Rory Townsend (Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team) is now 29-years-old and the former Irish road race champion is a veteran of the pro peloton. Currently nearing the end of the 2025 spring classics campaign with his team, Townsend is an aggressive rider who has won UCI-ranked European races and knows his way around the breakaway.
At Tour of Flanders, just as the major teams were getting in formation to block the road, Townsend got out of the bunch and across to the group that was forming off the front. He went on to spend 175km up the road and was the last man, but one, standing from the escape group in the final.
He told stickybottle there was often mixed feelings about a breakaway ride in a major race like Flanders - "a strange perverse feeling of guilt" - if well wishes and congratulations poured in when there was a sense of what might have been.
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Townsend also explained he has a routine he goes through when he gets up the road, adding communication with the others in the breakaway, and agreeing a strategy for maximising their chance, was important.
"Just before I went away, I said on the radio (to the DS) 'look I'm not on a good day'," he said. And then, as luck would have it, the next move went and I was just in a position where I had to go with it because I could see they were trying to shut the road down. I'm at the stage now where I know how to do that. No matter how bad I am, I can always sniff out a breakaway."
Townsend added the length of his breakaway ride, and the intensity of it, last weekend was huge. When he compared with a friend of his who is an Ironman athlete, they believed the impact from such a heavy day was most evident in the body two days later.
"The main thing for us, and what Giacomo Nizzolo was saying was, 'this is going to be an incredible event you've just got a soak it up and enjoy it'," he said of his team mate urging them to take in the life experience a race like Flanders offers. "And I think that definitely put me in a better mindset going into the race, and just trying to enjoy the moment."
Townsend added this classics campaign has been a tough one. His team - which signed Tom Pidcock this year - had a relatively small rosters for the classics, meaning the same riders were doing a lot of races. Townsend said that created pressure, and a very hectic period of racing, added to the fact he did not believe he was at his very best for this spring.
Because of that, he felt getting into the breakaway last weekend was something that one of his team mates may have been better suited to on the day. But when he saw the larger teams were about to block the road, she shot from the bunch and got across to the move, which formed about 40km into the race.
Though the race is packed with spectators - especially on the famous climbs - Townsend said the roadside is always more sparse in the early stages, when it was important for a breakaway rider to focus on the task at hand; normally a long hard day.
"In that first part of the breakaway, I go through my usual process," he said. "I'm pretty well experienced now with being in breakaways so you do the usual things like you find the biggest guy to sit behind. And you focus on things like having a high cadence, so it's quite focused for that part."
Townsend the breakaway men were also "very conscious it had a good opportunity to go quite far into the race so there was plenty of communication" about how they were going to spread their effort.
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"We took a pretty easy until Doorn, the first cobble sector," he said. "Easy… but we paced ourselves with the plan that from Doorn all the way to the turn before Eikenberg we'd step it up a bit," he said of pushing a bit more in the period from 110km to 145km into the race.
"And then we went hard to the Kwaremont (210km), and then controlled over the top, and pretty hard to the bottom of the Paterberg (214km). And from there the peloton didn't necessarily have a big advantage over us in the front, by virtue of the nature of the the roads."
Townsend said though the men in the breakaway were experienced pro bike riders, going up the Kwaremont in the lead at Tour of Flanders was an experience for all of them.
"The first time up it was pretty special, it was a unique experience," he said. "I think we all felt that on some level. The Astana lad who was with us (Alessandro Romele, 21) said he was struggling but he went up the climb, like, 20 seconds ahead of us," he laughed.
Townsend added through his DS, Kurt Bogaerts, was on the race radio trying to give details, including about the crosswind at the top of the climb, the Irish rider could hear next to nothing because the crowds were so big, and so vocal. And the riders couldn't feel any crosswinds, again because of the large crowd.
Though his breakaway was being gradually reeled in, a chasing group - containing Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) and Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) got across to them first. That added firepower drove on the Townsend group, helping it stay out front for longer.
However, while that was a positive, eventual race winner, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates - XRG) was soon attacking behind.
If that bazooka from the winner had come a bit later, Townsend said the race might have unfolded in a manner that meant he stayed ahead of the top favourites for a little longer and would only have fallen back to what was effectively the second group on the road, which ended up sprinting for 8th. In the end, Townsend was mowed down earlier by the big guns and slipped back to 82nd on the day, seven minutes down.
He said all of those things - the way the race might have played out - tended to play through his mind after such a big race. But, ultimately, he added, the Ganna-Kung group had helped him stay out front for much longer than they would have otherwise done. He was also reasonably happen that Marco Haller (Tudor Pro Cycling Team) from the breakaway had survived out front for longer than he had.
"But we don't just want to be going in these breakaways just to get ourselves up there," Townsend said of his team. "We're going with the intent of taking something out of the race.
"There's also some strange perverse feeling of guilt in a sense (after a big breakaway ride) because everybody's saying to me 'that was amazing, great ride'. And then I look at the results sheet and I think 'what does that actually mean?'
"But I think the race really played out well with that group coming across, it was a great opportunity. Looking back at it now, it's a feeling of 'Oh, it could have been something amazing'.
"But, in actual fact, if that Ganna group hadn't come across, it would have been a classic 'break gets swallowed up after about 200k' or whatever. I still think it was definitely a positive day."
