The step up to the WorldTour is a dream for almost any cyclist, and Devon’s Harrison Wood was amomg those to make it a reality in 2023, signing for long standing French outfit Cofidis, riding some of the biggest races on the calendar such as Strade Bianche and the Critérium du Dauphiné. Speaking to The British Continental during his off season from Torquay, where he was once on the books of the town’s football club, the 23-year-old climber spoke to us about his rise to the WorldTour, the realities of life as a neo-pro and his ambitions for 2024.
Wood has taken an eclectic path to the sport’s top division. Despite two years with the HMT Hospitals team as a junior, he barely raced on UK soil. Instead, his natural climbing ability was put to use in France and the Basque County. “I was doing OK in the UK nationals, but over in Spain with longer climbs, I was able to compete more,” says Wood.
As an under-23 he bookended two years with what he describes as, “The world’s best development team at the time”, SEG Racing, with spells in the fiercely competitive French amateur system with AVC Aix-en-Provence.
I reached out to them and within about two days I’d signed
It is his two years at AVC which perhaps shaped his future more than any other, with the move to southern France a natural choice. “My Dad had an apartment in the French Alps, so I’d been over a lot, I could speak a bit of French, which I’d learnt in school, and I saw that Alex Baybrooke, who is now a soigneur with British Cycling, was at AVC Aix-en-Provence and thought he might like a bit of British company, so I reached out to them and within about two days I’d signed,” he notes, explaining that not everything was perfect in his first year.
At the 2023 Criterium du Dauphiné. Image: Mathilde L’Azou
“AVC had quite a French mentality, which you sort of build into slowly and take your time progressing. I was progressing quite fast, but I wasn’t getting put in the races to progress that fast.” After reaching the top ten of a number of Elite Nationales, the highest level of amateur racing in France, as a first year under-23, Wood contacted the Dutch SEG team about a ride for 2020. “When a team like that comes back and says it would be good to have a discussion, you bite their arm off!” he says, having made a swift deal with the UCI Continental outfit.
When you start as an under-23, you think you’ve got ages, but you don’t have that long when you look at it, it’s four years and done
Wood spent two years with the Dutch team, the first virtually written off by the Covid-19 pandemic and the second marred not only by the continuous lockdowns, but also the disappointing news the team was to fold at the end of 2021, leaving him on the market for his final season in the under-23 ranks. “When you start as an under-23, you think you’ve got ages, but you don’t have that long when you look at it, it’s four years and done. It was disappointing in a way to miss two years in the best development team, where you do the best calendar. The team were really good in that we did other things like e-Racing on RGT and Zwift. They kept it quite focused. We had training camps and managed to get a bit of racing in, the way the team handled it was really good.
“We got told just before the end of the season [2021] they wouldn’t be running a team anymore. With AVC, I knew where I was, I knew the roads, the staff were still the same. When I was 19, I was able to do top tens in Elite Nationales, the highest level of racing, without having really done massive training or massive races. But now, after three years in under-23, I’d done the Baby Giro twice, which is ten stages, I [thought I] should be able to win an Elite Nationale or some races in Spain, so it was an easy decision in a way.”
Image: SEG Racing
Wood’s second spell with AVC brought results; stage victories in the Circuit de Saône-et-Loire and the Vuelta al Bidasoa followed a number of early season podiums, with second overall and the points jersey at the Vuelta a Navarra topping off an excellent first half of the season. It earned the climber a stagiare ride with Cofidis, although a horror crash racing in the Nations Cup for Great Britain in June almost cost Wood his career, not just his opportunity.
“It showed them [Cofidis] after my big crash that I was still able to perform and I was on an upwards trajectory,” says Wood of his time with the French WorldTour squad in 2022, where he rode races such as the Tour of Limousin and the 2.Pro ranked Tour of Luxembourg in support of team leaders Guillaume Martin and Benjamin Thomas.
Wood believes his time as a stagiaire helped him when he stepped up to the pro ranks this year, his first full season as a professional. It proved he had the level required, and helped him to get to know how the team operated.
