It was 2001 when Trent Lowe won his first Australian junior cross country mountain bike title. Given that he’s still only 25, it was an indication of precocious talent and, by the following season, he emerged as junior champion of the world in the same discipline.
He secured the Australian U23 cross country mountain bike champion in both 2003 and 2004, but the following year his talent on the road began to manifest itself with a stage win at the Sea Otter Classic and a strong ride in the Tour de Georgia.
The Discovery Channel snapped him up for 2006, and during his two year tenure there he had solid placings in the Herald Sun Tour in Australia, the Deutschland Tour and the Volta ao Algarve.
Jonathan Vaughters was to be his next boss, and in 2008 he was part of the winning Garmin Team Time Trial squad at the Tour of Georgia, produced good rides in the Critérium International and Paris-Nice, and finished his first Tour de France.
And then…nothing.
Two years of fatigue and illness were to follow, but a resurgent Lowe has just signed for the Australian team Fly V team and, if team boss Chris White’s plans come to fruition, the young man from Melbourne may well enjoy his third sojourn on a ProTour squad.
VeloNation spoke to Lowe not long have after his new contract was signed.
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VeloNation: Three years with Garmin, any regrets?
Trent Lowe: I suppose my regret is that I never really found my form due to a lack of health.
VN: What will you miss about Garmin, and what won’t you miss?
TL: You always have team mates and staff members that you miss when you move on.
What won’t I miss, I dunno really.
VN: Year one went well, second in Georgia and a ride in the Tour de France – tell us about that season.
TL: I had a solid season and really learned a lot that year. I really hit my stride early in the season, but perhaps I tried to hold onto form for too long.
VN: And tell us about the last two years – injury and chronic fatigue?
TL: Relating to the last question also, that I never really got enough rest coming into the next season, and started quite tired.
It become really difficult to get on top of things if you begin the season tired and go race to race trying to recover – it just never happened for me.
This year I was starting to find my legs in the spring and got knocked down with West Nile Virus. It took a while to find and I had already raced the Basque Country tour and some of the Classic’s with the virus.
This really has prolonged the recovery.
VN: Have you recovered from that?
TL: Yes I seem to be on the right path again now, back training again.
VN: Did the time off the bike lay heavy?
TL: I feel I will need to begin preparing much sooner for next season than I normally would, simply because I did miss so much time and will expect it will take longer to get my legs going. Time will tell that for certain.
VN: Fly V – who approached whom?
TL: I have known and raced with Henk Vogels for some time now, and we began talking during the year about the direction of his team and how it was growing.
So to be part of an Australia team at this level is something very exciting.
VN: An Aussie team, does it feel like ‘coming home’?
TL: Yes to some degree, and just the fact we have our own team, coming from so far away nearly always the Australian riders are forced to race on foreign teams, which is fine as well, but to have an Australia team is fantastic and has never happen before.
VN: Teams have been coming and going; there are a lot of guys without contracts – what’s the mood in the peloton?
TL: I haven’t been at a race for some time, so I don’t know exactly what the mood is. However, there seems to be a lot of new teams starting or existing teams expanding into bigger teams. I feel there are enough opportunities out there, actually.
VN: Do you still have any races to ride in 2010?
TL: No my season is over and has been for some time.
VN: When do you start training for 2011?
TL: I will begin in October this year, which is about a month earlier due to the time I have missed this season. I’ll be based in Valencia, Spain. I have been here 4 years now and it feels like home.
VN: Have you spoken to the team about your 2011 programme?
TL: Not as yet, I believe we have a training camp in November to sort out such things.
VN: What are you looking forward to most about 2011?
TL: Getting back to top condition.
VN: And who’s your top three for the Elite Road Worlds?
TL: Freire, Davis, Cancellara.