Ama Nsek is an unconventional bike racer, but privateering has never been a conventional path.

“My decision to go privateer was motivated by the idea that my racing results don’t really matter. No one's going to remember who won X race in five years. What matters is how many people are positively impacted.”

Nsek has competed and won at most of North America’s biggest bike races, and even been across to Europe to ride the Queen of the Classics. And yet, he’s still just 24 years old.

“It's a hard sport when it comes to racing, but it's a beautiful sport when it comes to the adventure,” he says of his experiences so far. 

Raised in southern California, Nsek and his brother, Imeh, were steered into cycling by their parents.

“My brother and I were heavily into academics and not that much into athleticism. In our spare time, we're playing Game Boys and World of Warcraft. In the summer of eighth grade, dad was like, ‘We gotta get you outside.’”

From a choice of hiking, biking or running, the brothers picked the bike. It proved to be an excellent fit. Both brothers raced throughout their adolescence, getting onto Team USA and going out to Europe to ride Paris-Roubaix Espoirs.

But when Nsek aged out of juniors, the return to academia won out over a desire to remain in the sport.

“My parents are immigrants, one from Mexico, the other from Nigeria. Being first generation, my brother and I grew up with an expectation of us that school is not optional. It was always the path that we were going to follow.”

While the intention was to dial back the bike racing and focus on his bachelors in accounting, the unprecedented global events of 2020 had other plans.

“2020 was a pretty crazy time. Covid changed the landscape of cycling and also the world as far as understanding the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). People began to actively take measures to diversify the sport.”

During the pandemic, Nsek found himself – like a lot of us – with time on his hands. And so he picked up his road bike again. 

“Justin Williams [founder of US criterium team, Legion of LA] noticed that I had come back and he knew my background. He was like, ‘Dude, you want to come back and race for Legion for 2021?’” 

Not only was Legion the biggest race team on the domestic scene, they were also riding an incredible wave of public support.

“I told Justin I really liked what they had planned. They had a GoFundMe that was like a massive amount of budget set aside towards youth development. And I was working with 30 to 40 junior athletes at the time, just helping them grow in the sport in a way that's sustainable.”

This chance to do good while also racing bikes was the clincher.

“It was really important to me to find more ways to have impact as far as creating a better world. So, yeah, I came back to pro cycling in 2021 and had a pretty killer year. It was me and a squad of nine travelling across the US. I won like six races in a row and got second at the Nationals road race. Got fifth in the crit. I got second at short track mountain bike Nats. It was a super fun year.”

Nsek says not as much of the promised DEI work “pulled through” as he had hoped, and that this ultimately led him to refocus on school again in 2022. Although, he knew he didn’t want to let go of or waste the platform he now had.

“It was a case of not really wanting to ‘retire’ from cycling because I felt like, honestly, my social platform. I could use it for something good.”

Nsek has continued to work with young riders as they look to move through the various development pathways toward a sustainable life within the sport.

“I've been working with youth development since I was 18, working one-on-one with them to make those big decisions. I can craft this privateer program into a platform for kids to understand that yes, maybe they could make a living out of it. But also that that isn't the entire point.”

For Nsek, the point – beyond staying fit and healthy – is community.

“I met my best friend through racing bikes in high school, and we lived 40 minutes apart in California. Now we live 15 minutes apart in Colorado.”

Since graduating, Nsek has thrown himself headfirst into a new career in the tech industry. He says he works “50 to 60 hour weeks”, while also finding time to train and mentor younger riders. It’s an impressive balancing act, one that his family are concerned could be a little too much to handle long-term.

“Trust me, my mom thinks it's a lot, my brother thinks it’s a lot. And I get reminded by my best friends, ‘Hey, do you want to slow down?’ And honestly, no, because I know that when I'm older and looking back on how I spent my time, I will never regret having a meeting with an athlete. I'll never regret being able to go out and train and know that I'm getting paid to ride my bike.”

I’m sponsoring the youth category at Thursday Night Thunder, a crit in Boulder, Colorado. Anyone 18 and under that wants to race, your registration is covered for the entire series.

Also a lot of Tupac lately, and Ellie Goulding, J.Cole.

I'd rather travel less and spend the time doing stuff that's actually forward moving.

No warm up and just chugging a Red Bull like three minutes before the start.