“It definitely helped a lot. You can have a look at what the races are like and what the level is, and it’s good that when you’re able to perform and help the guys, it shows the team that you have the level to be able to race in those races, but it also helps massively meeting all the team,” says Wood. “Last year, I think I met 13 or 14 of the riders before I even got to the training camp, so you already know over half the team. Same for the staff, I knew about ten staff and DS. It’s like having one foot in the door. If you come into a team without the stagiaire role everything’s new – 28 riders, 15 staff, 8 DSs and coaches, you’d be confused almost.”
How has Wood’s day to day life changed since signing for Cofidis? The Devon born rider still lives in Aix-en-Provence with future team mate and AVC alumnus Oliver Knight and continues to train with a group of friends linked to the team such as Oscar Nilsson-Julien and Jack Brough. He points out that riders in the French system are amateurs in name only – competing in such an environment is very much a full-time vocation.
Winning the 2022 Vuelta al Bidasoa-Gran Premio. Image: F. DE LA HERA
“The amateur scene in France is really big. Everyone who races in France is full time, nobody seems to have a part time job. In that sense, it’s the same as being a pro, you’re just missing 90% of the salary basically! The races, the organisation, it compares a lot to pro races, actually.
Everyone who races in France is full time, nobody seems to have a part time job. The races, the organisation, it compares a lot to pro races
“It is completely the opposite in that pro racing is very controlled and amateur racing is an absolute free for all – the moment the flag goes it’s every man for himself and it’s whoever’s left standing at the end almost. I think that’s why you see French riders, your Alaphillippes, why they are such good racers, they’ve done their years growing up where they’ve had to race all 150km.”
Wood was given a new coach by Cofidis, forcing him to cut ties with Conrad Moss, a local coach who had worked with him since his junior years, except from a spell under Dutch coaches in the SEG team. “Everything is done in-house, except for a few guys who aren’t coached by the performance team,” says Wood of the coaching structure in the WorldTour team. “For me, as a neo pro, you don’t want to be making demands to bring your coach with you! In 5 or 10 years’ time, when you’re an established rider and you’ve won some races, you can do that, but as a neo-pro, you just do what you’re told almost!
The French way is to do other things in the winter – running or swimming; but with cycling now, the level is so high from January, everyone is already at 95%, you can’t afford to be going out for walks all the way through December and doing some jogging
“I had a chat with my coach this morning. He said this winter we’re going to try and do more endurance training. He said the French are slowly changing, the French ideas are slowly going and it’s becoming more ‘normal’. The French way is to do other things in the winter – running or swimming; but with cycling now, the level is so high from January, everyone is already at 95%, you can’t afford to be going out for walks all the way through December and doing some jogging! You need to be on your bike by December and doing proper training camps. In that sense, it’s changed over the years for everyone.”
The Cofidis of today under General Manager Cédric Vasseur may be very different to the team which began life in 1996, although a strong French culture remains within the squad, the majority of riders and staff native Frenchmen. “It’s quite a French-orientated team , which I guess makes it harder for foreign riders – you have to be able to speak French to get on with the group. Luckily, I can speak quite good French now, so I feel like I get on well and fit in with everyone in the team.
At the 2023 Criterium du Dauphiné. mage: Mathilde L’Azou
“Everybody gets on well, I don’t think there are any big personalities on the group as such. There’s no rivalry, which is nice, everyone gets along. It’s a team that’s progressing in the WorldTour,” says Wood.
Everyone’s together or nobody’s together. Your Vingegaards and Van Aerts, their team’s not in the MPCC, they can take the ketones and things like that, so you’re already at a disadvantage
As Wood hints at, Cofidis’ progression and has been notable in 2023, the squad collectively enjoying their best season since becoming founding members of the Mouvement pour un Cyclisme Crédible (MPCC) in 2007. Teams and riders in the organisation are committed to clean cycling and have obligations that go beyond the usual anti-doping regulations. “It’s important to me to be part of a team that’s 100% clean. It’s a really good thing to be part of,” he says of the MPCC. “At the same time, everyone needs to be with it. Everyone’s together or nobody’s together. Your Vingegaards and Van Aerts, their team’s not in the MPCC, they can take the ketones and things like that, so you’re already at a disadvantage. You’re definitely at a disadvantage already to a guy like Vingegaard with the level that he has, then when he gets something else that can give him an extra bit, it feels like it’s almost unfair on us!”
