AJ August resets from disappointing 'cross crash at Worlds to ripping roads for US devo team

Andrew “AJ” August is back in the US after an eventful few weeks in Europe, from turning heads at a road training camp with Ineos Grenadiers to catching attention with his shredded Team USA kit while racing at the Cyclocross World Championships.

At the start line at the stacked junior men’s championship event in Hoogerheide, August was one of the favourites to grab the rainbow jersey. After all, he scored a momentous victory at Koppenbergcross in November, a first for any US male rider. Next, he won the junior men’s title at the US Cyclocross National Championships. Prior to the Worlds, he went four-for-four in European ‘cross races, including a fourth-place finish at Benidorm World Cup.

The Hoogerheide appearance would mark his final ‘cross race as a junior, so all signals appeared to be green for ‘go’. So much for well-laid plans. A huge crash at the start of the race changed everything.

“It was a strange crash. I had gotten off to a pretty good start, but shortly after the start, I pulled out of my pedal. Because of this, the rider behind me overlapped my rear wheel, and he began to crash, and his weight fell on my rear wheel. This sent me across the course, and from there, many others piled on top,” he explained to Cyclingnews.

The massive pile-up left a huge chunk of the 72-rider field in full-on chase the entire race, including August and his five US teammates. With much of his kit missing after the hard crash and scrapes exposed, the 17-year-old unleashed a furious attack on the course with some of the fastest lap times. In his pursuit to make up the gap of one minute and 38 seconds to eventual winner Léo Bisiaux of France, August put in the fastest time on the second lap and again on the sixth lap. But with just seven laps, he ran out of turf and time.  

“I knew that I was setting fast laps,” the upstate New York native said. “I came through the finish every lap, and I saw that the gap to the leader was holding pretty steady. At that point in the race, I knew I was out of contention, but I just wanted to keep fighting.”

He finished 1:41 behind Bisiaux, 22nd overall, just behind David Thompson in 16th, Magnus White in 20th and Miles Mattern in 21st, while Dan English was the best of the bunch in 13th, and Ben Stokes crossed the line in 29th. It was a disappointing end to his ‘cross campaign since he finished fifth in the junior race the year before and was in top form. 

“Race done. I’m moving on,” is what August told Toby Stanton, his road team sports director, just hours after the Hoogerheide experience. In fact, when Cyclingnews asked August if he kept the tattered team kit for future inspiration, the brief reply was, “Haha, there wasn’t much left of it. I did throw it away.”

Rolling on the road

According to Stanton, who is also the founder of the Hot Tubes Development Cycling Team, which will have August in a lead role again this season, the young US rider is “calmly analytical without being boastful,” and since the team began 31 years ago “he’s a phenomenal kid, as good as I’ve ever had”.

“It was a race he could have won,” Stanton told Cyclingnews about August’s ability going into Worlds. “Afterwards, he told me that he definitely could have stayed with the French rider [Bisiaux] and would have had to be smart to beat him.

“He has a good sense of what his capacity is, and when he screws up, he knows what he did. He acknowledges it like when he crashed it Hoogerheide. He was like, ‘I was too [aggressive] there, and I went too fast. Yeah, let's do that one again’.”

At last year’s three-day Junior Vuelta, August caught the attention of several WorldTour teams with his second overall riding for Hot Tubes, and he also won the overall at the Junior Tour of Ireland. Those led to an invitation to join Ineos Grenadiers at a training camp while he was in Europe for cyclocross in January. It was a team that already had one US rider on its roster, which happened to be a Hot Tubes alumnus and a role model for August, Magnus Sheffield. Both are from the small town of Pittsford, New York.

“One of my role models in cycling has been Magnus Sheffield [Ineos Grenadiers]. He grew up just a few minutes away from my house, and it has been very inspiring to watch what he has done,” August told Cyclingnews in December.

Stanton said the two are physically different, Sheffield having a much bigger build, but the dispositions and talents are very much the same.

“It's one of his biggest strengths for AJ, and he rolls with things very much as Magnus does. AJ is very much that same sort of mentality, where he's very organized. He's very flexible, but he thrives in a high structure,” Stanton said, glowing in his accolades about both riders from New York.

August participated for a few days with an Ineos camp in Mallorca before he finished his junior campaign at Cyclocross Worlds. Days later, he was back in the US and headed to Arizona for transition to the road, races beginning with the domestic-level Valley of the Sun Stage Race, a Hot Tubes training camp in north Georgia in March, a week of racing in California at Redlands Bicycle Classic and then a European campaign across events in Czech Republic, Netherlands and Switzerland before US Junior Nationals in June.

“For sure, I’m definitely excited and ready for the road season,” August said. “I think the change and the new opportunities will really get me excited for the road season. Also, I am looking forward to getting back with my teammates on my road team.”