Our #youngdudes Lennard Hofstede (Sunweb), Owain Doull (Sky), and Trek Segafredo’s Ruben Guerreiro have been busy, busy, busy racing all over this summer. One of them even took part in his first ever Grand Tour, the Vuelta a Espana! We last caught up with the guys in late June so we have lots of ground to cover. 

Owain Doull

Owain’s had a pretty hectic schedule since he returned from his appendectomy in the early part of the season so it seems only fair that he had a few days off while he was back in the UK. As befits an Olympic gold medallist and all round sports’ fan, Owain was invited to watch Wimbledon from the Royal Box but fell foul of its dress code  by forgetting his socks!

Owain’s raced the RideLondon-Surrey Classic in support of teammate Elia Viviani who finished in the top 10. Ahead of the race, Owain, Jon Dibben and Teo Geoghegan Hart were put on the spot by Sky’s Lia Hervey. Click on the link below to hear the full interview.

Owain and the team went on to successfully work for Elia Viviani, who won the CyClassics Hamburg and the Bretagne Classic. However, Owain posted some impressive results of his own, seventh overall in Tour du Poitou-Charentes and 9th overall in the OVO Energy Tour of Britain. He’s now off to the World Championships in Bergen and will be taking part in the team time trial with Sky and will represent Team GB in the road race.

Ruben Guerreiro

Ruben looks smashing in his national champion’s jersey and was no doubt looking forward to showing it off at the Tour of Poland but sadly he was struck down (again) with a tummy bug.

Ruben bounced back at the BinckBank Tour, where Trek-Segafredo won the team classification, capping a successful week of racing that included two stage wins and third overall. Here he is at 1 o’clock in the photo below celebrating post-race with his team-mates. You’ll note at 4 o’clock in the same photo is our Giro #youngdude Mads Pedersen, who won the overall in Ruben’s next race, Tour du Poitou-Charentes.

Ruben sprinted to sixth place in the Bretagne Classic, a WorldTour race where he had the best legs in the team to finish among a list of prominent names, a veritable who’s who of one-day classics, before taking part in the two GP races over in Canada. He’s now back and readying himself to ride for Portugal in the UCI Road World Championships in Bergen.

Lennard Hofstede

Embed from Getty Images

After training at altitude at La Plagne in July, Lennard was looking forward to the Clasica San Sebastian where we met up before the start of the race. He’d only flown in the night before and hadn’t had time for a reconnaissance. Nonetheless, he said he was going to finish the race even though many team helpers drop out of the final circuit. It’s a very undulating, leg-sapping course but he did indeed finish it.

Like Owain and Ruben, Lennard was in action at the BinckBank Tour where he was working as part of the Sunweb sprint train as well as providing protection for Tom Dumoulin who took the overall – job done! While we were chatting in San Sebastian, Lennard let slip that he’d be riding in the Vuelta – to say he was excited was putting it mildly.

Sunweb finished third on the podium on the Vuelta’s opening team time trial and Lennard was thrilled despite his planned early dropping off of the pace. During the early stages, he worked tirelessly for Wilco Kelderman, who finished 4th overall, but Lennard was unfortunately struck down with a tummy bug and couldn’t start stage 12. Now fully recovered, he’s taking part in the PostNord Danmarkt Rundt, working as part of the sprint train but a little bird has told me I’ll be able to catch up with him again at Il Lombardia.

 #Giroyoungdude Mads Pedersen