Wood began his tenure as a full-time Cofidis rider with the Tour Down Under in January, the stage race around Brisbane one of the highlights of his year. “It felt quite surreal,” he admits. “Doing my first race in Australia, doing it against Geraint Thomas, [Simon] Yates, it’s guys I’d watched in the Tour de France and Giro only a year ago.”
Wood quickly adapted though, helping team mate Bryan Coquard to his first WorldTour win, the catalyst for the team’s success later in the season. “You soon change. Obviously I have massive respect for [Geraint] Thomas, but at the end of the day it’s just another bike rider and you almost have to think that you can’t be too scared and it becomes just another bike race. If you spent the whole time in awe, you wouldn’t end up doing much in racing!
“Everyone we had on the team was part of a really good group, and if you ask anyone on that trip what their favourite race was, they’d say Australia. It was so much fun and we won a stage as well, which in my first WorldTour race was pretty nice.”
His first major test came in the Italian spring classic and ‘sixth monument’, Strade Bianche. Featuring long stretches of gravel, Wood was unsure of how he would fare over the ‘sterrato’, although he found the hilly nature of the race to his liking, finishing 47th. “I was pretty nervous for before it because I’d never done gravel and I’d never really done any mountain biking either, so I was sort of thinking ‘oh God, this could be me abandoning after 50km’, so I was pretty surprised to be up there just in the groups and able to do a half decent ride.”
When you see a rider like Vingegaard, it was just mental if I’m honest. It was the first time I’ve ever got back to the bus and been like ‘what an earth just happened?!’. The level he had there was unbelievable
Undoubtedly, the biggest challenge in terms of racing for Wood was the Critérium de Dauphiné, a key race in the build-up for the Tour de France. “Everyone at the Dauphiné is in Tour de France condition, some guys are actually stronger in the Dauphiné and get worse for the Tour, so you see the really high level,” he says of the week long stage race, where he was hoping to gain selection for the Tour. “It was my first big stage race, and after five days I was already pretty knackered before we did the mountains,” he explains, adding that the speed the best riders are capable of riding on the toughest climbs is breathtaking. “When you see a rider like Vingegaard, it was just mental if I’m honest. It was the first time I’ve ever got back to the bus and been like ‘what an earth just happened?!’. The level he had there was unbelievable, and you get to witness it first hand.”
Vingegaard’s performances demonstrated to Wood the level that is possible, and although he is under no illusion how high that is, Wood knows the direction he wants to travel. “You have to realise it’s not going to happen overnight. Next year I’m not going to have the level of Vingegaard, but you realise it’s going to take time to get to that level where you can compete, so it gives you a focus.”
Wood’s experience in the Dauphiné, and across the year, has led him to reflect on the style of rider he is. “I wouldn’t say now, having done a year, that I’m an out and out climber. The hilly races tend to suit me a bit better, races like the Ardennes classics and Strade Bianche. They aren’t the super long climbs, but also not the super short steep bergs, they’re something in the middle. Moving forward to next year it would be good to know I’m good on the 20-30 minute climbs, and if I get the opportunity to do the Dauphine or those sort of races to really test myself in the mountains and see what’s possible.”
One of the major disappointments for Wood in his maiden year was not riding a Grand Tour, injury preventing him from a potential Vuelta a España debut. “After the Dauphiné we said the next target for me would have been the Vuelta, so I went to Tignes and did an altitude camp to prepare for it. I was going really well,” says Wood, who headed to the Tour of Poland in early August as preparation. “I had a big crash on stage 2, and in hindsight, I shouldn’t have finished that. Finishing the race took almost everything out of me. I was knackered and sprained my collarbone and sternum joints so I couldn’t really move my upper body, I couldn’t really breathe properly for 3 weeks after. At this point we said no to the Vuelta because there’s a chance I recover and I’m OK, but there’s a chance I have to abandon on stage 5 or 6 because I’m just completely shattered.
Rayner Foundation Dinner 2023 – New Dock Hall, Leeds, England – Harrison Wood is interviewed at the Rayner DInner 2023. Image: Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com
“It was a bit disappointing, but it was out of my hands and out of the team’s control really. If I had done the Tour of Poland and was riding well, and was then told I wasn’t riding I would have been a bit pissed off, but as it was they’re was nothing we could do,it was just a crash and its part of cycling I guess.”
