Introducing Owen Cole, the US U23 champion making Worlds debut in Glasgow

Only half of the calendar for 2023 had ticked away before Owen Cole (Velocious Sport) earned a huge haul of firsts, which were punctuated, so far, with an inaugural appearance at the UCI Road World Championships for Team USA. In fact, he’ll get his first trip to Europe courtesy of the berth on the U23 roster of seven men for time trial and road race events in Glasgow. 

The stars-and-stripes jersey he earned in June at USA Cycling Amateur Road Nationals in Roanoke, Virginia was his first major road win. Just one month before in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he won his first national title, taking the crown in the USA Cycling Collegiate road race for club teams.

The 19-year-old from Chapel Hill, North Carolina rides for club team Velocious Sport as well as for his collegiate club team with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC). Last year as a freshman at UNC, he joined the cycling club team and focused on mountain biking in the Carolina colours, winning six events across cross-country, short track XC, downhill, and the marathon MTB national title. 

After a collegiate road title this year, it was the U23 victory in Roanoke that presented a springboard to greater challenges on the road, rather than his first love for mountain biking. He called the moments after realising he qualified for Worlds as 'surreal'. Cyclingnews caught up with Cole before he headed to Europe for his first taste of kermesse racing and then training with Team USA to prepare for the World Championships. 

Cyclingnews: How did you become interested in riding a bicycle?

Owen Cole: My dad has always ridden bikes. Back in the 90s, when mountain biking started to become a ’thing’, he was riding his road bike on mountain bike trails. And he's had me mountain biking kind of my whole life. It was just like a weekend recreation thing, that you do every once in a while, and then the NICA league started in North Carolina, in 2017. I started doing that and got into racing mountain bikes. And I realized that it was really fun. Until late spring, early summer of last year, it was entirely mountain biking that I did. 

I travelled a decent amount around the US and did some of the big mountain bike races and I liked it. But I always had this interest in the road. I got the opportunity to try it out and do a little more of it when US road nationals came to Roanoke last year. I had a good time and got second in the crit. And that was when I was like, ‘Yeah, this is really fun’. So that was the path I took.

CN: Do you have trails and roads close to your home in Chapel Hill?

OC: There's tons of mountains biking around here in Chapel Hill. There's tons of just empty roads around farms that have really nice pavement in all directions, except towards Durham. And you can just go ride for a long time and not see many people. The road and off-road around here is amazing.

CN: You don’t have much of a history of racing criteriums, like other under-23 riders. Tell us about how you perceive ‘riding’ versus ‘racing.

OC: I like riding mountain bikes, but I prefer racing road bikes. So that was my full focus for this year. I also just like to go out and just do really long rides and huge, huge training rides. And leans more towards a road racer than a mountain biker. I’m already a lot more successful on the road than I ever was on my mountain bike.

CN: You said you had two goals for road racing  in the first half of the year with your varsity club team at UNC-Chapel Hill. You accomplished both so tell us how you scored yourself for two national titles.

OC: Right at the beginning of May, at the end of the spring semester, I went out to Albuquerque, New Mexico with a couple teammates on the UNC cycling club. And I mean, we're just a club team. We're not a school-sponsored varsity team. So our race isn't the varsity race with all the really tough guys who go to school for cycling. But, you know, it's still a solid race. And that was my first big success in a full-length road race. I had that good ride at the junior crit last summer in Roanoke, but that was my first real success at a full length road race and that was the ‘a-minus’ goal for the year. And then, the ‘a-plus’ goal for the year was U23 nationals in Roanoke. And I managed to match it, or top it, [goals for year] depending on how you look at things.

CN: The victory in the U23 road race gave you a spot on Team USA for the UCI Road World Championships. Was that on your radar? 

OC: I had no clue. Somebody came up to me like 10 minutes after I won the road race, and said, “Dude, you're going to Worlds’. I'm like, ‘What do you mean?’ I knew the time trials were automatic qualifiers, but I had no clue the road races were automatic qualifiers. I was waiting for the podium and then talking to the national team directors, making plans to go to Scotland for World Championships. It was surreal.

CN: Your teammates at Worlds in the U23 division for the road race will be Luke Lamperti (Trinity Racing), Brody McDonald (Aevolo Cycling), Artem Shmidt (Hagens Berman Axeon), and Colby Simmons (Jumbo-Visma Development Team). They all ride for elite level teams. Do you know any of them?

OC: They're legit, serious riders. And they go to these big international races. No, I've never really ridden with any of them.

So I get to go to Belgium and do a couple of kermesses, and then we go to Scotland a week before the race. We get there on Monday, and we don't race till Saturday, so presumably, we'll be riding together around Scotland for a couple of days. I think maybe a lot of them know each other, but I'll get to know them. And, we’ll figure out how we're going to race together.

I’ve never raced in Europe before, so it's going to be my first experience at that level, and it's going to be the biggest race I can possibly do. So, I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's gonna be an awesome experience.

CN: Will World Championships cause any conflicts in your schedule?

OC: Actually, I come back from Scotland and I move back to school four days after that. It works perfectly. I think normally, when they don't do the whole ‘Super Worlds’ thing, like later September, it would conflict with school, but I would for sure make that work. That's not an opportunity I'm looking to turn down.

CN: What are you studying in college?

OC: I'm studying biology and Exercise Science.

CN: How do you juggle success as a road cyclist now with three more years of college?

OC: I’ve thought about it and I definitely don’t want to leave school. It’s just always been the track that I was on. UNC is not a school that I want to give up. So what I've thought about is focusing on school in the fall and racing in the spring, because racing over in Europe and stuff, you can't really do both, right? So, you can kind of take as long as you need to graduate. 

And actually we've had some meetings at the UNC cycling club with the Chancellor and some higher up people at UNC who actually were cyclists in college. I'm hopeful that I can kind of work something out to where I can focus on racing in the spring, and then obviously the summer, and then still be a full-time student in the fall and work towards a degree.

CN: It’s good to have the Chancellor of the university as a fan.

OC: I don't know to what level or anything, but he was a cyclist in college. And when he first heard about the team, it was like, ‘Oh, I gotta meet these guys’. He was really excited about it. I think I think that's pretty cool. And that'll help us and the rest of the guys on the team to make it a lot more fun, and have some more support from the school.

CN: When you are not riding or racing, how do you relax? What do you like to do?

OC: Well, when I'm in school, there's not much of that time. Trying to train like 20 to 25 hours a week and do classes and get enough sleep to actually make the training effective, there’s not much free time. Over the summer I work at my local bike shop, Parcycles in Carrboro, NC.

CN: What is the race you would most like to win?

OC: The races that I've always thought were the coolest were like the cobbled, one-day classics in Belgium and France. So I would have to say the Tour of Flanders just because it's the most iconic. That's like the coolest race in the world to me. That’s kind of the type of rider that I am, so it's not like I'm some sprinter trying to say I want to win the Tour.