The Tour Down Under marks the official start point of WorldTour season five for young American Quinn Simmons, but with that also five years since he became the junior Road World Champion in Yorkshire.
As the seasons have ticked by but the wins haven’t since that crowning day in 2019, even Simmons himself has come to question whether this year will be ‘the’ year for his rise to the top. That's a question which only further highlights the pressure placed on a 22-year-old to perform in the current peloton with Monuments and Grand Tours now being ticked off the palmarès of his fellow under-25s.
Speaking at Lidl-Trek’s December training camp in Calpe, Simmons was at peace with whether he’ll ever live up to the promise of being a junior World Champion who couldn’t have hit the ground running any harder by claiming that rainbow jersey.
“It kind of feels like all these other super talents have maybe realised that super talent, and I just haven't yet,” Simmons told Cyclingnews.
“But whether it takes me two more years, or takes me four more years, or never happens - for me - it's the chasing, the training and the working hard that I like.
“Maybe this year I do a perfect winter and I go on to do something crazy like those other guys have been doing and it's an amazing season. Or maybe I take one step closer than I did last year and it's still gonna be a success. I just really want to be able to go through a full year and have nothing go wrong.”
The amazing feats “those other guys” have been doing could refer to several recent achievements, be that Tadej Pogačar winning five Monuments and two Tours de France at 26, or Remco Evenepoel - the junior World Champion Simmons succeeded - taking the senior road race and time trial titles alongside a Vuelta a España overall aged only 23.
They were both prodigies at 19 and have now reached the pinnacle of the sport. Simmons was the same but has only four professional wins to show for his labour. But should the question at all be - why has that happened? Or have these generational super-talents skewed the expectations of both fans and riders themselves?
“I'm 22 and I've made the Tour de France team twice already and fine, I only finished one but essentially I have two Tour appearances already. Until like three years ago, that would have been a huge accomplishment. And now these other guys make me look like shit,” laughs Simmons.
Reminders of the young rider who triumphed in Harrogate have emerged from time to time, nonetheless. Strade Bianche in 2021 most notably where he was the neo-pro anomaly in a front group of big-money stars including Mathieu van der Poel, Julian Alaphilippe, Wout van Aert, Tom Pidcock and Egan Bernal. That was until he punctured, then crashed out of contention.
“I think that when people asked me my biggest regret race, it's that one still to this day. There was something I had in my legs that day that I haven't quite replicated again,” Simmons said. “But you know, that's that's how the sport goes for everyone.”
Simmons does have time on his side, especially since extending with Lidl-Trek until at least 2026. The American squad confirmed his new deal in August, just two months after Simmons himself said that winning the National Championships "could have saved my career".
From pride to pain at Tour de France
One day in 2023 where he certainly did find that form was the American National Championships in Knoxville, where he added the senior title to one he earned as a junior after dropping breakaway companion Tyler Williams to cross the line solo.
With the Stars and Stripes on his back, Simmons headed for his second crack at the Tour de France. The idea was he would target stages for Lidl-Trek and show off the American flag at La Grand Boucle for the first time since George Hincapie in the late 2000s.
“It's crazy, I was so proud to be wearing the national jersey in the Tour because - you may need to fact-check it - but I think since Hincapie, maybe 15 [16 ed.] years or something [had passed] since the American national champion last rode the Tour,” said Simmons.
“For me to have the flag on my back and be at the biggest race in the world and ride it on the 4th [of July], I wanted to be able to do that one time in my career. And luckily, it came.”
Simmons’ patriotic fairytale didn’t last long, however, as his Tour was torpedoed by a tough crash on stage 5 that left his beloved Stars and Stripes ripped and himself bloodied, bandaged up and - although it was not widely known at the time - suffered from a nasty case of concussion. Ahead of stage 9, he abandoned.
“Any other race I would have stopped it [earlier]. I wouldn't have even got back on my bike because you know when it's a bad one,” said Simmons.