One of the major changes for any neo-pro is switching from having to ride for your own results to playing a team role, something Wood has handled well, impressing the team with his efforts in supporting others. “Everyone will say they will take more pleasure when riding for themselves and trying to do their own result,” Wood admits, having enjoyed a freedom as an amateur he may never get again. “This year, you have to take a step back. At the Dauphiné with Guillaume [Martin], he was top ten there – I’m never going to be able to do that for at least the next five years, so it’s nice to work for a guy who can. Same with Ion [Izagirre], who won a stage of the Tour. When you’re riding for someone who’s one of the best in the world, then he’s able to do a good result. it’s a nice feeling.”
Wood confirms that the confidence within the team is high, with them competitive throughout the entire season with impressive rides from young classics star Axel Zingle, climbers Guillaume Martin and Ion Izagirre and the unforgettable Tour de France stage win from AG2R-Citroen bound Victor Lafay. “It gives everyone a boost when someone does well,” says Wood. “Now, if you do a race with Ion or Guillaume or Victor, you know they have the level to win, which gives everyone a boost, knowing you’re not just racing to come 15th. It does change how you race.”
I think Cofidis see me as a bit of a long-term project, but at the end of the day it’s a contract year. Cycling is such a savage world with contracts, you can just get chopped off and they give it to another guy
2024 will be a contract year for Wood, who realises that one of the harsh realities of professional sport is that your career is on the line, despite it having barely started. “I think Cofidis see me as a bit of a long-term project, but at the end of the day it’s a contract year. Cycling is such a savage world with contracts, you can just get chopped off and they give it to another guy,” he says bluntly. “It’s an important year, but you just sort of go with the flow. At the end of the day, you train as hard as you can anyway, I don’t think fighting for your contract really adds much, it doesn’t give you 10 watts more. Maybe in a race you take one risk you wouldn’t if you had a contract, but at the end of the day all that pressure won’t change massive amounts, so it’s better you don’t add pressure and race like that.”
Up next for Wood, who is currently training alone and with his local club in Torquay during his off season, are two training camps near Calpe either side of the New Year, before he starts his season at the French curtain raiser, the Grand Prix Cycliste La Marseillaise at the end of January.
What does he want to achieve in 2024? “Definitely win a race. That’s my big objective,” he answers straight away, revealing that there is the potential for him to be given opportunities when there is no clear team leader next year. “To also do a Grand Tour,” he adds, after his disappointment in missing out this year. “To gain selection there and try to do something, maybe win a stage. Guys like Oscar [Onley] have proved you can win a stage of the Vuelta in your first Grand Tour, it’s not unheard of.”
Other than that? “Just keep developing and improving, learn, and most of all, just enjoy it really. That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”
The step up to the WorldTour is a dream for almost any cyclist, and Devon’s Harrison Wood was amomg those to make it a reality in 2023, signing for long standing French outfit Cofidis, riding some of the biggest races on the calendar such as Strade Bianche and the Critérium du Dauphiné. Speaking to The British Continental during his off season from Torquay, where he was once on the books of the town’s football club, the 23-year-old climber spoke to us about his rise to the WorldTour, the realities of life as a neo-pro and his ambitions for 2024.
Wood has taken an eclectic path to the sport’s top division. Despite two years with the HMT Hospitals team as a junior, he barely raced on UK soil. Instead, his natural climbing ability was put to use in France and the Basque County. “I was doing OK in the UK nationals, but over in Spain with longer climbs, I was able to compete more,” says Wood.
As an under-23 he bookended two years with what he describes as, “The world’s best development team at the time”, SEG Racing, with spells in the fiercely competitive French amateur system with AVC Aix-en-Provence.
It is his two years at AVC which perhaps shaped his future more than any other, with the move to southern France a natural choice. “My Dad had an apartment in the French Alps, so I’d been over a lot, I could speak a bit of French, which I’d learnt in school, and I saw that Alex Baybrooke, who is now a soigneur with British Cycling, was at AVC Aix-en-Provence and thought he might like a bit of British company, so I reached out to them and within about two days I’d signed,” he notes, explaining that not everything was perfect in his first year.
