Archie Ryan "gutted" to miss Europeans, set for Jumbo Visma World Tour chance | Sticky Bottle

Archie Ryan wins stage 7a at last month's Tour de l'Avenir after a characteristic stinging attack in the mountains. He is out of the U23 road race at the Europeans but is also set for a late unexpected chance with the Jumbo Visma World Tour team (Photo: Anouk Flesch)

By Shane Stokes

Archie Ryan has expressed mixed feelings about his withdrawal from the European championships this week, saying that he is ‘gutted’ to miss the race but that the chance to line out with the Jumbo-Visma WorldTour team was too good not to avail of.

Ryan had been due to line out with his future EF Education-EasyPost teammate Darren Rafferty in Friday’s under 23 road race, together with Dean Harvey, Odhran Doogan, Jamie Meehan and Kevin McCambridge.

Instead he will guest with the Jumbo-Visma squad in the Tour de Luxembourg, in what will be his final appearance with the World Tour team. He is part of its development squad but UCI rules allow those riders to guest with the bigger team in .Pro and .1 ranked events. He rode the Tour of Slovakia with the WorldTour squad last year, winning stage two.

“I’m obviously gutted to pull out of euros, especially at such a late stage, but the course here in Luxembourg is a really great opportunity for me to race with the pros so I couldn’t say no,” he told stickybottle on Tuesday.

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“I’m super excited to get started. The course is real tough and we have Tiesj Benoit here in great shape so I’ll do my best to help him and we’ll see how it goes.”

Ryan has done little racing this year due to what was a lingering injury, but won a stage in the recent Tour de l’Avenir. He’s feeling good about his shape heading into his last races of the season.

“My form’s good. I did a big week last week into this as didn’t expect to be racing, but should be sweet! After this I’m racing Piccolo Lombardia u23 next weekend, and another 1.2 in Italy two days after that, then I’m done.”

The 21 year old has a contract with the EF Education-EasyPost team from next season, joining with new pro signing Rafferty and Ben Healy there.

He’s bidding farewell to the Jumbo-Visma squad but took encouragement from the team’s display in the Vuelta a España, where Sepp Kuss, Jonas Vingegaard and Primož Roglič took first, second and third overall in the race.

“Seeing what the boys did in the Vuelta is mad,” he said. “They made history there, something that could well never be replicated again and it’s super inspiring.”