For any pro, every season always has elements of a voyage into the unknown, but for Fred Wright, starting 2023 at a new race, the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, before his debut next week with the British elite track team at the European Championships, even more so.
Wright is set to ride the Madison for Great Britain on February 12 in Switzerland. But as he told Cyclingnews before stage 1 of Valenciana, he also believes the track and road combination will “set me up nicely for Opening Weekend and the Classics.”
During the stage, Wright’s Bahrain Victorious showed impressive collective form, as the squad worked hard in the rugged finale to try and shed some of the other sprinters.
Wright then ran 11th in the bunch kick and admitted later he had made some mistakes in the finale that would need to be put right. But he was happy with how he felt and was looking forward to seeing how a visibly strong Bahrain Victorious could “rip things up” in the hillier stages to come.
“Seeing how this works with the track is a bit of an unknown,” Wright told Cyclingnews before the stage 1 start in Orihuela.
“But I expect to have absorbed this workload by the Madison on the Sunday, and we’ll see how that fares. I've been training on the track and am looking forward to the Euros."
Wright recognised that Valenciana was a hilly season start for an allrounder like himself but that he viewed it as “a good chance to get that workload in the legs.” Furthermore, from a training point of view, he added, “doing the Euros is a good way to get looked after, and it all will set me up nicely for Opening Weekend and the Classics. I didn’t really have a race like this to taper in last year, so this will set me up better.”
As for his Valenciana debut, he said his winter had gone well, but as ever, it was only when the racing action began that he would have a real point of reference.
“I’m excited to see where my training has put me, you spend the whole winter building up to this point. It’s exciting to see where I’m at and how I’ll fare against the others after changing some things and doing the same in others.
"It was definitely a better winter than others, but you never know until you race. Plus, I’ve never done Valenciana before.”
And if February represents unchartered territory both on the track and road, Wright has a much more familiar season trail to follow once this month is out of the way. In fact, his schedule is now more or less decided all the way through to the middle of August.
“Paris-Nice, the first few Classics, but Flanders and Roubaix are the big ones,” he says, “then a bit of a break, a build-up to the Tour and the Worlds after that.”
As for the remaining question marks, he says, “I’ll maybe squeeze in a little getaway after the Classics, and after the Worlds, there are still some more races, of course. I’ll probably do an altitude camp again at some point, I did one before the Tour last year, and it definitely benefited me.”
A few hours later, when stage 1 of Valenciana was done and dusted, Wright argued that even if it had not all gone to plan, as fellow Londoner and singer Ian Dury famously once put it, there were plenty of reasons for Wright to be cheerful all the same.
“Day 1 of racing in 2023 was a bit of a shock to the system; actually, we started quite steady and then were straight onto the Col de Rates, a climb we all know really well, but this was the fastest I’ve gone up there by a long way,” Wright told Cyclingnews.
“I gave the sprint a go, though I made a few errors to work on when I watch the video [of the finish].”
“I should maybe have trusted Matej [Mohoric - working for Wright at Valenciana, Ed.] a bit more, he had a good lead-out in his legs. I could have used him a bit better."
But Wright insisted he was happy with how he felt after his season opener, and he also confirmed that his team’s collective powering up the two cols of the day at a ferocious pace had been to try and drop some of the other sprinters.
“It wasn't to be, but it was a good sign for the next few days," he argued. "It’s a hard day tomorrow [Thursday], and we’ll really try to rip things up there. I’m looking forward to being a part of that as well.”
