2025 in Context

It’s a reality of sport which I’m glad has been talked about this summer, because then it can be rationalised and acted upon to produce healthy, strong, durable and high-performing athletes.

Dec 31, 2025

Most cyclists have a story to tell about their time in the professionals, which is often kept behind the scenes, hidden. Some are broken by it. Others, somehow, manage to regather their strength to climb out of the hole they might find themselves in. Either way, it’s a reality of professional sport which I’m glad has been a talking point this summer, because only then can it be rationalised and acted upon to produce healthy, strong, durable and high-performing athletes.

This is the belief around which I constructed my 2025 season. And I want to round up my 2025 season. But if I did it in isolation, without some context as to what it took to get there, how much I went through. It would be remiss of me to ignore that completely. I don’t want to ignore the context.

First, this was my contract year, where I learnt to look after my own interests to help set up a future I wanted. Whatever way I looked at the 2025 season, I saw that it could be the end of what was quite an incredible 3-year chapter. I am deciding to share it, with context, because it would allow me to say that I learnt something from the mistake I made when I entered the professional ranks—that is crucial to “construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.1” That’s to say, celebrate the things that should be celebrated.

It may sound wishy-washy, but this story underpins the success of the 2025 season and the entire journey that I’ve been on, and you’ve read about, in the last three years. A story that, in essence, is what it means to be a pro-cyclist, but also a pro-athlete in general. It truly is an experience that I am proud to have worked my way through, but by no means on my own. I had incredible people beside me who held me accountable. Although I went searching for that, I did so with the knowledge that I required positive accountability. And though there are moments that took me to the brink, I wouldn’t change anything. As I wrote, this story underpins the entire reason for a successful 2025 campaign. Those lessons of life and sport are truly etched into my character today. So here it goes.

*The following post deals with topics, and contains images, that some readers may find distressing. Reader discretion is advised, and I encourage you to put your own well-being first.*

On the doorstep of joining the Professionals, I headed into a year on the continental level. It was an opportunity to prove to myself worthy of joining the professionals with the same team. I had my eyes set on taking the chance offered in gaining early experience in racing with the professional squad.

I was fortunate to start early with them at La Tropicale Amissa Bongo and Giro Di Sicilia. The image of a pro cyclist was, and will always be, contentious. For me, it moved away from being a strong athlete first, into the traditional sense of what a ‘pro cyclist’ was meant to look like. It began to shape my thinking long before I joined the team in Africa.

Though I was with a strong group of guys, my vision has been morphed by this ingrained belief. I was working with the staff who were with both the ProTour and Continental teams, and I began to believe the image of what a pro cyclist was meant to be, an incredibly lean and defined machine. However, I did not appreciate that I was already particularly lean at less than eight per cent in body fat, at a steady seventy-seven Kilograms.

Even with those parameters in front of me, I believed I needed to change my body (I won’t share where those beliefs came from). From all angles, even before I joined the pro team, I was being told I was too big and wouldn’t stand a chance. That was the opinion which extended across several potential teams—without any evidence base. And so, I did change my body, blinded by what I thought being a pro-cyclist should mean. I put it down to just being one of those things I’d have to live with; I might as well learn to deal with it whilst I’m in the continental team, where I’ve got a chance to adapt and learn. My heavy crash at the Paris Roubaix Espoirs handed me a crux point to be able to begin that process of moulding myself into this image several months later, that of being ‘sharp.’

@tomportsmouth_

Tom Portsmouth on Instagram: "– Racing is fun –
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À la proch…

During the process of reducing my body, I received high praise for doing so and was encouraged to continue. The word ‘sharp’ cropped up a lot. And morphed my definition of the word into something I’ve worked desperately hard to recover from. I felt good. I continued to listen and ‘push’ further. No wonder I lost confidence in the phrase pushing the limit. If this is what it meant, to truly reach the limit of what my body could handle. I paid the price for taking my body to its breaking point. Though not in the sense you’d think, whilst taking part in the Flanders Tomorrow Tour (which was when the photo above was taken).

I paid the price of strength, health, and performance; everything a pro athlete, in my eyes, stands to be.

I found out—not quickly enough—that it wasn’t what it was cracked up to be, being lean. My brain was dysfunctional. I wasn’t listening to myself, and I was dismissing others’ opinions. As a result, I had become numb and distant from the powerful racing that had carried my career up to this point. I definitely wasn’t going to perform in this state—I was delusional.

