The start of the junior E3 Classic is a strange place. Just a few hundred metres up the road, WorldTour pros are getting ready in warm buses, hordes of fans already surrounding them. Round the corner, on a quiet, residential street, there are 17 and 18-year-olds getting changed in vans.
Some of the riders are actually riding WorldTour teams’ bikes, or wearing their helmets – some even their kit – but here they’re on national team duty, where budgets don’t even stretch to a camper, unless you’re Belgian.
Milling around the basic line-up of vehicles are coaches, parents, and a very small number of supporters. But the most interesting figures are those in expensive coats or team-issue jackets, chatting directly with riders, and getting their number – both metaphorically and literally.
These people are agents and scouts, here to identify the next generation of talent before they even turn 19, and – ideally – get them on their books.
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We know by now that these relationships are starting earlier and earlier, with top riders turning pro straight out of junior ranks, or at least signing for a WorldTour team’s development squad. The fight for the next big star is fierce, and everyone wants to lock talent in early.
‘Scouting’ can come in a lot of different forms, and these days can happen via Instagram DMs as much as anything else, but with agents and scouts on the road throughout the year, it’s clear that nothing beats actually getting out there and meeting riders.
Junior races like E3, or perhaps the junior Trofeo Alfredo Binda a couple of weeks ago, are quietly some of the most important days of the year. Winning is important, yes, but every rider also knows that eyes from the pro ranks will be on them, and a good ride here could be a stepping stone towards a pro contract.
A rider is more than the sum of their watts
When everything nowadays is on ProCyclingStats and Strava, you might think that talent scouts can do all their work from home, just crunching the numbers to find the junior most statistically likely to become a good elite rider. But actually, they’re looking for much, much more than that.
“Personally, I look firstly at the humility of the rider,” Jayco AlUla scout Giovanni Visconti tells Cyclingnews after E3, perhaps not the first quality you’d expect a scout to pick up on.
“I like to speak with them and see how they love their sport and how…
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