The morning solar – the primary we have now noticed shortly – slants in the course of the cafe window and casts an angelic glow throughout Joe Blackmore’s face. And neatly it will, for this lad from London can, it sort of feels, do little incorrect presently.
The 21-year-old, a former dyed-in-the-wool off-road racer, has spent the previous season striking the completing touches on an alchemical development that has noticed him flip dust into street race silverware and graduate from the British Biking Academy to the WorldTour with Israel-Premier Tech, all whilst selecting up win after win.
Amongst the ones was once a momentous GC victory on the prestigious French under-23 race the Excursion de l’Avenir in August which, in a 63-year historical past, counts Greg Lemond, Egan Bernal and Tadej Pogačar amongst its winners – however by no means a rider from Britain. Till now.
The seed for that win was once planted in remaining 12 months’s race, when Blackmore was once nonetheless a mountain biker with the BC Academy. He rode to twelfth general. A turning level.
“I got that result with more focus on mountain biking,” he tells me. “That’s probably where I thought, you know, road racing suits me – should I have a proper winter training for it?”
Whilst a mountain biker, the street motorcycle was once a key coaching software; he’s willing to show that he did not by hook or by crook uncover thin tyres this January. He’d completed the peculiar race too, together with the 2023 Excursion du Rwanda.
However l’Avenir opened his eyes. “To do that with a lack of tactical experience, even of riding in a peloton, and then have the physical ability [to win], I was happy with that,” he says.
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Blackmore and Marion Bunel at the podium of the Excursion de l’Avenir
(Symbol credit score: Excursion de l’Avenir)
Blackmore comes from a biking circle of relatives – his father has at all times raced off-road – and started racing at simply six years previous on the Herne Hill Formative years Biking Membership.
Based totally on the well-known observe it can be, however the membership – and certainly Blackmore himself – was once all concerning the muddy stuff.
“I never really rode the track,” he says. “I tried it a few times, didn’t like it. And from there, it was always cross and mountain bike. I’ve always ridden on the road as well,” he caveats, “whether that’s local road training sessions or a few local crits. But I’ve never properly travelled around the country for it. I’d go to national cyclo-cross and mountain bike series, but I’ve never done that for road races.”
Till now, after all.
We’re speaking to Blackmore at Westerham’s Velo Barn cafe, a widespread flyby for him on his lengthy street forays out of south-east London and into the Kent hills.
Street rides took priority remaining wintry weather when, for the primary time since he was once in number one college, Blackmore forwent all the cyclo-cross season. As an alternative, he all in favour of construction street velocity and staying power, forward of what could be his first season with the Israel-Premier Tech Academy building squad. It was once a sacrifice that paid off in an instant he started racing.
(Symbol credit score: Getty Pictures)
He was once thrown instantly into the combination together with his WorldTour stablemates, beginning the 12 months with 3 level races – the Excursion of Rwanda, Excursion de Taiwan and the Circuit des Ardennes – all of which he gained. He additionally took levels in each and every.
Biking Weekly described him as a “young British winning machine”. Blackmore himself, who comes throughout as a measured, unassuming younger guy, is a marginally extra understated: “It was definitely a good start to the year,” he says. “It was good racing as well, to win with good team-mates and tactics as well. So yeah, it was exciting.”
Did he expect to win so much? “I have simply long gone race to race, and simply attempted to stay the momentum going. I feel firstly of the 12 months I sought after simply to be up there in additional races, somewhat extra ‘within the race’ as such. However to do in addition to I’ve, I did not consider that.”
A fast finisher, good in the hills and a rider who thrives in the stage-racing environment, Blackmore has yet to work out exactly what sort of rider he is.
Flexible, in all probability?
“I feel lovely flexible,” he says. “In the end, just about each and every race day I have completed this 12 months, I have simply were given caught in doing the most efficient I will be able to. Anything else can occur in a motorcycle race, so you have to be lovely all-round at the moment, I feel.”
Given that he had such a successful start to the year on secondment to Israel-Premier Tech’s WorldTour squad, it only looked like a matter of time before Blackmore would be granted permanent leave to hang with the big dogs. It came sooner than most onlookers expected: in early May, he put pen to a two-year contract with the WorldTour team.
Successful the U23 Liège-Bastogne-Liège
(Symbol credit score: Israel – Premier Tech / Alexis Dancerelle)
He acknowledges that moving to Israel-Premier Tech has been a big step up: “It is only a in reality just right surroundings and they have made me really feel like I will be able to pass to the correct races, and blend a couple of off-road races as neatly,” he says. “I believe love it was once the correct step, after the races I would completed the 12 months ahead of.”
While off-road racing will always be his first love, Blackmore acknowledges that he is, essentially, better at the road.
“I feel it most likely simply fits me extra, possibly it is my frame sort. I’ve completed a couple of mountain motorcycle races this 12 months [he took two U23 World Cup top-10s and won a round of the National XC Series]. Clearly I am in just right shape, however it is onerous to switch it again to the mountain motorcycle.”
