Less than two years after completing university, and questioning his commitment to high performance cycling, Rory Townsend raced into the Roubaix velodrome on Sunday at the end of a difficult, but memorable, debut at Paris-Roubaix.
The 28-year-old riding for Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team was not at the front threatening for victory. But he made it within the time cut; something that looked lost to him as soon as the pavé sectors started and his luck suddenly went south.
"I was pretty emotional, I can't lie," he said when asked how he felt on reaching the famed concrete velodrome after 260km of some of the toughest classics terrain in cycling.
"It was another one of those moments that I never thought would happen to me really," he added of a day of drama, when he was left to "hack" his way to the finish some 150km, and 28 cobbled sectors, from the line.
Advertisement
"I'd never been to the Roubaix velodrome before, even though I spent a lot of time at the team house last year literally just over the border. We talked about riding over and visiting it, but we never did. So it was pretty special to be there for the first time, it's such a Mecca for cyclists.
"There was definitely goosebumps. It was funny, as we were on our way in (to the velodrome), I didn't really know where we were going, it was hard to pick out the circuit. I was with Owain Doull (EF Education-EasyPost) and he's done it a few times, so he was shouting directions from behind because I couldn't work out where I was going.
"It was pretty special. They were winding up the podium presentation at the time so the atmosphere was still really good 20 minutes after the main event."
Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) won the race again, and this time by three minutes. That allowed him enough time to take the applause, greet well-wishers and then casually watch the sprint for 2nd place, leaning on his bike in the centre of the velodrome.
Townsend's day was more stressful; the 2022 Irish road race champion suffering a puncture as the cobbles began. He then suffered more bad luck with a slow service. Finding himself well down, with 28 sectors and 150km remaining, he tried to make the best of a bad lot.
"The way the race panned out form me, making it to Roubaix seemed pretty far-fetched from quite a way out after I punctured on that first sector, I couldn't believe it," he said.
"I had a pretty awful wheel change. Not to throw the mechanic under the bus, it was a bit of a nightmare. And then I was just hacking on my own for quite a while. I was in a big group but it was just a group of guys whose legs had already come off or they just decided that their day was done."
Townsend then had to dig in and keep the dream alive, going clear of the group solo and eventually catching Doull. They then teamed up to ride together, catching and passing groups before picking up Townsend's team mate Joey Rosskopf.
"It ended up just a three of us," said Townsend of the small but determined group. "Honestly, we were cooking. We were going full gas, pretty much. We were dead set on getting there and honestly we were ripping. There was only three of us and we averaged 45k an hour, you've got to tap the pedals for that."
Asked how hard the cobbles were, and what the atmosphere was like, Townsend described pain and elation at the same time.
Related News
"Arenberg was horrific, it is honestly as bad as they say," he said. "A lot of the cobbles are ordered chaos but (Arenberg is) just pure chaos. You're trying to focus to pick a line but there's no line, not really.
"I think Carrefour de l'Arbre (the fourth last sector) was probably the best one. Obviously it was brutal and hard.... There are certain parts of Arenberg... because it's quite isolated, there are no spectators on it. Whereas Carrefour de l'Arbre was just insane, really deep crowds. And by the time I was getting there people were more and more pissed so that really adds to the occasion as well."
He eventually finished - with Doull and Rosskopf - in 108th; the trio some 22:27 down on Van der Poel. They were the last riders but one - Kelland O'Brien (Team Jayco AlUla) - to finish inside the time limit. However, in the end they made it by more than five minutes.
Asked how much better he could have done but for such an early puncture, at precisely the wrong time, Townsend clearly has some regrets.
"I did feel good, honestly," he said. "I had two terrible races last week. I went to Limburg thinking 'I could try and go for the win here'. And I just did absolutely nothing. And then Scheldeprijs was much the same. So it is bitter sweet in a sense, because I never really got to show what I could do. I'm just another guy out there who had some bad look.
"But I take a lot of pride that I knuckled down and just cracked on. Like, you're riding along and people have the conversation 'are you going to go to the finish?' And I'm, like, 'well, yeah'.
"I've got one more race here on Wednesday, Brabantse Pijl, and that's my classics done. So what good is it leaving anything behind now? Maybe it's different if you have done a few of these... But big respect to Owain. He's done lots of these and he's ridden at a high level for a long time. But he was just as motivated as us to make it around."
How a career "flipped" in a month
Looking back now on how close he came to stepping away from the pro cycling dream, Townsend said the finish in Roubaix has confirmed for him he was right to keep going.
"I did go back to college in the end and I did all that," he said. "And then I saw my whole cycling life flip in maybe a month. I finished off university and then two days later I won the Champs," he said of claiming gold in the road race at the National Championships in Kanturk in June, 2022.
"And then within a month of winning champs I won two races in Belgium and then I got my contract with Black Spoke," he explained of securing his first ProContinental contract, with the Kiwi team, for the 2023 season. "And that was the start of it really, that gave me a foothold and a solid base to build from.
"And here I am now, in this team (Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team) where we're so well supported. I'm so pleased that I stuck at it, to experience this sort of level of professionalism because it's something I've always wanted. And I try to hold myself accountable and do the right things on my end.
"And sometimes when it's not reciprocated by the team or the environment, you feel like you're swimming against the tide. But on this team, there's a lot of pressure here and I relish it in a way," he said, adding getting the chance to ride Paris-Roubaix has been a high in his career to date.
"I think I'll be glad I did it, to be able to say that I did it. It's one of those life goal moments, in the same way the Worlds and those sorts of big experiences have been for me."