“There's a lot of, not necessarily pressure from the team, but from myself. Just because you build for eight months for that race and then add in all the extra stuff on top of that - that makes you want to keep going.”
When asked he he dealt with the disappointment of having to abandon his goal early, Simmons replied “I guess to be truthful, I didn't really.”
“I fell apart pretty bad after and I was also concussed, so that doesn't really help you emotionally regulate when you're already quite out of it. I went to Girona, where I have a place for the season and still had the idea that I'd recover and race the Worlds. But being there it became more and more apparent how bad the concussion actually was.”
Simmons chose then to fly home to see doctors in the US and be with his family, but the time when he was unable to ride his bike plunged him into quite a dark place.
“I still had the idea that ‘Okay, tomorrow, I can start training’, and tomorrow turned into five weeks of trying to get back on the bike and it not working really,” Simmons said.
“Everything I do for fun whether it's skiing, running in the mountains, or riding a bike is exercising. Then when you suddenly can't do that - I just sat on the couch and ate. It was really bad for me.”
The American champ tried to make it back in September at the Cro Race, but he still wasn’t right and was pulled out by the team. Binche-Chimay-Binche was the final race he started in what was a season that started so brightly with his solo win on the motor racing track in San Juan but was finally ruined by ill fortunes.
When preluding a question about just how tough a season it had been, Simmons interrupted “It was shit. We don't need to pretend like it wasn’t."
“There were some positives for sure. It started well, yeah, in San Juan. I always wanted to win a race in that style with a late attack. Then I can't complain too much when I have the national jersey on my shoulders. But other than those two we can call it shit,” he concluded.
Come January 16th, Simmons will reboot his ambitions of WorldTour glory by racing the Tour Down Under for the first time in his career. From there he’ll head to New Mexico for an altitude camp before targeting Strade Bianche and stages at Tirreno-Adriatico.
He’ll then be part of a strong Lidl-Trek contingent at the Ardennes Classics, where he should be given the freedom to attack while Mattias Skjelmose and Andrea Bagioli wait in the wings to follow moves.
No place at the Tour de France is guaranteed, for now. But the American will be hoping to defend his national title and then head to the Criterium du Dauphiné where he’ll have to earn his spot in a stacked Lidl-Trek side that will be working at the Tour for both Mads Pedersen’s stage win ambitions, and Tao Geoghegan Hart’s GC challenge.
Durango on top and the Olympic dream
Simmons may be seven years his junior, but shares similar beginnings to the new Vuelta a España champion Sepp Kuss as another native of Durango, Colorado. They didn’t cross paths as they journeyed into the WorldTour, with Kuss making the move to Europe before Simmons was on the scene, but the pair - along with Simmons’ brother - do share an agent and a love of the area.
“For me it was insane. An American Grand Tour winner - yeah right, fuck off no way,” said Simmons in admiration. “And to be a Durango boy and to just know who he is as a person and how he did it is the most impressive American cycling achievement for a while."
Kuss became the first American to win a Grand Tour since Chris Horner won the Vuelta a decade before him. But the value of Kuss’ triumph not only served as inspiration but his haul of points also meant the USA qualified for three spots at the Olympics in Paris next year.
"Thanks to Sepp now for the first time in a long time, we're taking three. I think it's quite a nice course and could be quite a good race situation for me. We have probably four or five really quality guys that, whichever three we send will be great,” said Simmons.
“A lot of times before - the US sent almost like a ‘Hey, your career's over, here is your gift, go to the Olympics-type deal.' But now no matter who, whether it's me or three other guys, I think we're gonna have a super good team. I just hope I'm the one wearing the jersey.
“I'd rather ride my way onto a competitive team than be gifted spots. So I think whatever the three, everyone will have earned their spot and I think that's the way it's supposed to be.”
Simmons will have stiff competition for an Olympic spot from the likes of Matteo Jorgenson, Magnus Sheffield, Brandon McNulty and Nielsen Powless to name a few, but the course on paper would suit him at his best. It's just a question of whether he can finally find that level consistently in 2024 and reach his full potential.