“AVC had quite a French mentality, which you sort of build into slowly and take your time progressing. I was progressing quite fast, but I wasn’t getting put in the races to progress that fast.” After reaching the top ten of a number of Elite Nationales, the highest level of amateur racing in France, as a first year under-23, Wood contacted the Dutch SEG team about a ride for 2020. “When a team like that comes back and says it would be good to have a discussion, you bite their arm off!” he says, having made a swift deal with the UCI Continental outfit.
Wood spent two years with the Dutch team, the first virtually written off by the Covid-19 pandemic and the second marred not only by the continuous lockdowns, but also the disappointing news the team was to fold at the end of 2021, leaving him on the market for his final season in the under-23 ranks. “When you start as an under-23, you think you’ve got ages, but you don’t have that long when you look at it, it’s four years and done. It was disappointing in a way to miss two years in the best development team, where you do the best calendar. The team were really good in that we did other things like e-Racing on RGT and Zwift. They kept it quite focused. We had training camps and managed to get a bit of racing in, the way the team handled it was really good.
“We got told just before the end of the season [2021] they wouldn’t be running a team anymore. With AVC, I knew where I was, I knew the roads, the staff were still the same. When I was 19, I was able to do top tens in Elite Nationales, the highest level of racing, without having really done massive training or massive races. But now, after three years in under-23, I’d done the Baby Giro twice, which is ten stages, I [thought I] should be able to win an Elite Nationale or some races in Spain, so it was an easy decision in a way.”
Wood’s second spell with AVC brought results; stage victories in the Circuit de Saône-et-Loire and the Vuelta al Bidasoa followed a number of early season podiums, with second overall and the points jersey at the Vuelta a Navarra topping off an excellent first half of the season. It earned the climber a stagiare ride with Cofidis, although a horror crash racing in the Nations Cup for Great Britain in June almost cost Wood his career, not just his opportunity.
“It showed them [Cofidis] after my big crash that I was still able to perform and I was on an upwards trajectory,” says Wood of his time with the French WorldTour squad in 2022, where he rode races such as the Tour of Limousin and the 2.Pro ranked Tour of Luxembourg in support of team leaders Guillaume Martin and Benjamin Thomas.
Wood believes his time as a stagiaire helped him when he stepped up to the pro ranks this year, his first full season as a professional. It proved he had the level required, and helped him to get to know how the team operated.
“It definitely helped a lot. You can have a look at what the races are like and what the level is, and it’s good that when you’re able to perform and help the guys, it shows the team that you have the level to be able to race in those races, but it also helps massively meeting all the team,” says Wood. “Last year, I think I met 13 or 14 of the riders before I even got to the training camp, so you already know over half the team. Same for the staff, I knew about ten staff and DS. It’s like having one foot in the door. If you come into a team without the stagiaire role everything’s new – 28 riders, 15 staff, 8 DSs and coaches, you’d be confused almost.”
How has Wood’s day to day life changed since signing for Cofidis? The Devon born rider still lives in Aix-en-Provence with future team mate and AVC alumnus Oliver Knight and continues to train with a group of friends linked to the team such as Oscar Nilsson-Julien and Jack Brough. He points out that riders in the French system are amateurs in name only – competing in such an environment is very much a full-time vocation.
“The amateur scene in France is really big. Everyone who races in France is full time, nobody seems to have a part time job. In that sense, it’s the same as being a pro, you’re just missing 90% of the salary basically! The races, the organisation, it compares a lot to pro races, actually.
“It is completely the opposite in that pro racing is very controlled and amateur racing is an absolute free for all – the moment the flag goes it’s every man for himself and it’s whoever’s left standing at the end almost. I think that’s why you see French riders, your Alaphillippes, why they are such good racers, they’ve done their years growing up where they’ve had to race all 150km.”
Wood was given a new coach by Cofidis, forcing him to cut ties with Conrad Moss, a local coach who had worked with him since his junior years, except from a spell under Dutch coaches in the SEG team. “Everything is done in-house, except for a few guys who aren’t coached by the performance team,” says Wood of the coaching structure in the WorldTour team. “For me, as a neo pro, you don’t want to be making demands to bring your coach with you! In 5 or 10 years’ time, when you’re an established rider and you’ve won some races, you can do that, but as a neo-pro, you just do what you’re told almost!
