One of the revelations of 2024, Dom Jackson isn’t your typical elite level cyclist. A former rower who represented Great Britain, the South West Londoner turned to cycling during the first Covid-19 lockdown, having had his rowing career cut short with a back injury. Beginning racing a year later, in only three years Jackson has risen to become one of the most prominent riders in the UK, claiming a stunning victory in the Rás Tailteann, Ireland’s fiercely competitive premier stage race back in May.
The British Continental caught up with Jackson to get the inside story on the five day race, his meteoric rise in the sport, and what the future holds for the 26-year-old.
What I’m doing at the moment is just loving riding my bike
“What I’m doing at the moment is just loving riding my bike,” explains Jackson, as the conversation turns to what the future holds for a rider who not only won the Rás, a race which helped launch the professional careers of Stephen Roche and Tony Martin, but raced wheel to wheel with WorldTour thoroughbreds on the way to an eye catching 13th place at the National Road Race Championships in Saltburn a month later.
Image: Ian Wrightson/The British Continental
“Foran have a pretty awesome setup, which makes that possible, and makes it fun,” he continues. “It would have to be a pretty serious offer for me to leave that. I have a pretty firm idea of what I want in the sport and my enjoyment is at the top of that.”
Foran CT, a small team based in South West London, has played a major role in Jackson’s rise after he joined them in 2022 from the Kingston Wheelers club. “It’s a relatively new team, I think they’ve been going four years or so and I’ve been on the team coming up to two years,” he explains.
It feels nice and organic almost, the team manager has a knack of getting people on board that have a similar mindset in that they want to do their best and see what can happen whilst working a full time job
“It started off, the two Irish guys who own Foran Construction, they just wanted to race some local London crits with their mates. They set up the team in order to do that when they were both Cat 3’s and it’s grown from there. It feels nice and organic almost, the team manager has a knack of getting people on board that have a similar mindset in that they want to do their best and see what can happen whilst working a full time job.”
Jackson, who runs his own coaching business, has become a key member of the team as it expands, this year including Ryan Christensen, a former professional with the Bolton Equities-Black Spoke team, as a guest rider after joining the team on their training rides. “The [Rás] win wouldn’t have happened without Ryan, or all the other people on the team.” He notes, describing the Kiwi’s impact as “phenomenal”.
Image: Ian Wrightson/The British Continental
“We had been training with Ryan all winter. Every Sunday we go out on a Foran team ride and he’s been coming along to those as he’s South West London based. His main focus this year has been the gravel stuff after not getting a pro contract at the end of last year, but his wealth of experience was hugely utilised in the Rás. He had such a cool head on him all the time, helping rally all of us, saying ‘you do this’. Even the night before we’d have all the routes on RideGPS or something similar and he’d be able to tell us exactly how the day was going to pan out, which roads were narrow or points we needed to be at the front for.”
My work is remote, so I basically took myself up a mountain for a month, and I was like i’m going to get myself ludicrously fit, in the hope that pays off
With the experience of Christensen on the team, did Jackson enter the Rás with the belief he would win? “That’s a tricky one. In short, I knew I had a shot,” he mulls. “Last year I was 7th on GC. 7th is good, but it’s knocking on the door, it’s not like you’re the next man in. So, I put a big focus on it this year. My work is remote, so I basically took myself up a mountain for a month, and I was like i’m going to get myself ludicrously fit, in the hope that pays off.”
Jackson describes his condition on entering the race as the “fittest he’d ever been, putting out some wild numbers.” However, despite his relative inexperience, he was all too aware of the pitfalls of cycling. “There’s no guarantees in cycling, even whilst I was out in Spain I’d have a few wobbles mentally, like what if you crash out, there’s so many different variables that can’t be controlled. The thing with Irish racing is that it’s pretty unpredictable.”
Image: Ian Wrightson/The British Continental
Jackson had previous form in Ireland, winning a stage of the Rás Mumhan in 2023, and believes the aggressive style of racing across the Irish Sea suits his capabilities as a rider. “I’d always say the longer and harder the stage the better it will suit me – the one that I won [in the Rás Mumhan] was about as hilly as a stage can get in Ireland, way hillier than I’ve seen any race in the UK. I think the harder it is [the better], I’m quite good at pushing out decent numbers after a good amount of fatigue. The other thing is that the Irish roads are grippier than in the UK, I think they’re just built to withstand a decent amount of rain. But what that means is even when you’re in the peloton or sat on a wheel it just always feels like your on the pedals and you’re having to push just a little harder than if you’re on a nice smooth road. That kind of fatigue helps me a bit.”
