"I was quicker than Stannard, who was two years older, to the halfway mark" - Alex Dowsett recalls the race where he realized cycling was 'his sport'

Even for a successful WorldTour rider looking back on their life in cycling, a ride on the small stage can have the most profound effect. For Alex Dowsett, his ride in the GHS national youth championship when he was 14 – less than a year after he first began racing – turned out to be unexpectedly formative.

"I started racing and within a year we did the GHS, Stannard won it. He was 16, I was second – I was 14. The rest of the top 10 was 16 years old," Dowsett tells CyclingWeekly. Yes, that Ian Stannard who went on to win Omloop Het Nieuwsblad two times later in his career.

Starting with a low number meant that Dowsett, who beat the previous best time by quite a margin, was up for a long day in the hot seat. "I just had to sit and wait for everyone to come in," he says. "I'll never forget, I was quicker than Stannard to the halfway mark as well."

"There is a Michael Schumacher level of racecar driving talent walking down Chelmsford High Street, Malden High Street right now, but until they get the chance to realise it'll just remain untapped potential," his dad had told him. "I think that spoke to me probably more than my dad thought it would. So I was sort of on a quest to try sports," Dowsett explains.