Adam Rafferty went into yesterday's U23 TT at the UCI World Championships as a promising young prospect and emerged from it very much on the radar of World Tour teams.
Still just 18-years-old, the first-year U23 rider has combined his cycling with exams this season. And having pulled a top 10 performance out of the bag, he has marked himself out as one to watch.
The expectations of him must now be recalibrated given the quality of the performance and he said he was genuinely surprised at the result he achieved, finishing in 10th, with his brother, Darren, placing 6th.
"It's a bit of a shock for me, being a first-year, and I wasn't as confident today as I usually am coming into time trials," he said, adding he was very pleased to be "in pretty good company" in the results.
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Rafferty was in 10th and some 1:17 down on new U23 world champion, Spain's Iván Romeo, the 21-year-old riding for Movistar Team in the World Tour.
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That result for Rafferty, of course, means he is now part of that "good company" he spoke of after his performance of yesterday.
And that is perhaps no surprising considering he has been riding with top development team Hagens Berman Jayco; the team his brother Darren moved on from for EF Education-EasyPost this year.
Rafferty laughed that he expected his brother to beat him yesterday, which he did by 16 seconds over the 29.9km course in Zurich.
Rafferty, the U23 Irish TT champion, said he was still finding out what kind of rider he could be, but to date had enjoyed his best results in TTs.
"I'll see how it goes over the next few years, just try to keep learning," he said, adding he and Darren had checked out the course together and studied it closely.
"It's double the knowledge and Darren's a great rider for me to learn from," he said. "I think the harder the course the better it would be for Darren and it was quite a challenging course."