The catalyst to Jackson’s Rás victory was built on the opening stage, where he formed part of a three man break which made it to the line ahead of a frantic peloton who had left the chase too late.
“When I found myself in that break, I first thought I’d pull the plug at the first sprint and drop back to the peloton because there were GC time bonuses at the sprint points. [However,] as they day went on the gap to the three of us grew – at one point I think we had almost four minutes or so, and then it started coming back quickly. At the last sprint point there was 14km to go, and I think we had a minute. I managed to win that sprint point and get a three second bonus.
I remember thinking even if I come dead last out of us three, ideally I want to put as much time into the bunch as I possibly can
“I remember thinking even if I come dead last out of us three, ideally I want to put as much time into the bunch as I possibly can. I really got my head down and just pulled as hard as I could with the other two guys, and then it almost backfired a little bit at the end. Paul Kennedy was waiting for me to sprint and didn’t expect me to have literally nothing left!”
With the Queen stage next up, Jackson leant on his Foran team to help him take the race lead and then defend it throughout the week. The tight-knit feel to the team seemingly critical to his success and a demonstration of why he is so happy in the setup.
“We’d done that stage before in the Rás Mumhan,” he explains, the course finishing with a series of punishing climbs on typically narrow and technical roads. “Just knowing where the pinch points are and which climbs are really decisive definitely makes a massive difference.”
“I made the front group and both Kennedy and [Stage One winner Alex] Pritchard didn’t. I was pretty sure I was in virtual yellow at this point.
“We kind of went in with a really big team plan every day. We had two guys – Tom Springbett and George Mitchell, they were fully invested and burnt every match they had in the first, say, 90km of a 150km day, trying to get in every break.
Image: Ian Wrightson/The British Continental
“Ryan [Christensen] was saying if it’s just two people, we’re just going to leave it, we can just trust the rolling nature of an Irish peloton to sweep them back up, but then if five or more people went up the road, we have to have one person in that. They might not even take a single pull, they’re just going to get there and sit on the back, then if it does go out to a minute they can ask the team car what’s the play, what are we going to do? If there’s just one person sitting on the back doing nothing, it can help demotivate other people who’d like that breakaway to work. I think early on that was pretty key, and then the last 60km of each stage, I guess that was where I actually had to do some cycling!”
Jackson’s rise in the sport is no doubt teatament his natural ability, adaptability, mindset and commitment to training. Having run a 2.43 marathon to test himself after leaving rowing, he tells me he still runs 40-50km a week, a figure “which in the grand scheme of how much cycling training I’m doing that’s quite small.”
What I really liked in cycling was the fact that it’s so much more than how hard can you go and because of that the winner isn’t always the strongest guy, but someone who has played their cards a bit more tactically
One other element to his rapid progression is the London scene Jackson fully embraced, having started racing with the Kingston Wheelers on his turbo trainer during the pandemic. “That kind of hooked me back into taking sport a bit more seriously again, and then when the all restrictions got lifted I was down at the local crits. Thankfully, in London you can do one, not quite every night of the week, but it’s not far from it! I was just loving riding my bike, and the tactics side of it – in rowing it’s essentially just a time trial of how fast you can go from one end of the lale to the other, what I really liked in cycling was the fact that it’s so much more than how hard can you go and because of that the winner isn’t always the strongest guy, but someone who has played their cards a bit more tactically.”
Image: Ian Wrightson/The British Continental
Jackson was also getting shown the ropes on early morning club rides by some of the best in the country, the harsh lessons so many have been taught on a club run seemingly applicable to any level. “The other thing that really taught me well, I did a couple of – they were hosted by Onyx Race Team, now Le Col host them – really really hard training rides, super early so there’s as little traffic as possible. They were just so good at all the small details that you pick up on quickly.
I got absolutely dispatched by Alex Richardson and Richard Todd. You finish the ride and get back to the cafe, everyone’s there and you have a great debrief
“I remember the first one I went on, I got absolutely dispatched by Alex Richardson and Richard Todd. You finish the ride and get back to the cafe, everyone’s there and you have a great debrief. It was just one of those things where you look back and think that was so much fun and I’ve learned so much in the space of an hour.”
