It’s an ordinary Thursday, and a teenage Callum Thornley rushes home from school as quickly as he can to eat his dinner. It’s usually tuna pasta. All day he’s been excited about racing in the Dirt Crit in the evening, a series of 15-minute bunch races at his local mountain bike centre. He’s thought about little else.
“It felt like it was the World Champs or something,” Thornley recalls of those nights at Glentress where the races were held near his hometown of Peebles in the Scottish Borders. He remembers the sound of the crowds as the riders cut through the course, the aroma of the cake tent and most of all the addictive adrenaline rush which got him hooked on racing bikes.
Almost a decade later, Thornley has emerged as one of Britain’s most promising young talents on the road. He is about to make the step up to race at WorldTour level with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe where he will race as a colleague of Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič, but the Scot is just as excited to race now as he was then.
“Everything’s changed since the Dirt Crit days, but then also at the same time nothing’s changed. It’s just still that same addictive atmosphere and adrenaline that you get,” he says.
Image: Maximilian Fries
After starting out on the mud, Thornley quickly found a love for the road, joining up with his local chain gang and then progressing into racing across Scotland. COVID put the brakes on Thornley’s junior career, preventing him from cutting his teeth in Europe. In an era where so many teenagers are being discovered and fast-tracked, he would have to find another way.
Thornley stayed in Peebles for his first year at under-23 level too and arrived at the 2022 British National Championships as something of an unknown. Having targeted the under-23 time-trial, Thornley sprung a surprise by finishing second in a stacked field. He caught the eye of Trinity Racing, where he would progress steadily for two seasons before being picked up by Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Rookies for 2025, his final year at under-23 level.
While many of his peers were signed up by WorldTour teams years before, Thornley’s slower progression to cycling’s top division could serve him well in the long-run. Most young riders are now living the life of a professional very early on, but Thornley has a different perspective having experienced a more ‘normal’ adolescence.
“It’s funny because I’m obviously last year under-23 now, but in my…