareness of it is developing but since kind of abandoning that dream of going world tour many years ago then i set out and said well what else can i do to make cycling such a huge part of my life but not necessarily be a world tour rider and there's just so many other avenues to do this in and you seem to have carved this out super well that you're you don't have any of the bad [ __ ] from world tour like having to travel and race and all that stuff but you still have to ride your bike train that's the worst part it's brutal dragon snowfall yeah i actually like wanted to sign up for a like little race road race which i don't even have a road bike right now just to challenge myself again and and to sort of get into an event that i didn't do any this year um and and i'm training and i'm like why did i put myself into hell again but like training you like like a tiny train like okay one hour and a half two days three days four and that's it so you have a picture on your instagram was flicking back doing some research for the podcast and it might be the coolest picture in cycling history you tone a surfboard on your bike well this is this film is coming along um velocio is involved which i was really happy to get them awesome yeah i mean especially for women's cycle i think they're one of the best shows right now in the market and and so i wanted to work with them since a long time so i thought it was really cool to bring them on a project that is not just about cycling because they also reach out to all this amazing woman around the world that you know this sort of like capable capable for everything so so basically yeah this this is a film that's coming along i just wanted to tease a little bit the people um but yeah i i i'll just give a little resume it's uh it's an island on the middle of the atlantic it was the steepest island i've not seen a road cyclist on the whole entire trip because it just goes or up or down and like this i think there was one day that i got like i did like 23ks and a thousand 400 meters of climbing um so i didn't really even see a downhill it was just up um and yeah it's it's it it's just i just wanted to combine basically two sports uh and i love surfing at surf since a long while and when i got back to it i thought that the best manner and the easiest way to do it is just combining the two of them so did you have to make the trailer or was it like pre-bought no longer ago with chris mclean which is a really cool photographer he invited me to a shooting um in asturias here in the north of spain and he brought these two trailers and uh and basically i i was like oh this is super cool you know i've made myself a board from some friends uh another one not the one i was having the other day and uh and i just put it up and we just served uh three days in the north of spain and from there i took the name and i bought it myself straight away i did like a last minute buy and a last minute trip as well and it was amazing it's super cool this trailer and when's the video coming out i think it will be let's say midsummer august i am i we're sort of working towards it are you is it a painful editing process at the moment well i have four films to edit uh i i and my computer just cracked today um i'm happy that it's working right now but it's not working with anything else so um so today is like the hell of a typical day that nothing really works um but yeah it is it is but it's fun to see yourself actually on the other side it's kind of cool so the first time i came across you was i think the outskirts uh movie you wrote across route 66 and i think there's a beginning scene and i'm not sure if it's uh if it's ghost martin or someone else narrates it but they're basically talking about this is a film about exploration about adventure on the most iconic road in the world and the people along the way like that must have been a crazy trip what is it like four thousand kilometers three time zones like eight states yeah how did you get involved in that and what was that like i think i mean it's funny because i think i've done 12 or 13 states in total and in that from that beginning of the trip till the the time i came back here because uh we also wrote right and then after that i was in a training camp and all this so it was it was quite an intense uh trip um it's i mean it's not well it's really hard because it's not like my favorite one it was a hell of a trip uh as well because of personal situation stuff but i mean i got to see america from side to side so i was really lucky and i think the opportunity that on the time gus gave me it was it was really cool you know like uh because after that we went to transfer the highway as well so i was yeah um i don't know but it seems like you're getting thrown in at a pretty hardcore level like in the the one else was trans iberian highway that one was trans labrador highway yeah that one was crazy like in here with lachlan martin who's obviously a world tour rider now and no the chance that the tractor door highway was uh dan uh craven which is for yes yeah giant craven and um uh now i can't say his name the other guy who is also from jelly belly um jacob rathy yes and gus morton so i'm i'm literally just but i didn't we didn't spoke about this before with gus it's like yeah you come you know like we need a female and i tried to search another female because i was producing that at the same time uh and i was also doing some stills like and helping photography and stuff so but i didn't thought oh i'm just getting myself into three extra cyclists that just want to go fast and enjoy an adventure uh on a 680 kilometers gravel road you know and not like a smooth gravel road kind of like a super rocky gravel road but you know i went and did it because you know i i as i say i don't close myself in into opportunities if it's helen and that happens afterwards right um and and it was not a good decision that's for sure because it resulted if i remember it's a while since i've seen the documentary but it was a little bit of tension between you and the main character ghost morton yeah he was my ex um like my ex-couple do you say like