Now training on similar rides with his Foran team, Jackson is clearly at ease with everything about the sport he has come to love as he continues to push the boundaries. “[Wheelbase rider] Tom Martin said to me at the Rás Mumhan, ‘what’s next?’ And I was saying maybe this is my last year of sport, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore,” he admits.
“When I first left rowing, having represented team GB at various levels, I thought ‘that’s as good as i’m going to get’. Now, I’m definitely at a new ‘that’s as good as I’m going to get’, but if i’ve learnt anything, that might not be the case.”
Featured image: Ian Wrightson/The British Continental
One of the revelations of 2024, Dom Jackson isn’t your typical elite level cyclist. A former rower who represented Great Britain, the South West Londoner turned to cycling during the first Covid-19 lockdown, having had his rowing career cut short with a back injury. Beginning racing a year later, in only three years Jackson has risen to become one of the most prominent riders in the UK, claiming a stunning victory in the Rás Tailteann, Ireland’s fiercely competitive premier stage race back in May.
The British Continental caught up with Jackson to get the inside story on the five day race, his meteoric rise in the sport, and what the future holds for the 26-year-old.
“What I’m doing at the moment is just loving riding my bike,” explains Jackson, as the conversation turns to what the future holds for a rider who not only won the Rás, a race which helped launch the professional careers of Stephen Roche and Tony Martin, but raced wheel to wheel with WorldTour thoroughbreds on the way to an eye catching 13th place at the National Road Race Championships in Saltburn a month later.
“Foran have a pretty awesome setup, which makes that possible, and makes it fun,” he continues. “It would have to be a pretty serious offer for me to leave that. I have a pretty firm idea of what I want in the sport and my enjoyment is at the top of that.”
Foran CT, a small team based in South West London, has played a major role in Jackson’s rise after he joined them in 2022 from the Kingston Wheelers club. “It’s a relatively new team, I think they’ve been going four years or so and I’ve been on the team coming up to two years,” he explains.
“It started off, the two Irish guys who own Foran Construction, they just wanted to race some local London crits with their mates. They set up the team in order to do that when they were both Cat 3’s and it’s grown from there. It feels nice and organic almost, the team manager has a knack of getting people on board that have a similar mindset in that they want to do their best and see what can happen whilst working a full time job.”
Jackson, who runs his own coaching business, has become a key member of the team as it expands, this year including Ryan Christensen, a former professional with the Bolton Equities-Black Spoke team, as a guest rider after joining the team on their training rides. “The [Rás] win wouldn’t have happened without Ryan, or all the other people on the team.” He notes, describing the Kiwi’s impact as “phenomenal”.
“We had been training with Ryan all winter. Every Sunday we go out on a Foran team ride and he’s been coming along to those as he’s South West London based. His main focus this year has been the gravel stuff after not getting a pro contract at the end of last year, but his wealth of experience was hugely utilised in the Rás. He had such a cool head on him all the time, helping rally all of us, saying ‘you do this’. Even the night before we’d have all the routes on RideGPS or something similar and he’d be able to tell us exactly how the day was going to pan out, which roads were narrow or points we needed to be at the front for.”
With the experience of Christensen on the team, did Jackson enter the Rás with the belief he would win? “That’s a tricky one. In short, I knew I had a shot,” he mulls. “Last year I was 7th on GC. 7th is good, but it’s knocking on the door, it’s not like you’re the next man in. So, I put a big focus on it this year. My work is remote, so I basically took myself up a mountain for a month, and I was like i’m going to get myself ludicrously fit, in the hope that pays off.”
Jackson describes his condition on entering the race as the “fittest he’d ever been, putting out some wild numbers.” However, despite his relative inexperience, he was all too aware of the pitfalls of cycling. “There’s no guarantees in cycling, even whilst I was out in Spain I’d have a few wobbles mentally, like what if you crash out, there’s so many different variables that can’t be controlled. The thing with Irish racing is that it’s pretty unpredictable.”
Jackson had previous form in Ireland, winning a stage of the Rás Mumhan in 2023, and believes the aggressive style of racing across the Irish Sea suits his capabilities as a rider. “I’d always say the longer and harder the stage the better it will suit me – the one that I won [in the Rás Mumhan] was about as hilly as a stage can get in Ireland, way hillier than I’ve seen any race in the UK. I think the harder it is [the better], I’m quite good at pushing out decent numbers after a good amount of fatigue. The other thing is that the Irish roads are grippier than in the UK, I think they’re just built to withstand a decent amount of rain. But what that means is even when you’re in the peloton or sat on a wheel it just always feels like your on the pedals and you’re having to push just a little harder than if you’re on a nice smooth road. That kind of fatigue helps me a bit.”
