Nineteen-year-old Oli Peace will probably remember this year's Tour of the Alps for the rest of his life. The race marks a crucial milestone for the Brit: his first outing on the ProTour, and his first time sharing a peloton with his childhood heroes.
"It's weird," he smiles, speaking to Cycling Weekly. "Obviously I've been watching them on TV and you grow up looking up to them. Suddenly, you're looking across at them in the bunch."
Alongside Peace at the five-stage race are 2018 Tour de France champion Geraint Thomas, former world time trial champions Filippo Ganna and Tobias Foss, and a host of Grand Tour stage winners. It’s a roll call of sporting feats, the kind that young riders like Peace, a first-year member of dsm-firmenich PostNL’s development squad, have always dreamed of achieving.
Riding with the elites, the teenager says, is a "big step-up" from what he is used to.
"It's a pretty surreal experience," Peace adds. "It's a different level from the juniors. You have different people looking after you. You're not looking after yourself around the race as much. You're only thinking about racing instead of how you're getting to the race and stuff like that."
Born in the market town of Keighley, in the rolling hills of West Yorkshire ("proper cycling country"), Peace was sporty from a young age. "I started [cycling] when I was 12 years old," he says. "My family always rode bikes and was always active. I ran a bit when I was younger and then I progressed through the UK [cycling] scene, doing under-16 and junior racing for a UK team."
Now, he is evolving into a strong climber. He's slight, rangy in stature, and learning from one of the best. "I'm sharing the bus with Romain [Bardet]," he says. "He's given me a little bit of advice, but I've also watched how he acts, around the dinner table and stuff like that."
Peace isn't the first young Brit to get early opportunities at dsm-firmenich PostNL. He follows in the footsteps of Max Poole and Oscar Onley, both now 21 and part of the senior squad.
For Matt Winston, one of the team's sports directors, such experiences are key for development.
"With all our devo guys, we give them the opportunity to race with the WorldTour team," Winston said. "I think [Peace] can be a really good climber. He can keep developing into a guy that can go for GCs in the future.
"But, as with all our devo guys, we just want to take it step by step. We're not pushing people down rabbit holes, saying, 'This is where you have to be. This is what we expect.' We want to give those younger guys that all-round experience, and whether that's racing a couple of Classics, or racing the Tour of the Alps, it gives them that."
Prior to the race, Winston sat down with Peace to assure him that there was no pressure to perform this week. "I said to him the night before, 'Certainly in this race, you'll find the peloton is a lot more relaxed in terms of positioning than maybe in a Classic, and certainly in an under-23 race.'
"I hope, by the end of the week, he can go away and reflect and say, 'You know what, I learned a lot from that race.'"
