PAUL Double is unusual for a few reasons, but perhaps the thing that distinguishes him more than anything else among professional cyclists is his former habit of riding in yellow rubber washing-up gloves. “Stuff like that was always fun,” he says over the phone from his flat in Girona, Spain. “Even now people say I do some things that make people think, ‘God, you look like such an amateur’, and I remember cycling with washing-up gloves on a rainy ride or cycling in the dark with terrible lights.
” Paul is talking about the days when he used to ride for ’s very own cycling club, VC Venta, and laughs at how his journey to the pinnacle of his sport was frequently less-than-professional. Now, however, Paul is anything but an amateur: he has just signed a two-year contract with Jayco-AlUla, a team which rides in the “Premier League” of cycling – the UCI World Tour. Even if he has now reached the summit of his sport, Paul is Winchester through and through: he grew up on a farm near Sutton Scotney and went to South Wonston Primary School and Kings' School before becoming, by his own confession, something of a vagabond at college.
"I did also go to Peter Symonds, but that was a bit of a waste of time," Paul says. "I was a bit of a bum at that time, so cycling probably saved me. I wasn't a bad person, I was just a bit immature.
I didn't study." Few people might believe that a "bum" from Winchester could reach the top echelon of cycling, but Paul's achievement seems .