“I had a chat with my coach this morning. He said this winter we’re going to try and do more endurance training. He said the French are slowly changing, the French ideas are slowly going and it’s becoming more ‘normal’. The French way is to do other things in the winter – running or swimming; but with cycling now, the level is so high from January, everyone is already at 95%, you can’t afford to be going out for walks all the way through December and doing some jogging! You need to be on your bike by December and doing proper training camps. In that sense, it’s changed over the years for everyone.”
The Cofidis of today under General Manager Cédric Vasseur may be very different to the team which began life in 1996, although a strong French culture remains within the squad, the majority of riders and staff native Frenchmen. “It’s quite a French-orientated team , which I guess makes it harder for foreign riders – you have to be able to speak French to get on with the group. Luckily, I can speak quite good French now, so I feel like I get on well and fit in with everyone in the team.
“Everybody gets on well, I don’t think there are any big personalities on the group as such. There’s no rivalry, which is nice, everyone gets along. It’s a team that’s progressing in the WorldTour,” says Wood.
As Wood hints at, Cofidis’ progression and has been notable in 2023, the squad collectively enjoying their best season since becoming founding members of the Mouvement pour un Cyclisme Crédible (MPCC) in 2007. Teams and riders in the organisation are committed to clean cycling and have obligations that go beyond the usual anti-doping regulations. “It’s important to me to be part of a team that’s 100% clean. It’s a really good thing to be part of,” he says of the MPCC. “At the same time, everyone needs to be with it. Everyone’s together or nobody’s together. Your Vingegaards and Van Aerts, their team’s not in the MPCC, they can take the ketones and things like that, so you’re already at a disadvantage. You’re definitely at a disadvantage already to a guy like Vingegaard with the level that he has, then when he gets something else that can give him an extra bit, it feels like it’s almost unfair on us!”
Wood began his tenure as a full-time Cofidis rider with the Tour Down Under in January, the stage race around Brisbane one of the highlights of his year.
“It felt quite surreal,” he admits. “Doing my first race in Australia, doing it against Geraint Thomas, [Simon] Yates, it’s guys I’d watched in the Tour de France and Giro only a year ago.”
Wood quickly adapted though, helping team mate Bryan Coquard to his first WorldTour win, the catalyst for the team’s success later in the season. “You soon change. Obviously I have massive respect for [Geraint] Thomas, but at the end of the day it’s just another bike rider and you almost have to think that you can’t be too scared and it becomes just another bike race. If you spent the whole time in awe, you wouldn’t end up doing much in racing!
“Everyone we had on the team was part of a really good group, and if you ask anyone on that trip what their favourite race was, they’d say Australia. It was so much fun and we won a stage as well, which in my first WorldTour race was pretty nice.”
Embed from Getty ImagesHis first major test came in the Italian spring classic and ‘sixth monument’, Strade Bianche. Featuring long stretches of gravel, Wood was unsure of how he would fare over the ‘sterrato’, although he found the hilly nature of the race to his liking, finishing 47th. “I was pretty nervous for before it because I’d never done gravel and I’d never really done any mountain biking either, so I was sort of thinking ‘oh God, this could be me abandoning after 50km’, so I was pretty surprised to be up there just in the groups and able to do a half decent ride.”
Undoubtedly, the biggest challenge in terms of racing for Wood was the Critérium de Dauphiné, a key race in the build-up for the Tour de France. “Everyone at the Dauphiné is in Tour de France condition, some guys are actually stronger in the Dauphiné and get worse for the Tour, so you see the really high level,” he says of the week long stage race, where he was hoping to gain selection for the Tour. “It was my first big stage race, and after five days I was already pretty knackered before we did the mountains,” he explains, adding that the speed the best riders are capable of riding on the toughest climbs is breathtaking. “When you see a rider like Vingegaard, it was just mental if I’m honest. It was the first time I’ve ever got back to the bus and been like ‘what an earth just happened?!’. The level he had there was unbelievable, and you get to witness it first hand.”
Vingegaard’s performances demonstrated to Wood the level that is possible, and although he is under no illusion how high that is, Wood knows the direction he wants to travel. “You have to realise it’s not going to happen overnight. Next year I’m not going to have the level of Vingegaard, but you realise it’s going to take time to get to that level where you can compete, so it gives you a focus.”