At the lowest point, I took that photo as a vow to myself to change something, however slow or difficult it would be. I didn’t know it at the time, but I am grateful I did. That was the first instance of the smallest crumb of hope I felt that I might be able to recover. That was the day I first heard my parents, and I finally saw what they saw. I was ill and far too thin. After that, an 18-month-long recovery ensued before I started to see a semblance of the style of racing and life I wanted to lead.

That 18-month period challenged my character every day. I questioned what I was doing every morning, and where exactly I fell off the proverbial horse. I had become so numb that I had no real recollection of feeling anything toward anyone or anything (racing or otherwise). Slowly, though, I started to understand what it took to believe in myself, and what trusting myself meant. I had to convince myself that the work I put in now, to be strong and healthy, would pay off in the future, and it did. I had to rekindle the relationship with pain, excitement, nervousness, and anger—all the emotions. Which, I suppose, is what this newsletter is here for.

What 4kg of muscle looks like.

Now, I can reflect on how I went from fighting to survive each and every race to being an active part of most races I participated in.

I could reflect on how I went from using a pillow between my legs (to protect my knees) to sleeping soundly for the entire night.

I could describe the difference between having a rush of lactate in my legs when I clambered out of bed (as if I had done a Wingate Test), and producing my best performances and power production in the first and last minutes of the race. Lasting all the way until the end.

Imagine for a professional cyclist with a cardio system to die for, how devastating it might be to be breathless while climbing the single flight of stairs I used to dance up.

Indeed, I can palpably feel the hope I had to find to overcome all of that (no wonder HOPE, NF, is my top song from 2025). I found the belief that I could, one day, begin to animate racing once again. This is what I dreamed of. I dreamt of returning to what an old coach once said,

‘to leave a mark on any race I participated in, no matter how small it might be. A mark that would be indelible and irrefutable; I was part of that race.’

From my breaking point to the start of the 2025 racing season, I had recovered over sixty watts in the six kilograms of muscle that I regained from that immemorable period. The power I did for 4 minutes became my power for the famous Col De Rates.

That’s why 2025 was so damn important to me, and why that context is so damn important to remember. I feel I should recognise it. It’s a testament to finding a way out of a great fucking deep rabbit hole. To hold myself accountable, with a desire to achieve what I set out to achieve. The criteria that people in my close circles show on a daily basis.

When I wrote what I wanted (the other reason for this newsletter), I had an image to produce an incredibly consistent performance level throughout 2025. Both for my team and, importantly, for myself. Something, I believe, I was known for when racing with Mini Discar in the amateurs. I longed to regain this trust from others and from myself, to produce results and performances, regardless of the race, terrain or time of season. I wanted to race.

This was what I imagined when building my dream of the 2025 racing season in those Cypriot Mountains. Spending time with incredible people in the off-season allowed me to dream. And I dreamed big—within the set of cards I had to play with. A lot of those people have all gone on to win races. Every day, they inspire me with their successes, which are just some of the sources of my belief in myself—this writing being the other.

I have a physical mark which I know like the back of my hand. It reminds me every day of the level I did manage to get to, despite all of the difficult ‘stuff’ of the last 3 years. I got to that level by listening to my gut and putting the human being and athlete in me first. That mark helps me remember my tenacity and resilience, and any anger I have left within me, be directed to returning to the high level of this sport. It’s “a road I can’t predict.2” But I’m excited to discover my pure racing instinct in 2026. By working towards unlocking my athleticism and tactical brain, once again. Unpredictability in the exciting kind is no bad thing. And all this can be meaningful in developing my character. I just hope that it will include building my life in France and Europe, somewhere that has come to mean a lot for me and my racing.

It’s no understatement then, to say that I am fucking proud (sod it, algorithm, I need that word) to have come through it all, with my mind and spirit, all in check. I can rest calm, and shed a happy tear on these hills, with the knowledge that I gave everything I had the last three years, right until the end. And that I showed a capability to perform at this professional level regularly, week in, week out.

In writing this, to myself, I can say that following my gut led me to find myself, and other brilliant people, who helped pave the way back to achieve something in 2025, an important contract year as a professional cyclist. I’m proud to end it, as I started, a professional athlete (emphasis on each word), in spite of all the obstacles. And that, right there, is the realisation that my being myself is enough. It brings a smile to my face and a soft tear to my eye (“look at me, everybody I’m smilin’ big… I’m back, so enjoy the trip”).

I visited the podium four times, for sprint and combative classifications (only a handful of teammates also achieved podium visits this season):