Luke Rowe narrowly misses Gold in the

European Junior Road Championships.

Posted 11/07/08

The riders line up to take the start in terrible conditions.

 

Luke Rowe was beaten into a close second by French rider Johan Le Bon at the weekend, in the European Junior Championships. It is the best finish by a British rider in many years. Along with Luke's other top finishes in European events this year, this result confirms Luke as being one of the best riders in Europe and one to watch for the future.

 

Here is Luke's riders diary of events leading up to his impressive performance.

 

The circuit was about a 40 minute drive north of Milan air-port where we flew into.
The championships ran from July 3-6, 2008.

We arrived out in Italy on the 30th of June.

1ST JUNE
we started off with a steady spin on the 1st of June, just a real light ride about 2 hours in length. Beautiful weather, about 30 degrees all day.

2ND JUNE
another steady ride went out to check the road course out. Did a lap of that course then ride back to the hotel. Another beautiful day, again about 30 degrees.

3RD JUNE
went out for an hour and a half on the low pro bikes. Had a good blow out along the time trial course. Did 3 x 5 minute efforts with a good rest in-between each one. Another good day as far as the weather goes.

4TH JUNE
The first race today. My start time was 11:48 so started my warm up a good 40 minutes before. Had to cover 16km which is about 10 miles. Came 11th in this. Felt ok but don't think I had a great ride. Didn't feel like I could get all my effort out and I still had more to give but just couldn't get to it. A strange feeling, possibly due to not enough of a warm up??? But still happy with the result. Another hot day!

5TH JUNE
The day before the road race. Just went out for a steady spin, about an hour and half. Went out all 7 of the team for tomorrow's road race.

6TH JUNE
Road race time! An early start today, had to be up before 6am so we could get all the food into our system's 3 hours before our start time which is at 9am!

Arrived at the start and were sat in our pit when the heavens opened! The rain was full on. The worst rain I have ever seen and trust me ive seen some rain as ive lived in Wales for 18 years!!! The rain was relentless for the whole 130km.

The race was held over 6 laps of a course just over 20km. The course had 2 very hard climb's in it both with a tricky decent. There were a total of 200 riders who massed the start line.

Different countries are allowed different amounts of riders depending on their previous results and standings e.t.c. Great Britain was allowed 7 riders. Only 1 country had more than us and that was the Italian (host nation) team with 8 riders.

I started towards the back of the field. As soon as the flag dropped I fought my way up the bunch as there would obviously be a lot of crashes on a day like this one. For the first 3 laps of the race I just sat in the top 20 riders and marked any of the real big moves that were going. Then as the race went on I became more and more active.

I got in a good move on the 4th lap but in the end it came to nothing. Then finally I got a break, about 10 riders slipped away over the top of one of the climbs on the 5th lap with about 35km to go.

Then over the next climb it narrowed down further more. There were then 8 of us left. There were 3 French riders among these, and also 2 polish riders. I was the only Brit so it was always going to be hard! There were several attacks over the last lap but none of them successful. Then with 5 km left there were still 3 French riders left. OH CRAP! Also 1 of the polish riders had been dropped so apart from the French every other rider in the break was alone.

Over the last 5km, which was a fast flat run in the French got really organised and started firing men up the road 1 at a time. As soon as 1 of them was caught another 1 would attack. I chased a lot of these moves but then realised I was going to have to settle for 2nd as I saw 1 French rider disappear up the road. Then for the sprint I knew we were closing in on the French rider and at the finish we were only 5 seconds off him.

Too little to late! Out of the last 2 French riders, 1 of them led the other 1 out. I lay off him and it ended up being a 2 horse race between me and the remaining polish rider which I just got the better of.

I got the silver! Overall this was a really hard race for me. But really happy with the end result! The fact that only 76 of the 200 that started finished shows just how hard this race was! Good day in the saddle!

The eventual winner - Le Bon

 

Luke takes his place on the podium

 

European Champs: Junior Men's Road Race (129.6 km): Results
1. LE BON, Johan FRANCE - 03h13'57" (40.093 kph)
2. ROWE, Luke GREAT BRITAIN - at 05"
3. GAWRONSKI, Piotr POLAND - s.t.
4. ZIMINE, Boris FRANCE - s.t.
5. KOIR, Nejc SLOVENIA - s.t.
6. CATTANEO, Matteo ITALY - s.t.
7. BROCHARD, Florent FRANCE - at 15"
8. SAGAN, Peter SLOVAKIA - at 25"
9. KWIATKOWSKI, Michal POLAND - at 31"
10. ALAFACI, Eugenio ITALY - at 55"
11. SBARAGLI, Kristian ITALY - s.t.
12. BARDET, Romain FRANCE - s.t.
13. MAYKIN, Roman RUSSIA - s.t.
14. PINOT, Thibaut FRANCE - s.t.
15. IVANOU, Yauhen BELARUS - s.t.
16. SPRENGERS, Thomas BELGIUM - s.t.
17. DANACIK, Tomas CZECH REPUBLIC - s.t.
18. BARBIN, Enrico ITALY - s.t.
19. ERSHOV, Artur RUSSIA - at 01'37 - s.t.
20. FELLINE, Fabio ITALY - s.t.
21. SOKOL , Jan AUSTRIA - s.t.
22. HERRADA LOPEZ, Jesus SPAIN - s.t.
23. SCHELLING, Patrick SWITZERLAND - s.t.
24. GRADEK, Kamil POLAND - s.t.
25. DANNER, Fabian GERMANY - s.t.
26. ALEKHIN, Sergey RUSSIA - s.t.
27. FREITAS, Daniel PORTUGAL - s.t.
28. MAQUET, Arnaud BELGIUM - s.t.
29. PETRUS, Lubomir CZECH REPUBLIC - s.t.
30. OWSIAN, Lukasz POLAND - s.t.
31. AHLSTRAND, Jonas SWEDEN - s.t.
32. ZIESLER, Johan Fredrix NORWAY - s.t.
33. POLJANEC, Erik SLOVENIA - s.t.
34. BÜRGEL, Bastian GERMANY - s.t.
35. BOUHANNI, Nacer FRANCE - s.t.
36. HASIBEDER, Thomas AUSTRIA - s.t.
37. WAEYTENS, Zico BELGIUM - s.t.
38. LAVERY, Philip IRELAND - s.t.