Assen Junior Tour:
After racing Assen for the past few years from younger categories up to Junior and doing well in the past, I was keen to come back and see if I could do even better at a race I’ve always enjoyed with a great atmosphere.
The first stage stage was a really short 1.7km TT I finished in the top 3rd around where I expected as it didn’t really suit me.
The second stage was a 45km crit, I finished 12 out of 114 which I was responsibly happy with but it was annoying as I’d missed a break of 10 rides losing time to them on GC, I was happy with how my sprint had gone though 2nd across the line out of the main peloton.
Stage 3 was a 91km road stage with cobbles. It was a very windy day with echelons splitting up the race. I finished 16th and moved up on GC after riders who were ahead of me lost time being caught out by the echelons.
Stage 4 was a 13km TT I didn’t do as well as I wanted coming 20th but still moved up a few places on GC.
Stage 5 was a short 60km road race, towards the end the winning 6 rider break got away, I managed to get into a second break between what would be the wining break and the main peloton. I worked hard to get to the leading group of 6 however about 3 km from the end the peloton caught my group. I thought I wouldn’t be able to get a good result now as I’d put a lot into being in the break away but I went for the sprint anyway and to my surprise was first out of the peloton so I finished 7th on the stage.
The final stage was a short crit, it went down to a bunch sprint however I messed up my positioning so I came 16th in the sprint. I finished the tour 17th on GC . From the tour I was most happy about coming 7th on stage 6.
Aubel UCI 2.1:
Unfortunately I was ill for Aubel so I don’t have any results to write home about. However I didn’t feel as bad for the team time trial. I did my best and the team ended up coming 7th on the stage which was a pretty good result considering some of the strongest teams from across Europe were there and we hadn’t had time to train together for the TTT.
