Empowered by cycling: Meet Queers on Wheels

Not long ago, says Queers on Wheels founder Santi Suarez, there were few places where the LGBTQ+ community could come together besides nightclubs. Now, thanks to new groups like Queers on Wheels, the community is coming together around sports, the outdoors, and in this case, cycling.

As Santi tells GCN in a phone interview, sports can be intimidating for queer people. By understanding and addressing the intimidation factor that puts people off sports, Santi has built an approachable and lively community that has drawn dozens of new people into cycling.

Queers on Wheels, based in London, has one major focus: empowerment. This 300-strong community is dedicated to equipping members of the LGBTQ+ community with the skills and confidence they need to take to the countryside on two wheels. It is a safe space for people to be their authentic selves, and it’s thriving.

A latent need

Santi started Queers on Wheels in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. He’d been a keen long-distance amateur cyclist for several years but had struggled to find a local cycling group that appealed to him. There were a handful of LGBTQ+ led cycling groups in the UK, but the ones within reach of Santi seemed too performance-focused.

“So I thought: it would be amazing if I can create something where people who are new to cycling and feel intimidated by lycra, by having a really expensive bike, by having to be really fast or being on top of your game, can feel included, and they can also find a safe space within the LGBTQ+ community.”

Queers on Wheels began as an Instagram page, and things developed from there.

“It grew really rapidly, actually, I was surprised. I thought at the beginning it was going to be just a bunch of people around me, but no: a lot of people, thanks to the power of social media, started to come.”

Why we need LGBTQ+ spaces within cycling

You might be reading this thinking, ‘Anyone is welcome at my local cycling club, so why do we need a dedicated LGBTQ+ cycling community?’ Santi explains:

“Ultimately, you just want to connect with people like you. You want to feel completely safe in this space. Sports can be something that is quite intimidating for us, and you feel safer when you are doing it with people like you, or part of your community.

“There's also the sense of belonging – I guess it sounds more existential – but the sense of belonging to something bigger than you, of building something all together.

“You feel supported and you feel like you're supporting them and empowering them, whether you are gay, lesbian, bi, trans, non-binary, or wherever you fall within the LGBTQ+ spectrum.”

“Just until a few years ago as a gay or lesbian or bi or you name it person, you could barely do anything other than nightlife. Especially in a city like London, as a social activity to meet other people like you,” Santi explains.

Queers on Wheels is part of a new movement of LGBTQ+-led groups that have emerged in the past few years. Collectively, these queer-led groups of runners, rock climbers, cyclists or hikers are taking the community out of nightclubs and into the great outdoors.

Focusing on fun, not fitness

As Santi highlights, his is one of a small group of LGBTQ+ cycling groups in the UK. He differentiates Queers on Wheels from other groups by making it a group for people who aren’t necessarily performance cyclists.

“The majority of us, we’re not ultra performance cyclists, so it's not exactly the same way to target someone who wants to do a 150 miles ride and is really focused about nutrition and speed and stuff like that.

“We wanted to inject a lot of fun, not feel intimidated by something like cycling, because the moment that you make something very like clinical, like, ‘We're going to do 80 miles, 1,000m, average speed…’ which a lot of cycling clubs do — I don't think that's wrong, I think that's actually very practical — but it's very important to add a sense of adventure and a sense of experience; that you're just going to have fun above everything.

“A lot of people, when they think about cyclists, they immediately make a divide and think ‘cyclists versus cars’ or ‘lycra versus whatever else’, and I think cycling is not about having the most expensive bike or wearing lycra,” he explains.

Instead, Santi draws in new people by breaking down that image of ‘the cyclist’, and making it feel like an activity anyone can get involved with.

“I think that contributed to a lot of people who were completely new to cycling or who had no idea about cycling to join and to experiment and to try this new sport.”

Another point of difference is that Queers on Wheels is for all members of the LGBTQ+ community, rather than just one part of it. Historically, the community has tended towards gender divisions, which can exclude trans or non-binary people. That’s changed in recent years, but the gender divide can easily crop up again when you start putting people on bikes, as Santi explains.

“Something we actually struggle with is to have all the people from the LGBTQ+ spectrum represented,” he says.

“Some women sometimes can think, ‘If there's too many men, I feel intimidated. They're going to be faster.’ And in reality, that's not the case. But it's very hard to communicate that.”

Through support and encouragement, the Queers on Wheels community are tackling those intimidation factors one by one, person by person. Santi says those same women who had reservations about their own fitness, or about their mechanical skills, often go on to become ride leaders.

© Queers for Wheels

A Queers on Wheels group during a ride in the Cotswolds

Going the distance to empower members

Although many of their members are new cyclists, the riders at Queers on Wheels take on some ambitious routes. Led by long distance lover Santi, the group have crisscrossed the UK and even explored Europe on two wheels.

“We've done London to Paris in the first year, London to Oxford, London to Brighton – we’ve done that a few times. We did London to Amsterdam, we're going to Munich next week, doing Munich to Innsbruck. We've done the coast to coast in the north of England.”

That might sound like a lot for new cyclists to take on, but Santi says that people are more capable than they might think. As he's written on their FAQs page: ‘From our experience, you will almost definitely make it.’ It’s a line that fits with the overall message of the group: to empower and support LGBTQ+ people.

The community is growing, and the variety of things that the Queers on Wheels community are organising is growing too. Now, they run short social rides to boost the confidence of brand-new cyclists. They run training-style rides for experienced riders looking to build fitness. Additionally, by partnering with London bike workshops, they help people learn how to fix and maintain their bikes.

“When you start cycling and you're completely new to it, some people feel intimidated by something as simple as how to change the flat tire, how the brakes work, what's the difference between disc brakes or rim brakes, like, everything that is super basic. So we want people to feel empowered and to know how to do all these things,” explains Santi.

“It's not about becoming an expert bike mechanic, but it's about just being more self-sufficient whenever you're on the road, because sometimes you may not be cycling with a group."

“It's all about empowering and feeling capable that you can do a lot more than you thought,” Santi says.

Read more: How to take the macho out of your group ride

Support, empowerment and community: this is what Queers on Wheels are bringing to cycling, and so it should come as no surprise that they are getting loads of people out on bikes for the very first time. This is a safe, empowering space that is expanding the horizon for LGBTQ+ people, and expanding the world of cycling in turn.

There is a perception that cycling has a high cost of entry, a dictionary of jargon, and even a kind of uniform. Queers on Wheels are demonstrating that that's not the case. By helping people overcome barriers to entry, they are allowing more people to discover the freedom and well-being that cycling brings.

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