The Lost Boys: Simmons and Evenepoel, a tale of two prodigies
From Velo.com
Ever since Quinn Simmons won the 2019 world junior road championship in Yorkshire, England—taking over the under-19s rainbow jersey won by Remco Evenepoel the previous year—the American prodigy has promised more than he has produced.
It was a partial surprise when Evenepoel turned pro at age 19, but he overcame that seeming premature step-up by soon winning classics and one-week stage races and clocking up more than 30 victories in his first three pro seasons. Perhaps his example was one that Simmons hoped to repeat.
But now, midway through his fourth season in the UCI ProTour, the American has won just four times, at lesser races, and his hopes of winning a stage at this Tour de France ended on Sunday when his Lidl-Trek team decided he should not start stage 9. Simmons sustained extensive wounds to his left shoulder and hip in a heavy crash 30 kilometers into the first Pyrenean stage, stage 5.
After he finished with the gruppetto for the following three days, he said online: “Together with my doctor, coaches and team, we have made the decision not to start today. Disappointed doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling. I built my whole season around arriving here in peak form but I guess that’s how the sport goes.”
At just over 6 feet tall and just under 160 pounds, Simmons is much bigger than the average Tour rider; but his power numbers are also bigger than the average. That’s why the Trek team first became interested in his capabilities four years ago.
“I had signed the contract with Trek-Segafredo before Yorkshire, so I knew I had a future in the sport,” he said. “I knew I was the best junior that year, and Yorkshire was just the way to prove it.”
Image Courtesy of Hoebele, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
