Standing 1.94m tall and weighing over 80kg, Jason Lowndes is a hard man to miss but it's the results of the 21-year-old Drapac rider in 2016 that have been equally eye-catching. The statuesque former mountain biker rode with the Continental Garneau-Québecor team from Canada last year before inking a two-year deal with Drapac as a relatively unknown prospect.
While Brenton Jones was the number one sprinter on the Australian Pro-Continental team, Lowndes quickly emerged as a foil to the fastman with top-ten results at the Tour de San Luis, Tour de Taiwan, Tour d'Azerbaïdjan, and the Tour of Norway. He then ended his season with sixth place in the U23 World Championships road race.
"I definitely came into the year with the two-year contract and planned the first year being a big learning curve and started off pretty rough with poor performances at the bay crits and road nationals on my behalf," Lowndes told Cyclingnews during his off-season break. "In turn, that ended up being good training for San Luis. I really surprised myself with an eighth place in my first race at that level in Argentina. In the closing stage, I was third ahead of Peter Sagan, and behind Elia Viviani and Jakub Mareczko, who was third at the U23 Worlds, was definitely a big surprise."
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Finishing ahead of the world champion Sagan was Lowndes' equal best result of the season along with third at Tour de Taiwan on stage 2. The results were also notable for the fact that Lowndes was 'freelancing' with the team telling him to "prove yourself and earn the lead out". The Tour of Qatar was squeezed in between his tours in Argentina and Asia before a first ever flight to Europe. The Vuelta a Castilla y Leon in April was his first race, starting it "straight off the flight to Europe", where the testing conditions saw him start a run of ill health over the next few months.
"I managed to have a mid-year break in early July and from then on in, I was able to actually race the races I was doing like was Tour du Limousin, where I started to come good again," he said.
The run of illness where he was sick and stuck in the cycle of trying to recover before his next race day threatened to derail this season and have ramifications for the 2017 season. Lowndes' aim for the season was to represent Australia on the sprint-friendly parcours in Doha for the U23 road race, but there were several points across the year when the dream appeared all but extinguished as he explained.
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