this like mike's oh he's your ex-boyfriend yeah ah okay so yeah you were ex at the time or you were together at the time we were together at the time okay like say route 66 and then translator we were together actually yeah like it seems like there was a lot of tension around your fitness level versus stairs but it was like an unrealistic expectation that you were going to be at the same level as ex-professional reuters yeah plus it was a there was a bit of matches in there because i was the only woman into six men so it was pretty hard to handle at the end of the trip i felt like very uh sort of uh let's say it was the only time in my life i actually felt that i was a woman there you know and i was like just working full there for them um because i was also producing which is the hardest part of a film let's say so it was like all this mixing pieces so i had yeah a little bit of ups and downs with all of them so we actually got to watch the relationship fall apart live on camera and and he didn't really put all of it but there was a lot of the hell of the times film it um i wish i wish he would have done it because you know it's it's you can if you're with a couple you can have and you do a big trip like that like i'm saying like a month trip it's not like a litter you need to really communicate properly and you need to really understand each other very well if if you do not do not even like do not even try it because it's gonna go like hell but in retrospect was it still a good experience especially route 66 one i know maybe it's a straight road like i've i've driven parts of route 66 and like at times it is a it's a very busy road and maybe that didn't make for the best cycling at times yeah i mean the last 500k is pretty much we needed to jump all the time in the highway because there was no road anymore so it's it's a road completely undeclined that doesn't exist that was that like 60s 70s route 66 beautiful like little roads and motels it it's just like it's just a highway now so we had to jump i remember there was a day we did like 280 cases 31 average because it was just literally highway straight forward and that was ear plugs or music and just follow a will you know there's nothing you could do so a lot of your content and storytelling i would describe it as almost aspirational for definitely a lot of my audience that listen to the podcast they're you know they're stuck in work they're you know living in ireland uk across america and they they just want to break free and they want to get out on their bikes they want to have these big adventures but it's something that's so far out in our comfort zone that it's it's just not easy for them so i suppose is there do you think a best starting point or advice you would give someone like that if they want to plan this big epic how do they get started well i i always say like i in most of my films and stuff like no matter what you wear who you are right like um or what bike you do you have like i see people doing adventures with like a bike that costs like nothing it doesn't matter whatever it costs you know it matters that if the bike is right you're comfortable with it and you just get out and do it um i i never recommend to start with a route 66 that's for sure after i came i was coming from like fixed gear racing like super short and track and and i throw myself into rex's 66 uh and and i remember doing even a photo of like the first 200k in my life on that trip um but i i just say like stop tiny like do little trips uh manage your gear however it's more comfortable for you you know uh try everything i've tried million bikes i've tried a million gears and um and it's just a matter of like what is the best for you in your comfort zone don't go out and do three peaks because maybe that's not what you want you know you can do flat roads if you can or if you are in a flat place or the other way around and you know start with your comfort zone and don't go way too out there and then progress bit by bit and obviously you've got a chance to ride in some pretty crazy places what's the kind of the bucket list top one top two places that you think people have to get out and experience good question i mean spain is pretty cool i think each country has its own little corners uh i've i've been traveling all over and i've discovered spain recently thanks to the you know situation that we had the last two years and to be honest i've been really happy riding around here there's amazing especially driver roads uh on all over the the spanish country and the canary islands as well i i am seeking to go to the eastern side side like um albania montenegro and all this i was just there on a motor rally documenting the motor rally and i've i've just seen amazing roads uh in gravel roads excuse me and uh and i'm going to slovenia on august if i should choose one place i think i think i still stay with arizona or colorado like america has an amazing land to this cover so right folks you've got to get out there and check them a lot of your content and we spoke about it as well like that you don't need to have this bike you know you don't need to wait and save up until you have the new canyon grail like income or monetary shouldn't be a barrier for you getting out and exploring and a lot of your videos and films i see this kind of reoccurring team that it really doesn't matter what bike you're what age or what fitness level you are or even one of your initiatives now i see that you have linked in your instagram is the w camps where you're really pushing like the inclusion of women in sport so do you want to talk to us a little bit more about that yeah so the double loop camps came because uh i've seen i've traveled a lot as well to the us and i've seen a lot of the stuff that they are doing there like uh amazing as well like uh woman camps and and non-inclusive camps and everything and uh and i i didn't saw any here and i wanted to participate to some myself and i couldn't find so i thought um to put out um some gravel camp uh here starting here in girona and this is this is something that is not ready 100 yet but i think it will come in 2022.
