Killian O'Brien is about to take one of the biggest steps in cycling; jumping from the junior peloton straight into European professional racing with a UCI-ranked team. Ahead of his debut in Spain on Friday - for Mexican squad Petrolike - he explained to stickybottle the "big winter" he had put in.
Though he gained extra kilos - often anathema to cyclists - O'Brien outlined how the watts he is now producing are much higher than last season, when he was often "chilling on the climbs" but then being "smashed around" on flat terrain.
In this interview the 18-year-old from Ballinteer, south Dublin, sets out his high volume training in recent months, much of it in Spain, and how he was worried he was doing too much. Those concerns weren't assuaged when he weighed himself for the first time after a long period of training.
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But when he trained with a top tier group - Archie Ryan (EF Education-EasyPost), Conn McDunphy (Team Skyline), Ronan O'Connor (Team Skyline), Ruairí Byrne (Orwell Wheelers) and others - in Dublin-Wicklow on a recent trip home, and they raced each other, he could see the benefit of his big volume winter.
"Over Christmas we did a smash race ride with all the guys - Archie, Conn, Ruairí and Ronan and all the good guys in Dublin basically. And I was well able to hold my own," O'Brien said. "It was nice to show that the winter had paid off and I felt really really good. So that improved my confidence a lot."
O'Brien gets his season underway on Friday at Classica Camp de Morvedre (1.2) in Valencia; a 178.1km test with some stiff climbing in a field that includes teams like TotalEnergies, Equipo Kern Pharma, Burgos Burpellet BH and Euskaltel-Euskadi.
From there he will travel to the Mallorca Classic - five days of one-day racing - where he will train as his team mates compete, though he may be called in to race himself if required. However, his season proper will not start until he travels to Croatia in March.
Even though he will race this Friday to get used to the pro peloton, and help the team as best he can, the climbs will offer some indication where his form is. Overall, he said he was hopeful he could ride well this year, for both his trade team and hopefully for the Irish U23 team, if selected.
"The team is kind of split in two; more experienced riders and then younger guys," O'Brien says of Petrolike. "So there's not really much competition for the team slots for the bigger races at U23. And then I can learn a lot from the older guys in the elite races that I do, which is really nice.
"I finished the Leaving Cert last year so I'm off this year and the team is supporting me for everything for the whole year. It's the first year when I've been cost-neutral. I'm not having to ask my parents for anything or to work, so I can give cycling my full focus."
O'Brien had been training in Spain, near Granada, when he spoke to stickybottle in recent days. Though he had gone skiing with his family earlier this month, and was also home in Ireland for Christmas, he spent a near two-month period before that training in Spain.
"It was all just low intensity high volume," he said. "I think I did something like 195 hours in two months, or something crazy like that. It kind of killed me and I really thought for a while I was doing too much. But the week off really helped me, and I came back and I'm better now than I've ever been.
"I've put on four kilos since last season. I was worried about that. But I didn't want to weigh myself at all; I just wanted to let my body do what it does naturally. But then when I stepped on the scales and I was 4 kilos more than I've ever been.... I was saying to myself 'oh no, I'm going to be really bad now'. But I'm actually just better - stronger, faster - than I've ever been. It's really good."
Looking to the year ahead, he could ride races like Giro Next Gen (2.2U) and Giro Ciclistico della Valle d'Aosta-Mont Blanc (2.2U) with his trade team. If Ireland rides the Tour de l'Avenir, he would love to gain selection. The Europeans are also on a hard course this year, in Drôme-Ardèche, France, in early October, that could be suited to O'Brien, who likes the climbs.
However, as he makes the jump from junior to UCI senior racing, he is not putting pressure on himself. The first task is to try and get comfortable in the bunch in the first part of the season, test himself and improve. He knows it will take time and that he must prove himself to gain selection for the big U23 fixtures.
"I'm confident in my ability, but I think over the next month and a half I'm going to improve a lot in my high-end stuff," he said. "My Zone 2 power and my Zone 3 power have gone up by 30 Watts since last year.
