At the end of the opening stage of the Colorado Classic - featuring WorldTour teams - Gage Hecht was out front solo (Photo: Ashley Gruber - Colorado Classic)
It’s a race that has seen many of its stars go on and, literally, conquer the world of pro cycling.
The Junior Tour of Ireland has played host to Tour de France winners Geraint Thomas and Bradley Wiggins.
Both won stages but neither claimed the overall. Robert Gesink has ridden it, as have our own Nicolas Roche and Dan Martin.
Roche claimed outright victory and Martin won a stage when he rode on a Team GB selection.
And ‘The JT’, as it’s known, is still attracting some great riders. Just a few short years ago we reported on American hot shot Gage Hecht.
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He rode the race in 2015 for the Hot Tubes team. Hecht claimed the opening stage as a 16-year-old to take the first yellow jersey of the race.
In the 6.2km test from Ennis to Drumquin he beat Simon Tuomey of the Irish national team by 12 seconds to win.
And one of stickybottle’s first stories of that race was a piece on the impressive palmares Gage Hecht had already built up despite his youth.
He also came back the following year, 2016, and won the final stage. He was reigning US junior road race champion and the junior national cyclocross champion.
On the final stage two years ago he just about beat Alexis Roche for victory on the final stage in Co Clare.
Now aged 20 years old, he has just taken his biggest win; a stage of the Colorado Classic, against WorldTour teams, and the leader’s jersey.
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Gage Hecht in yellow at the 2015 Junior Tour of Ireland. And beating Ireland's Roche for victory on the final stage in 2016 (Photos: Stephen McMahon - Sportsfile)
He escaped in the main breakaway of the day. And while it was caught Hecht attacked it and held off the chasers to win by six seconds.
In recent times Hecht also won the American U23 TT title, as well as the criterium and cyclocross titles.
Just over two weeks before he came to Ireland in 2015 he rode the USA Cycling Amateur Road Nationals and won the criterium gold medal and stars and stripes jersey of American junior champion.
Two days before taking that title he had won bronze in the time trial event, having taken silver 48 hours earlier in the junior road race.
Before that 2015 road season even began, Hecht had taken no fewer than 11 victories on the US cyclocross scene in major events.
He was also victorious in the junior support race at round 2 of the UCI Cyclocross World Cup in Belgium in November 2014.
And he claimed gold in the junior race at the USA Cycling Cyclocross National Championships on December 1st.
He then went on to represent America at the World Cyclocross Championships in the Czech Republic in January, 2015.
And in the sprint for the silver medal in the junior race from a three-man group his chain slipped and he would have to settle for 4th.
As an even younger rider – in his youth racing days before becoming a junior – he had also taken a string of national titles.
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