INTERVIEW: JONATHAN DIBBEN
The Brit tells us about his time on Team Sky and his new lease of life at Lotto Soudal
At the end of 2016 Jon Dibben was on the cusp of his career on the road. He had signed a two-year deal to turn pro with Team Sky; the perfect fit considering the then 22-year-old Briton was a graduate of the British Cycling Academy system, a programme set up by Sky’s top management and the pathway the majority of Britain’s most successful pros have taken. He’d broken into the mainstream by winning a rainbow jersey on the track that spring, in the points race at the London Track World Championships to a raucous reception from the home crowd, and gave Mark Cavendish a close run for a spot in the Rio Olympics team pursuit and omnium. On the road he was making a name for himself too for Team Wiggins and the GB U23 squad, notching up a string of podium places at the Tour de l’Avenir, an impressive runner-up spot at U23 Tour of Flanders and top 10 at the U23 Worlds road race in Doha, Qatar. He was one of Britain’s brightest young talents.
Dibben was among a trio of young Brits taken on by Sky that winter, along with Owain Doull and Tao Geoghegan Hart, and was hailed as part of the team’s “second generation” of future stars by team boss Dave Brailsford. He had an A-list agent in Andrew McQuaid, who’d helped broker the Sky deal, and was due to move to the warmer, more glamorous climes of Monaco that winter. All was good.
During his neo-pro season, Dibben quickly slipped straight into Sky’s spring classics squad. His big engine, honed on the track, and quick turn of speed to sprint, marked one-day racing out as his speciality. He was handed debuts in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, the latter of which he diligently rode solo to the line 47 minutes after the winner, keeping going out of pure pride despite knowing it all meant nothing as he was way out of the time limit. That May, an even bigger prize came along as he won his first pro race in the time trial at the Tour of California in Big Bear Lake, beating much more seasoned pros like Brent Bookwalter and Andrew Talansky.
But by the end of 2018, as his contract came to a close, Dibben’s name was quietly dropped from the Sky roster. He crashed out of RideLondon that July with a broken elbow, and raced just twice again for the team after, signing out his tenure at the Hammer Hong Kong and Tour of Guangxi with barely a whisper. There was no transfer announcement to another top team.
With no road contract offers on the table, Dibben instead decided to go back to his track roots that winter, and raced the sixday scene around the world. He considered returning to the track full-time in a bid to race at the Tokyo Games in 2020, before Roger Hammond asked him to join British Continental squad Madison-Genesis midway through the year. It wasn’t ideal, Dibben didn’t particularly enjoy racing on the domestic scene where criteriums are plenty and UCI-ranked races scarce. But crucially, the move gave him a lifeline back to the road, even if it was one he didn’t necessarily think he desperately needed.
Not long after, the WorldTour came knocking. Again.
When Procycling now meets Dibben, he’s pretty tired - a six-hour ride around Majorca the week before Christmas will do that to you - yet he’s cheerful and chatty. In September it was announced that Dibben was signing with Lotto Soudal this season, and he’s coming to the end of a long twoweek camp settling into his new Belgian team. He’s got a familiar face with him in fellow new signing - and fellow former Madison teammate - Matthew Holmes, and the team language is English so integrating hasn’t been a struggle.
“I actually spoke to them a little bit last year, towards the end of 2018 and nothing came of it,” Dibben explains about where the move to Lotto came from. “Then this year during July when the Tour was on I had a call from my agent who said they wanted to meet again, so I went over to the Tour whenever it was in Toulouse, which stage that was. And I met John [Lelangue, team manager] and Marc [Sergeant, sports manager] and it was just a really good conversation actually, they set out what they saw my role in the team as, what it could be and what they had planned for 2020 and it was all what I wanted to hear in terms of what I wanted to do.”
Dibben insists the year he was out of the WorldTour wasn’t too testing, and so getting a new contract wasn’t a relief because despite finding himself in no-man’s land, there was never a period of not knowing what he was going to do.
“I don’t know if it was a relief, because at that point I was still thinking about going back to the track or I hadn’t really decided, and they made my decision for me,” he says. “It wasn’t a relief as such but more an exciting new, let’s go back to the road and really give that a good go, doing something I think I can do well.”
