Quinn Simmons: Now it's time to start winning

Quinn Simmons is already training hard for 2023, clocking up a seven-hour, 232km ride in Arizona this week, before he travels to Spain for Trek-Segafredo’s first formal training camp of the new season. 

The 21-year-old American will begin his fourth campaign at WorldTour level in 2023, which is also a contract year, hungry to finally make a breakthrough and take his place among the new young generation of riders who have become prodigious winners at the top level. 

“I've been on the podium, I've been in the breaks, I've gotten jerseys at races, I've done all this stuff. Now it's time to start winning,” Simmons recently told Cyclingnews and Velonews in a joint interview.  

“I used to be a promise and if I'm honest, I'm sick of just showing promise. I want the promise to be something. I want to finally be able to be the one who can get it done.”

Simmons will know more about his 2023 race schedule at the Trek-Segafredo training camp but his personal ambitions are clear.     

“In 2023 I want to be good for Strade Bianche again and follow the same schedule as last year, be competitive to try and win it. I've now been in the top ten, so the podium would be the next step.

“I don't want to go to the Tour next year and just ride six times in the breakaway again, I want to go and maybe I only ride twice in the break but take a stage. Also in the Classics, I want to finally be up there. I want to at least be there in the final to help riders like Mads Pedersen or Jasper Stuyven.” 

A fast track career: from Junior world champion to Tour de France debut at 21

Some people doubted Simmons’ decision to turn professional immediately after winning the junior road race title in 2019. He was physically mature but still young. However, stepping up to the WorldTour with Trek-Segafredo in 2020 perhaps saved his career. The under-23 racing calendar was virtually cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and reduced in 2021. 

Simmons raced for 34 days in his debut season and made his Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta a España in 2021, winning the Tour de Wallonne his first professional victory.  

2022 was another season of intense racing, suffering and learning, with Simmons again strong at Strade Bianche, sick during the cobbled classics but then strong again on his Tour de France debut, where he went in the breakaway five times. 

He celebrated racing Paris and was eighth in the inaugural Maryland Cycling Classic in the USA but opted not to ride the World Championships and ended his season after racing in Montreal and Quebec.  

Simmons learnt a lot in 2022.

“I recently had a conversation with my manager about next year and we realised I need to be more selective when I try to do something,” he said of arguably his biggest lesson.

“I was frustrated because so many times this year and last year I felt like I'm in the position to do something good. And then it just doesn't happen. It's just a lot of miscalculations on my part. But you know, sometimes you just need that one lucky moment to get away. I've never never had that yet. I came close at Strade Bianche and was playing for the win, then I was fourth on the stage at the Tour de Suisse.   

“If you look at the spring it's a bit annoying. I've had three years now where the Classics basically fell apart. This year I left Tirreno thinking I could finally do something and then we all know that story already. I don't need to sit here and make excuses.” 

Simmons managed to recover from what he thinks was bird flu in the late spring, train hard and then secure a place in the Trek-Segafredo Tour de France squad with some impressive riding at the Tour de Suisse.    

“When you get the phone call for the first time that you're going is special, I almost started crying. I was so happy,” Simmons said. 

“I knew more or less like in my head that it'd be pretty hard for them not to take me but you still don't know. And then my coach Steven de Jongh let me know and I called my parents and told him to book their plane tickets. I went to Girona, slept in my altitude tent and then the Tour was as I wanted. I emptied myself there.”

Simmons joined the break of the day five times at the Tour de France, racing somewhat recklessly but having fun and learning for the future. 

“There was a mountain breakaway that I really didn't need to be in but I had the legs to do it, so I said: ‘Why not?’ You're riding on the front of the Tour!" he said.

“If I'm honest, I was just a bit too excited. It's a good way to ride your first Tour. But I realise I need to be more black and white and decide when today is my day. On the right day I can, I can climb on the right day, I can sprint, but we don't know when that day is. I’m still developing mentally and physically. My body's been changing and I haven't really found that one thing that I want to do.

“I know, I'm good when I'm tired. You know, I really enjoyed the last week of the Tour when everyone's on their knees. And that's when I then started to feel that I'm a good rider. When everyone's fresh, I feel quite average, nothing special. But the more tired everyone gets, the better I feel. So, you know, maybe we can work something like that in the future.”

Simmons is hungry to live up to his promise and take his place in the next generation of leading riders, but after four years as a professional, he understands it will not be easy, even for one of the most talented riders of his generation.  

“It's an exciting time to be a young rider, but it's also really frustrating if you're not one of the superhumans,” he said.

“It's inspirational and cool to be part of the same generation as Evenepoel but at the same time, it's now you start to feel like you're falling behind. At my age, Pogacar had already won his first Tour.

“You can't compare yourself to everyone, maybe it takes me a couple of  extra years or maybe it never happens. But I still believe that at some point I can win the biggest races. I don't know when it's gonna be but I'm going to keep trying every year until it either doesn't happen or it does.”