Jon Dibben was the last of Team Sky’s inductees for the 2017 season. The call up to the WorldTour came late on during the 2016 season while he was riding as a stagiaire for Cannondale-Drapac, and was only announced in November.
In the intervening two months, before sitting in front of a group of journalists at Team Sky’s Mallorca training camp last week, Dibben’s life has been turned on its head. The 22-year-old has left Manchester, where he was based while working on British Cycling’s track programme, and moved nearer his teammates in the south of France. The move has given Dibben an early taste of his new life as a WorldTour professional, although there has been little time to settle into his new home as he prepares for the 2017 season.
“Life is pretty good now,” said Dibben. “I’m just by Monaco right by the Italian border. There’s obviously a lot of the guys in Monaco, and then some of them are in Nice, so it’s spot on down there. I did a bit of a block between this camp and Christmas. It’s great down there."
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“It’s perfect down there for bike riding. In the summer it will probably get a bit busier on the coast but from our doorstep, you’re at the foot of the Madone right away.”
Dibben will make his debut in Team Sky colours at the Mallorca Challenge next week, alongside fellow neo-pro Tao Geoghegan Hart, who is sat next to him in this media session. The pair has been racing together since their formative years in cycling, and they are happy to poke fun at each other in front of the press, with Dibben joking that Geoghegan Hart is already pushing for a spot in this year’s Tour de France squad.
“I remember the first big race that I did we did together Jon won, and I was looking up at him, literally and metaphorically,” Geoghegan Hart recalled. “He rode away from everyone. He could have won it one-legged. It was around two football pitches by Yarborough sports centre, and it was my very first national race and Jon was two or three times the size of me.”
Classic ambitions
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