Originally Posted by
furiousferret
I don't know if that means the is in decline as a cycling nation or we have an outstanding crop of youth talent. I'll go with the latter.
Locally we have so many Juniors coming up they've essentially rode the Masters out of the Tuesday Night Ride. I'm not sure if that popularity is just a local thing, or nationwide.
LUX is in SoCal. They are trying to get on LUX. I think in SoCal racing is cool. Nationally, it is probably as cool as wrestling. But telling the class you are working from Europe during Spring is cool.
Online HS allows this in ways that could not be done before. Kids can Skype with teaches, interact and learn. But that drive the others to get there.
The juniors are better than ever. 2015 - best in the world. Looks like a 2019 repeat.
Ian was a 2015 junior, as was Brandon, Gage, 2018 Pro winner J Brown, top MTB Blevins and a few that are not in the ITT. When I posted 2014/2015 I thought they were faster than pros, it was because they were faster than pros. It is not surprising juniors are so fast. They can't do long races, or multi-day races which is what the WT pros do, but they are every bit as fast. I think faster.
As to their future, if they do not live in Europe, have family support and do what the European cyclist do (that too), it is unlikely they will do so well as time goes on.
It is easy to get fried, and going home to bed at parents house is quite an advantage for a 18-23 year old.
Fly from a ToS to do a USA ITT 4 days later has to not be fun, esp when you already qualified for worlds.