Racing mountain bike continues to be important to Blackmore, though. He has watched riders such as Tom Pidcock and Mathieu van der Poel succeed with their multi-disciplinary approach and been inspired; that the team supports this approach appears to have been significant in his signing for them.
“The pathway that Van der Poel, Pidcock and Wout van Aert are making with multi-discipline is surely cool,” he says, conceding that switching back to off-road does not come easy for him – and he wouldn’t take any chances on it.
“If I will be able to get that stability the place I am additionally doing neatly at the mountain motorcycle, then clearly I would experience it,” Blackmore says. “Ultimately I want to race at the front and do best in whatever discipline that is. At the moment, that’s road.”
Blackmore’s part-season as a fully paid-up WorldTour rider was constructed largely of high-level races – UCI Pro Races, .1s and WorldTour races – meaning gaining experience became as important as the results.
That did not stop him from registering some memorable results, though: fifth overall at the Tour of Britain Men, for example, and the same in the U23 men’s World Championship road race in Zurich. And let’s not forget that win at the Tour de l’Avenir, of course.
On his way to fifth place in the Commonwealth Games mountain bike 2022
(Image credit: Getty Images)
While this season has been the second key year in a row, as Blackmore first decided to switch to road and then progressed to the WorldTour ranks, next season is equally rich in opportunity and anticipation as he considers what will be his first full season at the top level.
He doesn’t know many of the details yet, but as the reigning U23 Liège-Bastogne-Liège champion he is hoping for a crack at the full-fat version as part of an Ardennes foray. He also mentions Brabantse Pijl, where he was fourth this year and which was Pidcock’s first pro road win in 2021. “[It] would be a cool target race, because I’ve been there, out front, and experienced it.”
Beyond that, he has mentally earmarked rides in the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, “and a Grand Tour”, for his career bucket list. It’s not hard to imagine him being granted all three of those wishes, perhaps sooner than he thinks, and with successful outcomes, too.
His dream wins, he says, would be victory in the World Championship road race, and a Tour de France stage. The latter is perhaps inspired by the man who helped him to victory in the Tour of Rwanda earlier this year, team-mate Chris Froome, whom he cites as his sporting hero: “As a young child I wasn’t racing as much road, but when [Froome] was winning the Tour, that was really cool,” Blackmore says.
For now, though, racing dreams and racing itself – including his beloved CX – are on hold. It’s off-season. “After this year’s race season, I’m grateful to not do any cycling,” he confesses. “I’m happy for a good break and some consistent training as well.”
He has been building strength in the gym, putting in a few unstructured miles when the weather’s good, and the week after we met was due to head to Cyprus with his girlfriend and a few mates for some sociable riding and relaxing. Things began more earnestly at the team’s December training camp in Girona, Spain. Then it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to the first competitive outings.
“To be on the start line of some of the biggest races in the world will be pretty cool,” he says. “I’m excited for it.”
Rounding out the 2024 season at the Tour of Guangxi
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Blame it on my youth
Joe Blackmore may be one of the youngest new stars in the WorldTour peloton, but in terms of experience, he is already a veteran, having started out at just six-and-a-half years old.
Taking inspiration from his dad Steve, a dedicated off-road racer himself, Blackmore joined Herne Hill Youth Cycling Club in 2009 and began riding and racing his mountain bike on the trails behind the famous velodrome.
By dint of sheer quiet consistency, within a few years the young Londoner had blossomed into a rider with obvious ability. “I think because his dad was a regular racer, he was brought to all the races because his dad was going, and he’d turn up and do it,” says Herne Hill Youth founder Bill Wright. “After a while, people who do that, they just suddenly find that they’re quite good.”
Even at 10 years old, Blackmore was beginning to glean a few raised eyebrows and knowing nods of approval, says Wright, who says the emphasis at HHY is on enjoyment. “He was once at all times within the peak 4 or 5, and from time to time successful,” Wright says, “After which, as he were given to twelve or 13, he was once just about successful the whole thing.”
Bill Wright remembers Blackmore as having a “quiet character and getting on with stuff. However he had a forged crew of buddies.” As a youth rider, Blackmore would ride cyclo-cross and mountain bike races, before ultimately graduating to National Trophy events, which he began riding at U14 level.
The club had been thrilled to watch their young charge’s progress through the British Cycling Academy, development and now WorldTour ranks.
Blackmore’s bangers
Joe Blackmore was only 19 when he began last year’s Tour of Rwanda with the British Cycling Academy. By the time the eight-stage race was over, he’d celebrated his 20th birthday, taken four top-10s and sixth overall, and lit the blue touch-paper on a season that would alter the course of his cycling career. Here are some of his most memorable road results since.
2023Orlen Nations GP: 9th overallTour de l’Avenir: 12th overall
2024Tour of Rwanda: 1st general, two level wins, two 2nd puts on stagesTour de Taiwan: 1st general, two level podiumsCircuit des Ardennes: 1st general, issues and formative years winner, one level winDe Brabantse Pijl (first race with Israel-Premier Tech): 4thLiège-Bastogne-Liège U23: 1stNational Championship Elite Males’s Street Race: 8thTour de l’Avenir: 1st general, issues winner, level win, two 2nd puts on levels