"But my high end stuff hasn't followed yet, because I've only just started my intensity (training recently). So I think in the next few weeks I'll start to get my high-end power back and get more confident then."
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Though O'Brien was most impressive on the climbs as a junior, he said his training during the winter was more general, rather than seeking to purely work on his strong point.
"I think with the body shape that I am, I'm always going to be light. So that's always going to be my strength," he said of climbing. "It's about building a lot of power. Last year... I was low 50 kilos and I could do all the watts-per-kilo I wanted but the second the road wasn't uphill I was just getting smashed around.
"And every time I was in a breakaway... on the hills I'd be chilling and on the flats I'd be dying . So (this winter) I've tried to keep my watts-per-kilo the same and just lift my weight and the power with it.
"I think my climbing is good enough, but everything else isn't. So it's about getting to that level where I can hold my own in the breakaways on the flat and then maybe make them suffer on the climbs."
But, again, he stresses this year will be a learning process. He is under no pressure - from the team or himself - to set the world on fire.
"The ProConti guys I'll be racing against are all nearly at the World Tour level and I'm just coming out of the juniors," he said. "And in the juniors it wasn't a super talent. So I'm not expecting to win races from the get-go or anything.
"I want to make it so the team taking a chance on me is worth their while. I don't want them to regret taking me on. So it's about proving to them that they made a good choice. And then also in those big races - if you could get a top 10 on a stage of the Baby Giro, or get other big results....
"That could put you out there for the bigger teams, the World Tour development teams, that kind of level. And those teams will be doing pretty much the same races I'll be doing this year. So I want to prove myself against those guys, hold my own against the best young guys, and just really get the most out of the season."
Ireland U23 and Petrolike
O'Brien won the Shay Elliott junior race, and the junior classification in the Cycling Ireland National Series as a first-year junior in 2023 riding for Orwell Wheelers. He then went on to ride for International Veleka Team, based in the Czech Republic, and claimed two victories in Italy. He was also 3rd in the junior road race at the National Road Championships in Limerick and 3rd overall at the Junior Tour of Wales.
He was especially pleased with his bronze at the nationals, saying the course did not suit him yet he was able to compete with the best Irish riders. Similarly, though some of the usual climbs were missing from the Junior Tour of Wales, he still managed 3rd.
And even in some of the races in Italy that did not suit him he performed well; a 70km solo breakaway in one being neutralised with just 5km remaining.
His agent - Massimiliano Mori of the Italian PM Cycling Agency - knew some of managers at Petrolike and was able to secure a spot for O'Brien for this year. He said Mori, a former pro himself, has been very proactive; regularly traveling to watch him racing in Italy and going to great lengths to secure him a team for this year and ensuring he is settling in.
Aside from getting used to his new trade team surroundings, O'Brien would also clearly like to make his debut for Ireland in the U23 ranks. He was part of a junior and U23 group recently taken to Calpe for a training camp by Cycling Ireland and got to meet all the staff.
"They were telling us that the Europeans this year is quite a tough course and the Worlds in Rwanda is obviously a brutal course at altitude," he said. "It will be quite hard to get a team out there, especially at U23. So we'll have to really prove that we're at that level if we really want to go to Rwanda.
"Tour de l'Avenir would be incredible, but we haven't been there in a few years. So the U23s really have to prove we're at that world class level before they're going to invest. So if Adam (Rafferty, Hagens Berman Jayco) got a GC result and then maybe Seth (Dunwoody, Bahrain Victorious Devo) might win a sprint in the big under 23 races.
"And then Patrick and Sam (Casey and Coleman of Israel Premier Tech Devo) and Liam (O'Brien, Lidl Trek Future Racing) might get some results. And then they might think, 'well, we have a good chance of getting some results here, let's put a bit of money into l'Avenir and Worlds'.
"You could almost build a full Irish team of U23s from World Tour development teams. Only the best countries in the world can do that. And for us, as a small country, to be able to do that... I think that's pretty impressive."