Wood’s experience in the Dauphiné, and across the year, has led him to reflect on the style of rider he is. “I wouldn’t say now, having done a year, that I’m an out and out climber. The hilly races tend to suit me a bit better, races like the Ardennes classics and Strade Bianche. They aren’t the super long climbs, but also not the super short steep bergs, they’re something in the middle. Moving forward to next year it would be good to know I’m good on the 20-30 minute climbs, and if I get the opportunity to do the Dauphine or those sort of races to really test myself in the mountains and see what’s possible.”
One of the major disappointments for Wood in his maiden year was not riding a Grand Tour, injury preventing him from a potential Vuelta a España debut. “After the Dauphiné we said the next target for me would have been the Vuelta, so I went to Tignes and did an altitude camp to prepare for it. I was going really well,” says Wood, who headed to the Tour of Poland in early August as preparation. “I had a big crash on stage 2, and in hindsight, I shouldn’t have finished that. Finishing the race took almost everything out of me. I was knackered and sprained my collarbone and sternum joints so I couldn’t really move my upper body, I couldn’t really breathe properly for 3 weeks after. At this point we said no to the Vuelta because there’s a chance I recover and I’m OK, but there’s a chance I have to abandon on stage 5 or 6 because I’m just completely shattered.
“It was a bit disappointing, but it was out of my hands and out of the team’s control really. If I had done the Tour of Poland and was riding well, and was then told I wasn’t riding I would have been a bit pissed off, but as it was they’re was nothing we could do,it was just a crash and its part of cycling I guess.”
One of the major changes for any neo-pro is switching from having to ride for your own results to playing a team role, something Wood has handled well, impressing the team with his efforts in supporting others. “Everyone will say they will take more pleasure when riding for themselves and trying to do their own result,” Wood admits, having enjoyed a freedom as an amateur he may never get again. “This year, you have to take a step back. At the Dauphiné with Guillaume [Martin], he was top ten there – I’m never going to be able to do that for at least the next five years, so it’s nice to work for a guy who can. Same with Ion [Izagirre], who won a stage of the Tour. When you’re riding for someone who’s one of the best in the world, then he’s able to do a good result. it’s a nice feeling.”
Wood confirms that the confidence within the team is high, with them competitive throughout the entire season with impressive rides from young classics star Axel Zingle, climbers Guillaume Martin and Ion Izagirre and the unforgettable Tour de France stage win from AG2R-Citroen bound Victor Lafay. “It gives everyone a boost when someone does well,” says Wood. “Now, if you do a race with Ion or Guillaume or Victor, you know they have the level to win, which gives everyone a boost, knowing you’re not just racing to come 15th. It does change how you race.”
2024 will be a contract year for Wood, who realises that one of the harsh realities of professional sport is that your career is on the line, despite it having barely started. “I think Cofidis see me as a bit of a long-term project, but at the end of the day it’s a contract year. Cycling is such a savage world with contracts, you can just get chopped off and they give it to another guy,” he says bluntly. “It’s an important year, but you just sort of go with the flow. At the end of the day, you train as hard as you can anyway, I don’t think fighting for your contract really adds much, it doesn’t give you 10 watts more. Maybe in a race you take one risk you wouldn’t if you had a contract, but at the end of the day all that pressure won’t change massive amounts, so it’s better you don’t add pressure and race like that.”
Up next for Wood, who is currently training alone and with his local club in Torquay during his off season, are two training camps near Calpe either side of the New Year, before he starts his season at the French curtain raiser, the Grand Prix Cycliste La Marseillaise at the end of January.
What does he want to achieve in 2024? “Definitely win a race. That’s my big objective,” he answers straight away, revealing that there is the potential for him to be given opportunities when there is no clear team leader next year. “To also do a Grand Tour,” he adds, after his disappointment in missing out this year. “To gain selection there and try to do something, maybe win a stage. Guys like Oscar [Onley] have proved you can win a stage of the Vuelta in your first Grand Tour, it’s not unheard of.”
Other than that? “Just keep developing and improving, learn, and most of all, just enjoy it really. That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”
Featured image: Mathilde L’Azou
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