![]() Jay competed in the Zwift Academy finals for more than a week. – Jay Vine, Tour of Tweed Zwift Academy Win It means a lot, and to do this, to put all this work into a result like this, this is for her.” ![]() ![]() “Bre’s been working for 18 months, nearly two years now to support my training and, with the pandemic, trying to justify me not having a job while there’s no racing is pretty difficult. The plan was to treat the week-long tour as individual days, and Jay managed to take the win for the ITT day 4, and again on the same day, showed promising form for the Zwift Academy Finals. Jay speaking to media during his first major European race, the 2021 Tour of Turkey. Jay and his team at the time, Nero Continental, set their eyes for the ![]() Shortly after the Virtual NRS, it was announced that the NRS would be hosting a 7 day tour. Jay managed to take the overall win for the Virtual NRS, and I made the top 5 from memory. This was Jay’s final chance to try for a professional contract in 2021. In previous years the competition was only open to under 23 riders, but this year they opened it up to all ages. “With COVID-19 taking away our real life racing season, Jay and I wanted to focus on working with the cards we’ve been dealt, and race as hard as we could with the virtual series to not waste these past few months, and it’s been a wild roller-coaster ride to say the least.”Ī glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel appeared as the 2020 Zwift Academy was announced. Then the National Road Series opened on Zwift and we embraced the opportunity with both hands. Once again we had another big decision to make: do we have Jay treading water at the slight chance Australia opens up again, or put him into a break and build again towards the end of the year. Then COVID-19 happened the whole world shut down, as did the likelihood of Jay getting a contract for the 2021 season. We thought after his results he might have a chance to be picked up, but with his ‘limited’ UCI / European racing experience we couldn’t get him onto a team straight away, so we were looking at other options to use as a stepping stone. It went to plan and he was able to secure the top 5 in the final stage of the Tour. Jay rode for Nero Continental prior to his Zwift Academy win and team role with Alpecin-Fenixīut Jay decided to take it to the next level and wanted to go for top 5 in General Classification. The original plan was to try and get a top 10 in GC-we knew he was feeling good, the training was there, and he’d been going well on the climbs. Heading into the race and we were excited about how he was feeling. This was because we knew having a solid result at the Sun Tour would have more chance of him being noticed by WorldTour teams over the Road Nationals. ![]() Moving on from there, Jay was looking good we decided not to have him build for the Australian Road Nationals, and instead peak for the Herald Sun Tour. That’s when everything changed and Jay decided to completely dedicate himself to training full-time and give it everything he had, while I supported us on the one income. We had a long realistic conversation on what we would need to do, and what we ‘think’ is going to be needed to get to the next level. One day I came home from work and asked, “What if you didn’t get a job? What if you fully commit to going pro?” He replied, “We gotta go all in, otherwise it’s not even worth trying.” Jay training with his wife Bre prior to heading to Spain where they now reside. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |