Logan Owen rolled the dice before the 2017 season started, choosing to walk away from a cyclo-cross career that had seen him win 10 consecutive age-graded US championships and focus 100 per cent of his effort on road racing and earning a WorldTour contract by the end of the year.
Wins during stage 3 of the 2015 Tour of Utah and in the 2016 Liège-Bastogne-Liège U23 race hadn't propelled him onto a WorldTour team like he'd hoped, and 2017 would be his final season on Axel Merckx's development team Axeon Hagens Berman. He was determined that 2017 would be a standout year.
"I thought it was the right step whether I made it or not," Owen told Cyclingnews by phone from Port Orchard, Washington, where he and wife Chloe Dygert Owen, a pro cyclist with Sho-Air Twenty20, are moving into a home the couple just bought.
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"I figured it was time to put all my eggs in one basket, and I felt like cyclo-cross was holding me back for a few years as far as my development and resting in the off-season," Owen said. "I wasn't properly setting myself up for the best road season, so I was just trying to do my best at both, and I was doing alright at both. It was better to just focus on one."
Owen's decision paid off almost immediately this year when he won stage 2 at the Volta ao Alentejo in February during the team's season-opening trip to Portugal.
His plan for the final year of U23 racing was off to a good start, but he hit the first hurdle when he entered a local training race in Washington called Tour de Dung and crashed hard, injuring his hip and interrupting his training as he built toward a crucial part of his year.
Getting right to it
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