My Year so far

I’m sat here writing a quick Blog about how my year has been racing for the Holdsworth Zappi Team up until now.

After a great 2 months getting some good training and some sun in Calpe we headed off to Italy to get the racing year kick started.  I was excited to see how I would fair in my first year being a full time cyclist along with jumping up to the U23 category. 

The first race for me would be Montecasiano which would take place at the back end of March.  Here I finished 21st after crashing I was happy with the result for my first Italian race. 

Following this my first UCI race would be Trofeo Piva after a hard and long race, much longer than I raced the previous year, I finished 16th with team mate Tim in 17th.

After this I would focus on Reccioto which was a big UCI race said to be one of the toughest 1 day races of the year for the U23’s.  I was happy to finish 12th in a pretty stacked field. 

The next race would be an Elite Italian National called Monte Urano where I finished 8th and first young rider.  Shortly after this we would go to altitude camp to focus on the Giro.

We spent a little over 2 weeks there getting in some good miles before returning to the house which was near the start of the Giro. 

Then the next week was about preparing everything and freshening up ready for the race.  The Giro would start on Thursday.  I finished the Giro in 20th on GC and 7th in the Young Riders classification and 14th on the stage up to Monte Amiata. 

After that I travelled home to prepare for Valle D’Aosta.   Valle D’Aosta didn’t go quite as well as I wanted it to having maybe picked something up on the flight over and being fatigued following the Giro so I helped Callum as much as I could on the final few stages but I did finish 21st on stage 4 after being in the break.  

It’s been a great year up to now and living and working as part of a Team has been an amazing experience.  I appreciate the support which has got me to where I am now and I look forward to the rest of the season and next year with special thanks to Barnett and Ravenscroft.