I've been super busy and other stuff and unfortunately i got it got down one of my main sponsors in the beginning of oh well i i stopped with one of my main sponsors which i thought they will um sort of uh help me to do the w cam so that was uh why i stopped progressing on it but basically yeah it's going to be a woman camp or for everybody who wants to come and and what i just want to show is that you can you can do a gravel adventure or a road adventure uh no matter what you have or how you are what you wear you know you can everybody can do it so i want to show that it's it's not that difficult and i want to show how to use a camping stove and create an amazing meal in the middle of nowhere and and as well like hammock or tent or whatever you want but isn't that so cool about this whole adventure or bike packing or gravel movements like if you want to turn up to a road ride and you know you're living in you know one of the nicest places in the world to road cycles girona but if you want to turn up to a road ride it's almost like there's so many barriers to entry and you've all these sartorial barriers where your socks need to be a certain length your socks need to be a certain color the same as your helmet your shoes need to look a certain way you need to look a certain way you need to have this certain etiquette and if you don't have all these starting points you're just immediately excluded from the group but with this sort of stuff like you could literally turn up wearing a three-piece suit on the biggest piece of [ __ ] bike with your rucksack on your back and everybody's gonna welcome you in yeah that's exactly it that's exactly it i mean and especially here in tirona you know like uh it was it was it's funny because a friend just the other days was like oh i don't know if to join this this ride to rocacoba and i was like why and rocaco was like one of the main climbs i hate dark time i've never done it before and i live here and i'm from spain barcelona but i i've never i yeah what about don't deal with it [ __ ] with jay voyne on the podcast quite a bit we've we're doing this like neo pro section with jay vine from albus and fenix and he has the strava record on rocker cob and was like oh my god that just sounds so painful and i yeah i've done it in my car a few times congratulations but i've never done it by bike um and and yeah she was like oh i don't know if to go with his friends and i was like why and she's like oh because maybe they're way too fast for me and i was like if you don't know and you don't go and experience it you don't know and if they're fast for you they will wait for you and the other way around maybe you're the first one and you wait for them like but you know i i never i am somebody who never thought that before like i when i was living in berlin for example they they were super like you know strict like you say the socks wide the the leg warmers can be and all these things and i you know i follow that because of the time i was a newbie and and i did it but i remember i was just showing up in this like crazy sprint rides and i was dying but you know and i ended up alone many times but i just did it it was a you know it was like i never thought about like oh if i stay alone what happens like it doesn't happen anything you can just like you know plug your route and go back home i also feel like 99 of people in this community are nice people and they realize that they were all also once a beginner and somebody had to wait for them and it's like pay it back now a little bit uh and and in surfing or skateboarding you see a lot this because you're in one spot you know like somebody's is in the spot of surfing and and you see him struggling and catching bad boys or never arriving to the wave and or i don't know like eating a lot and you're like i was there one day you know like and you can and i relate that a lot and now i finally can catch surf like a wave and just sort of surf so just like yeah i don't know i i see myself in cycling the same you know i remember i still remember the day i was like coughing and like completely red and and nearly crying because i didn't understood what was happening with my body for an hour and now i'm just like enjoying cycling like no matter what if you follow or nobody follows i especially don't get it we've like every country we've this like hierarchical system within racing wave category four three two one but there's such a snobbery as somebody moves up a category from cat four to cat tree they almost like they're so self-congratulatory about going up a category and they just like casts dispersions back down to the category below like oh fred's like look at them they're so [ __ ] and but