Owen Cole Won a Race by Less Than an Inch. Then, UAE Team Emirates Came Calling
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It’s strange how sometimes, just a few millimeters can change the course of a life.
Before he attacked in the final meters of the 2023 U23 National Road Race Championship and crossed the line less than an inch ahead of Visma-Lease a Bike development rider Colby Simmons, and before some of the world’s best cycling teams started courting him, Owen Cole was just a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A kid studying biology and exercise science with a lot of natural talent on a bike.
Cole, 20, thought he might have a future on the regional race circuit, maybe as a pro crit racer. Still, like most bike-racing kids, he dreamed of becoming a professional racer living in Europe and fighting for a win at some of cycling’s most legendary races. If he was ever to realize that dream, he thought there would be many steps between then and now. Hundreds of races to ride, dozens of which he would need to come out on top. He was, he believed, someone who could one day make the leap from talented young racer to Continental pro.
But thanks to those few millimeters, where barely a sliver of light could be seen between his and Simmons’ wheel, Cole’s day came much sooner than he ever imagined. At the end of 2023, after only racing road bikes for a little over a year, Cole returned from Alicante, Spain, sporting the colors of his new employer: UAE Team Emirates.
Yes, that one. The World Tour team making itself known for spotting some of the best young cycling talent in the world.
Immediately after winning U23 Road Nationals in June 2023, a then 19-year-old Cole started fielding emails and DMs from some of the best professional cycling teams in the world. After Cole automatically qualified for the U23 World Championships in Glasgow by winning Nationals, and competed in the race, interest in him surged to an all-time high. And just earlier this year, after much quiet deliberation, Cole finally announced he signed as a development rider with UAE, officially making him a teammate of Grand Tour stage winners Jay Vine, João Almeida, and Adam Yates, and, of course, the once-in-a-generation talent, Tadej Pogačar.
However, Cole won’t be pulling Pogi up the Tourmalet anytime soon, as the plan is to let him figure out how to race on the Continental circuit over the next year. Despite his early successes and demonstrable raw talent, Cole still has much to learn about racing a bike. It’s a level of know-how Cole recognizes he needs to embrace.
“I didn’t do any road racing until earlier in 2023,” Cole tells Bicycling. “Before that, it was all mountain biking.”
From Chapel Hill to Girona
Cole grew up racing mountain bikes with his dad in and around his native Chapel Hill, NC. And though he had some experience on the tarmac, using a bit of road riding to train for his slate of mountain bike races, he only came to road racing when he started at UNC in 2023.
Local group rides in his area, with names like “Twin Peaks,” “The Hammer Ride,” and the famous “P Ride,” piqued Cole’s interest. His first Hammer Ride, a Wednesday night loop of the rural roads around Chapel Hill, which can average speeds over 22 miles per hour, hooked him for good.
Cole was barely able to hang on over the course of the 33-mile loop, riding the entire go at his limit. But the thrill was set, and Cole’s focus immediately shifted to road riding.
“Those rides made me realize how much I liked racing on the road,” says Cole. “I went on the Hammer Ride for the first time, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is pretty fun.’”
During May and June 2022, he trained by entering a few local road races and plenty of crits, focusing on July’s Junior Nationals in Roanoke, VA. At Roanoke, Cole made it into the race’s initial breakaway before being ridden into the ground and subsequently caught by and dropped from the peloton. But the next day, Cole finished second in the crit. It was his first podium and a confirmation of what he felt during that first Hammer Ride; he was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a road racer.
He spent much of the following year home riding with UNC’s club cycling group, racing crits, and honing his legs on the weekly rides. Nearly a year after getting dropped in his first Junior Nationals, Cole won the U.S. Collegiate National Championship in Albuquerque, NM, attacking up the race’s final hill.
And then, just a month later, on a final sustained sprint at the 2023 U23 National Championship, again in Roanoke, VA, Cole nicked Colby Simmons by the few millimeters that would, at least for the foreseeable future, alter the course of his life.
2023 UCI World Championships in Glasgow
Still green to the world of road racing, Cole had no idea that the Nationals win automatically qualified him for a spot in the UCI World Championships, taking place just a few weeks later in Glasgow, Scotland. It was only while waiting near the finish line for the podium ceremony that a fellow competitor informed Cole he would be traveling to Glasgow to represent the U.S.
On a rainy day, over a punchy parcour that wound through narrow city roads, Cole finished 56th out of 79 finishers and ahead of another 100 who didn’t complete the race at all. By then, Cole was already contemplating his future, in discussions with at least a few teams who reached out to him via email and DM in the hours after he beat Simmons.
“Coming away from [the World Championships in Glasgow], I knew that with another year of racing experience, I could perform a whole lot better,” says Cole. “I have the strength to be a lot more competitive than I was.”
Why UAE Team Emirates?
The local rides in Chapel Hill buzzed with excitement earlier this year when Team UAE Emirates unveiled its roster for the upcoming year’s development team, with Cole’s name on it.
A week later, Cole headed to Alicante for his first training camp with his new team, an organization he chose for its resume, commitment to its development riders, and the natural flow of conversations between them. (It should be noted, however, that Cole arrived two days late to camp, as he had some final exams to finish.)
He spent the week in Alicante riding alongside UAE’s other U23 riders, developing a rapport with his new teammates. Some of UAE’s premier WorldTour names were also at the camp, allowing Cole and his U23 teammates to train with some of the fastest bike riders on Earth. One ride that sticks out to Cole was the day Juan Ayuso—who won the Best Young Rider at the 2023 Vuelta a España—was leading their training ride. “The group was moving pretty fast that day,” he says.
That integration with the WorldTour team was another reason Cole picked UAE, as that kind of synergy simply cannot exist with Continental teams lacking any WorldTour affiliation.
“If I want to do this, I want to go all in on it, and UAE’s development team is going all in on it,” says Cole. “It would have been silly of me to turn something like that down. You want to take the best opportunity given to you, and that was UAE.”
But more than seeing the strength of someone like Ayuso firsthand, it was the work, effort, and ability of his new team’s staff that impressed Cole the most during his first training camp. Every day, his chain was freshly lubed, his tires pumped to exactly his preferred pressure, and his bike perfectly cleaned. Cole realized that, as a member of UAE Team Emirates, his only focus was to ride his bike.
Cole’s long-term future is equally as unwritten as it was six months ago. He’s only deferred his tenure at UNC one semester and might be back for his fall classes.
Today, he goes back and forth between Chapel Hill and Girona, as he has started training in the black-and-white of UAE Team Emirates. He’ll be home in May for the U.S. Nationals to try and defend his title, and is hopeful for another selection to represent his country in the 2024 U23 World Champs in Switzerland.
Cole is confident that much of the reason he finished midpack in last year’s Worlds was due more to a lack of race experience than a lack of fitness. With a full slate of Continental races under his belt, that should change in Switzerland.
Cole says the most breathtaking moment of his first week of training with his new team wasn’t receiving his new kit. Nor was it churning up a hill alongside someone like Juan Ayuso. Instead, it was the first time he laid eyes on his new bike: a team-issued Colnago V4R, decked out in the UAE Team Emirates’ signature black-and-white livery. The bike has a little red-and-white “Emirates” badge running down the fork and a tiny American flag just below the seat post. Beside it, in little white letters, is the name “Cole.”
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