Brayden breaks through in Ireland and Belgium
Apart from completing his HSC course, year 12 Moriah College student Brayden Bloch’s other major goal for 2022 was to make a breakthrough on the world junior cycling circuit.
He’s already achieved the latter, returning last Thursday from a gruelling, eye-opening, and ultimately successful six-week racing trip across Europe, where he made impressive debuts in the world’s longest U19 men’s road cycling event – the six-stage 2022 Junior Tour of Ireland (JTI) – and a series of seven separate one-day U19 road races in Belgium.
The current joint winner of the Maccabi Australia Junior Sportsman of the Year award could not have had a better start in the JTI, which featured the Irish junior national team, eight teams from America and teams from European nations.
Riding in a team of Americans and one fellow Australian, Bloch came third in a sprint finish in the opening 50km stage.
He came eighth in the hilly 103km second stage to earn the Green points jersey, and defended it for another day by placing eighth in stage 3.
A heavy mid-race crash in stage 4 gave him cuts and bruises, plus damage to his bike’s gears, but he still managed to come 20th, and find enough determination and energy in reserve to form a breakaway with another rider early in the 106km stage 5.
They were reeled in by the peloton with 10km left in that stage, which featured four climbs scaling a total of 1200m, but Bloch hung in there to finish seventh.
Then, in the final stage, he bounced back from another crash to secure himself ninth place overall in the tour’s general classification, sixth in the points competition, and 10th in the King of the Mountain category.
Competing in Belgium a week later, up against 150 U19 cyclists from all over the world, Bloch rode for a team called BRE, earning a couple of top-10 and top-30 finishes.
He told The AJN that competing in Ireland and Belgium “was an incredible experience and a huge learning curve, in terms of there being so many riders, and having tours extend to six days, compared to a maximum of two days in Australia”.
“I really enjoyed it, and I think I surprised myself [in terms of results] … just knowing that I can compete at that level is massive.”
Bloch will now juggle completing his HSC trial exams with competing in the 2022 NSW U19 road cycling championships, before ending his debut overseas cycling season by travelling to South Korea to ride in the five-stage Junior Tour de DMZ from August 26-30.
comments