it should be like reaching a hand down to help people people oh we've just got that part so wrong and the adventure gravel culture seems to have got that part so right yeah i yeah that's sort of true i think that the the good part is like the gravel is not that competitive it's about it it feels that it's about more exploration and just like like opening your eyes and your everything to a new place you know uh which i guess that's why i think gravel is sort of like it's what i most love so far and it seems to sit perfect with your kind of position as this storyteller in ireland we have a word like shanaki and that's the irish native language it just means storyteller so you'd be a shana key over here but it's gravel seems perfect for this storytelling have you always been cast in that storyteller mulder is this something new no i've actually i always loved it um but especially i think like gravel takes you to to these places that you maybe don't reach with with the road or with car or with anything else um and i don't know yeah i think i don't know if it's just because of that or i don't know but now i love it even more i even even went to this albanian rally and and it was grabbable obviously so it was perfect oh amazing it sounds like you need to hire an editor though you're getting quite a backlog of stuff to edit i do need to hire editor but it's i don't know if it's more difficult to communicate to that editor or to do it myself yeah no that's the problem uh before we wrap up is there any big projects or plans you have for the rest of the year outside of locking yourself in the bedroom and editing right now well i'm actually going to more remote scene next to geneva and this is for filming a little ambassador adventure for commute so i'm really excited to work for them as a videographer now another community manager and then after that i am going to slovenia with um three friends that we're creating a little uh more creative adventure where we will tell the story in four different ways i will film another photograph then somebody will paint another one would be the writer and we really will i would really hope that after all this covet situation everybody's vaccine we can do an exposition about this because we want to sort of create a merge between artists um so this one is really exciting and from then on i have a bigger project hopefully at the end of the year happens because i had to cancel it that's why i went to madeira but yeah it's it's a multi-sport adventure as well brilliant brilliant for anyone tuning in that wants to keep following your journey and listen about these adventures where's the best places to keep up with you i i pretty much use just instagram i don't go into very further from there and youtube now uh and then well yeah that's that's my main things and any questions or anything don't hesitate to also ask me definitely to follow on instagram it's purifier thank you sami thanks for joining us thank you thank you to you for having me anthony thank you
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How did Sami Sauri get into cycling?+
Sami Sauri started out in the fixed-gear street cycling scene in Barcelona before moving into competitive fixed-gear criterium racing with LA Sweat at events like the Red Hook Crit. That racing background eventually gave way to gravel riding and filmmaking, which became the centre of her cycling career.
What is the Red Hook Crit and how does it relate to gravel cycling?+
The Red Hook Crit is an unsanctioned fixed-gear criterium race series held in cities including Brooklyn, Barcelona, and Milan. Sami Sauri raced it competitively before shifting her focus toward gravel adventure riding, treating the transition as a move away from pure competition toward using the bike as a tool for exploration and storytelling.
How do you build a career in cycling outside of professional road racing?+
Sami Sauri's path shows that combining creative skills with cycling, specifically filmmaking and content creation, can sustain a viable career without ever entering the World Tour pipeline. She has worked on projects like a Route 66 cycling film with the Thereabout crew and a Velocio film shot on a remote Atlantic island, funding her riding through production and brand partnerships.
How do you balance training with creative work like cycling filmmaking?+
Sami Sauri addresses this directly in the episode, describing how she integrates riding into film projects so that training and production happen simultaneously rather than competing for time. The approach requires flexibility over rigid periodised schedules, prioritising consistency and adaptability instead.
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