Junior Road Worlds report....will be in endurance mag soon

Junior World Cycling champs

How I was looking forwards to nearly 5 weeks with a bunch of teenage boys…..It actually turned out way better than I had ever imagined. We have real talent in our cyclists and this trip did nothing but confirm it for me.

The plan was to get in some hard fast racing, followed by a bit of recovery and adjustment to altitude and then the Worlds competition itself.

Stage 1 was the tour or Abitibi in Quebec Canada. This is the only UCI junior race in Canada and had riders from nine countries on the start list. This invitation gave us a chance to take the riders selected for the worlds and give a chance to those likely to be there next year a bit of competition at a very high level. So joining Tom David, James Williamson, and James Dobson, were Wade Mangham, Josh Brown and Simon “horsey” Honor.

We really had no idea how this would pan out but what a fantastic race it turned into. It started with a 400m dual sprint as the prologue, won by the later to be world TT champ, Taylor Phinny, yes that Phinny son of Tour de France stage winner Davis, and 4 x world pursuit champ Connie. We had Ok finishes, but nothing to say we were about to light up the race…..

Next was the Team Time trial, we didn’t have specific TT rigs for every one, so the result was as we expected, close but not quite there. Come the next day and Tom David was on fire, jumping away on the last lap of the finish circuit to win the stage and take the leaders jersey, the best young rider, the Sprint and the KOM. He flowed this up the next day with a win in the TT. I have never seen a TT like it, it started under ground in a Gold mine, in the dark!!! and with a 17% climb to get out!!.

At this stage we also manage to pick up the teams classification also, so we had everything.

The nature of the race was that it was going to go down to sprint time bonuses to win, and we just didn’t have the speed of Phinny, so he just slowly took seconds off till he eventually got the lead back on the second to last day. So we ended having achieved the goal of a hard workout for the worlds guys and gave the others some experience in the biggest race of their lives so far, a 9 stage tour. This was an absolute bonus that we really were a factor in the race and the guys were just glowing with confidence when ever we hot the start line. It’s a nice feeling seeing that in a bunch of kiwi guys, and they were also extremely supportive of each other and a real team was developing over the week.

So we finished the tour with Tom in second, the team in second and a bunch of cash to split between the riders.

So from here it was down to Colorado Springs Olympic Training Centre, we would spend a week here just recovering and starting a build up of volume and intensity as the guys adjusted to the altitude. This is an amazing facility, with everything laid on. It is set up completely devoid of government funding, but funded though commercial sponsorship.

So Mexcio was the next stop, training done, it was race time. First up was the TT with James Williamson and Tom David. Poor James had the honour of leading the field away, not easy with no targets to follow, but he gave us good split times to gauge Tom off. Tom on the other had was 4^th from last away so we knew what it would take to get a good time. And Tom gave us one, finishing in 5^th place on a “flat” yeah right TT course. This was our best ever TT finish in the mens race from memory so we were very happy with this. Both riders were smashed at the end, just what a coach likes to see, an honest effort.

So the road race, 115 starter, on a hilly hot course. We were told it would be a bunch finish but on seeing it we could see the field would be blown all over it. And that’s how it turned out. The main bunch just got smaller and smaller until the last 2 laps of 8 when the Italian, attack and the bunch exploded. We still had Tom and James Williamson in the chase group but that was about to explode also. So the Italians rode on to a 1,2,3 finish…..Impressive to say the least. Tom finished in the next bunch in 21^st place, James was in the next bunch and by then it was just ones and twos surviving the course. Did I say it was Hot!!

So from a coaching point of view, what had we achieved, we had a team of extremely confident riders start the world champs. We had three riders leave Canada knowing that they could have been competitive if they were in world’s team and hungry for next year. We have qualified a full team for next year in South Africa and Tom the “Gentle Giant” has turned some heads.

Just have to thank the assistance of Mike Leach, our Kiwi mechanic in Canada and Jason Rico and Cassandra Carry for the assistance in Mexico.

John Lee

Junior Road Coach