At the end of the 2023 season, Quinn Simmons was unsure if he would ever truly reach the potential he showed after becoming junior road world champion in Yorkshire in 2019, but fast forward to this year’s Tour de France and he has the confidence to say he “knows he can” win a stage.

So what’s changed in the time since telling Cyclingnews that “it kind of feels like all these other super talents have maybe realised that super talent, and I just haven’t yet”? That was off the back of a 2023 season where, yes, he did become senior national champion, but had his second Tour appearance undone by a crash and nasty concussion.

He was committed to finding the promise he showed as a teenager, though, stating: “Whether it takes me two more years, or takes me four more years, or never happens… for me, it’s the chasing, the training and the working hard that I like.”

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Now, after “years and years of 1000 hours-a-year on the bike”, as he described it, Simmons is a more assured, mature rider who both knows how to win – shown in his successes from the Tour de Suisse, US Nationals, and the recent Dauphiné – but also believes he can now do so on the biggest stage of all.

“I think there’s maybe six or seven chances for breakaways that are suited to me, and for sure, the hunger is there,” Simmons told Cyclingnews, speaking by the pool of Lidl-Trek’s team hotel before the Grand Départ in Barcelona.

“I know I can do it; it’d be stupid to sit here and pretend that I can’t even play the game a bit. I know I can win a stage in this race, but I also know everything needs to go right for it to happen.

“This is the 200 best bike riders in the world, and we all want the same thing, so everything has to go right. It’s not like if you show up the best you possibly can, you’re guaranteed a stage; it doesn’t work like that, even for the crazy good riders.”

‘When one guy wins eight of them, there are not too many left’

A day after the breakaway got burned under the pressure of Tadej Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad, they will get another chance on the hilly roads from Carcassonne to Foix on stage 4 of the Tour de France, with Simmons likely as one of the hopeful escapees.

There have been discussions around UAE’s almost total domination of both the Tour and the entire WorldTour calendar, but Simmons is not looking for an easy route to the result he wants most. His season has already been a success, after all.

“Even if I don’t win here again, OK, that’s fine. I have that Dauphiné stage, and I have my US jersey for another year. For a rider at my level, it’s been a good season. Anything I do now is a bonus,” said Simmons.

“I know I can [win a stage], but there are also 50 other riders that can, and only 21 to go around, and when one guy wins eight of them, there are not too many left. If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best, and right now he’s the best, so you can’t get too frustrated about it.”

Pogačar’s dominance will remain a theme throughout this year’s Tour, but Simmons and the rest of those chasing the escape will need to break free from UAE’s hold. He’s never actually won eight stages of a single Tour, but he has won six in 2024, and with his stage 3 victory, moved to equal fifth on the all-time list, alongside Andre Darrigade on 22 Tour stage wins.

So what has changed for Simmons?

Simmons has credited a change of internal pressure as a key reason why he’s finally winning bigger races, noting how when he was coming through as a pro, he’d be overly harsh on certain performances.

When asked if that meant this would be the year he gets that Tour stage win he chased exhaustingly 12 months ago, Simmons could only laugh – “I thought it was ‘the year’ every year” – but this new mindset seems to have put better placed him to do so.

“One thing I’ve changed in preparation, and one thing is I’ve stopped… I don’t want to say I’ve stopped caring, but I’ve stopped putting so much on thinking ‘I have to win’, and I just let it happen,” he said.

“I put way too much on myself. I could not care less what anyone else says about me, but what I tell myself, I beat myself up quite badly, and I’ve learned to stop that a bit.

“I mean, even for my stage win at the Dauphiné, it was not the stage I picked out; I did not think we were going to make it – I was just there to train for here, and then suddenly, like 3km to go, I realised it like, ‘Wow, I’m about to win a stage of the Dauphiné; this is cool.”

Simmons is also more confident in his tactical abilities as a racer, having been guilty of wasting energy at the wrong times in the past and missing the clinical edge to bring him the type of results his power could, or maybe should, have bred.

He is aware that he is something of a marked man, though, in a similar way to Ben Healy – who he finished second behind on stage 6 of last year’s race – with those around him knowing not to let him go solo. Brute force has allowed him to take those aforementioned top-level wins in the past, though, so it could be his best path to success again at the Tour.

“My legs have gotten better, but I think one thing that, with the way I came into the sport as world champion, I never got the opportunity to be that small-name rider who maybe got the lucky breakaway,” added the US rider.

“Every time I’ve won, I’ve had to just force it. It’s similar to if I’m in a break with Van der Poel, I’m gonna follow him and be really annoying about following him, but now I’ve reached the point where I’ve noticed other riders are now doing that to me, and I’m like, ‘Wait, guys, I’m not the world champion, like follow someone else. You know, I’m still a small rider.’

“I think tactically being able to handle that has helped, and then I have just gotten better. If you can push more power, maybe the attack that didn’t make it before makes it a little further now, and eventually it’s going to make it to the finish.”

‘If I win a Tour de France stage I can retire satisfied’

Simmons has described the ultimate satisfaction a Tour stage win would bring him, saying it would allow him to retire with little else to aim for, but going back to that internal pressure he places on himself, he’s been able to recognise the successes he’s already had at 25.

“There’s these other super young riders that have kind of changed the bar, but if you go back five years ago, for someone to be my age and have done what I’ve done, it’s not such a bad career,” he said.

“I mean, OK, it’s not Remco, it’s not what Seixas is doing, it’s not what these other riders are doing, but I just turned 25, I have a stage in three of the biggest races and three national titles, it’s not too bad.

“I’m happy with where I’m at, [but] if I win a stage here, I can basically retire satisfied. I know I’m never going to ride GC. I’m never going to be able to do what these crazy people can do, but if I can pick up a stage slowly at all the biggest races in the world, you know, for me, that would be amazing.”

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