The catalyst to Jackson’s Rás victory was built on the opening stage, where he formed part of a three man break which made it to the line ahead of a frantic peloton who had left the chase too late.
“When I found myself in that break, I first thought I’d pull the plug at the first sprint and drop back to the peloton because there were GC time bonuses at the sprint points. [However,] as they day went on the gap to the three of us grew – at one point I think we had almost four minutes or so, and then it started coming back quickly. At the last sprint point there was 14km to go, and I think we had a minute. I managed to win that sprint point and get a three second bonus.
“I remember thinking even if I come dead last out of us three, ideally I want to put as much time into the bunch as I possibly can. I really got my head down and just pulled as hard as I could with the other two guys, and then it almost backfired a little bit at the end. Paul Kennedy was waiting for me to sprint and didn’t expect me to have literally nothing left!”
With the Queen stage next up, Jackson leant on his Foran team to help him take the race lead and then defend it throughout the week. The tight-knit feel to the team seemingly critical to his success and a demonstration of why he is so happy in the setup.
“We’d done that stage before in the Rás Mumhan,” he explains, the course finishing with a series of punishing climbs on typically narrow and technical roads. “Just knowing where the pinch points are and which climbs are really decisive definitely makes a massive difference.”
“I made the front group and both Kennedy and [Stage One winner Alex] Pritchard didn’t. I was pretty sure I was in virtual yellow at this point.
“We kind of went in with a really big team plan every day. We had two guys – Tom Springbett and George Mitchell, they were fully invested and burnt every match they had in the first, say, 90km of a 150km day, trying to get in every break.
“Ryan [Christensen] was saying if it’s just two people, we’re just going to leave it, we can just trust the rolling nature of an Irish peloton to sweep them back up, but then if five or more people went up the road, we have to have one person in that. They might not even take a single pull, they’re just going to get there and sit on the back, then if it does go out to a minute they can ask the team car what’s the play, what are we going to do? If there’s just one person sitting on the back doing nothing, it can help demotivate other people who’d like that breakaway to work. I think early on that was pretty key, and then the last 60km of each stage, I guess that was where I actually had to do some cycling!”
Jackson’s rise in the sport is no doubt teatament his natural ability, adaptability, mindset and commitment to training. Having run a 2.43 marathon to test himself after leaving rowing, he tells me he still runs 40-50km a week, a figure “which in the grand scheme of how much cycling training I’m doing that’s quite small.”
One other element to his rapid progression is the London scene Jackson fully embraced, having started racing with the Kingston Wheelers on his turbo trainer during the pandemic. “That kind of hooked me back into taking sport a bit more seriously again, and then when the all restrictions got lifted I was down at the local crits. Thankfully, in London you can do one, not quite every night of the week, but it’s not far from it! I was just loving riding my bike, and the tactics side of it – in rowing it’s essentially just a time trial of how fast you can go from one end of the lale to the other, what I really liked in cycling was the fact that it’s so much more than how hard can you go and because of that the winner isn’t always the strongest guy, but someone who has played their cards a bit more tactically.”
Jackson was also getting shown the ropes on early morning club rides by some of the best in the country, the harsh lessons so many have been taught on a club run seemingly applicable to any level. “The other thing that really taught me well, I did a couple of – they were hosted by Onyx Race Team, now Le Col host them – really really hard training rides, super early so there’s as little traffic as possible. They were just so good at all the small details that you pick up on quickly.
“I remember the first one I went on, I got absolutely dispatched by Alex Richardson and Richard Todd. You finish the ride and get back to the cafe, everyone’s there and you have a great debrief. It was just one of those things where you look back and think that was so much fun and I’ve learned so much in the space of an hour.”
Now training on similar rides with his Foran team, Jackson is clearly at ease with everything about the sport he has come to love as he continues to push the boundaries. “[Wheelbase rider] Tom Martin said to me at the Rás Mumhan, ‘what’s next?’ And I was saying maybe this is my last year of sport, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore,” he admits.
“When I first left rowing, having represented team GB at various levels, I thought ‘that’s as good as i’m going to get’. Now, I’m definitely at a new ‘that’s as good as I’m going to get’, but if i’ve learnt anything, that might not be the case.”
Featured image: Ian Wrightson/The British Continental
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