“That’s why I signed there. It’s the best team in the world. It just didn’t pan out; that’s that”
While Sky, now Team Ineos, is the blockbuster squad in the WorldTour it hasn’t always had the best reputation for developing young talent. While in 2020, 12 Ineos riders are aged 25 or under, in 2016, the year before Dibben joined, that number was just six. It’s easy to name young riders who went to Sky and didn’t flourish there as it was thought they might, and went elsewhere - Danny van Poppel, Ian Boswell, Joe Dombrowski, Josh Edmondson, Andy Fenn, Alex Dowsett. Former head of performance Rod Ellingworth even said himself in 2017 that the team’s focus on winning the biggest races in the world, such as the Tour de France, had sometimes come at the detriment of young riders.
So what happened to Dibben? How did he go from being one of Britain’s brightest talents to his career never really taking off?
“2018 hadn’t gone great, and then I built up some good form and was hoping to do well in some races in the second half of the season and then crashing in RideLondon that was it then, that was super tough. I found out a bit later that Sky probably didn’t want to re-sign me, and I was also sort of fed up there with how things were going and the people I was dealing with there,” he explains.
“I actually quite liked working to a real system, it wasn’t that side of things. I felt like it was more a couple of people who were coaching me or looking after me,” he continues before a pause. “Once you start falling out with them for various reasons you get put on the back burner of the race programme and that’s it then. There was nothing major... just disagreements.”
On paper the fit should have been perfect; Dibben’s nationality and progression prior to joining in many ways made him the archetypal ‘Team Sky rider’. “That’s why I went there, it was like a natural step, from being at BC for four years, with all my under 23 years and going from Team Wiggins straight to Team Sky it was just, that’s why I signed there. It’s the best team in the world; it’s hard not to. It just didn’t pan out; that’s that,” he says.
Dibben refuses to be drawn further into the issues that went on behind the scenes during his time at Sky, but he doesn’t appear disappointed (at least now) about the way things panned out there.
“I certainly don’t regret having my two years there,” he says. “I really learned a lot from them, that’s why I’m excited for next year to see more in a different set up with a bit more of a different dynamic to how the team works in races. I think, I hope, it’s going to be better for me, which is why I came here.”
Dibben is still only 25 (he turns 26 in February) but is going into his second WorldTour stint much more prepared for what lies ahead. When he first stepped into Sky colours he was bright-eyed, fresh-faced and used to being the top of the U23 class, then suddenly thrust into the WorldTour like a child who goes from the oldest in junior school to the youngest in high school. Now, Dibben says, he knows the level he needs to be at if he wants to perform, and perform well.
“You just get to see the level, especially with how quickly the top guys climb, or even not the top guys, just the bunch. The power you’ve got to get out just to get up the climb in a group of, like, 100. You just see the level in the racing, everyone doesn’t
give any room, there are no gaps in the bunch, everyone’s just full gas into every descent, every corner. You’ve really got to be 100 per cent the whole race, you can’t afford to be slacking,” he says.
“Most of 2017 was really good and then 2018 was a big let down, I certainly didn’t improve on where I was so it’s just for next year getting to that fitness level in the races and then you can work from there really.”
At Lotto, his role will be split. Primarily he will support their sprinters, Caleb Ewan and John Degenkolb, while he’s also hoping to earn his way into the classics roster and get a shot at some time trials, too. At a towering 6ft 2in tall and with an engine honed in the velodrome, it’s no wonder the Lotto management can see him slotting straight into a lead-out and the benefit (speed and aerodynamically) he could bring to a shorter sprinter like Ewan. There’s also the fact that unlike at Ineos, where grand tours are almost the entire focus, at Lotto there are no GC stars - sprints and one-day racing have always been their heritage. For a rider with a love for the classics you can see why he’d be excited.
“You can tell already it’s just so different to Sky because they almost didn’t really care for anything apart from training hard and stage races,” he says. “They targeted the classics but not… I don’t think they ever really did. This team is completely different, they don’t care about stage racing at all… otherwise they just go for sprints, they go for classics, and they race to race. That’s why I was really up for it because if
Caleb’s not there, or John’s not there, and it’s not the Tour of Flanders or something, you can race, go in the early break, attack from early on, if there’s an opportunity go for yourself in the sprints. It’s just exciting to get some actual racing in.”
The season begins at the Tour Down Under, the UAE Tour then the Belgian classics. Ultimately though, Dibben just wants to see how far he can develop. He never really figured that out before.
“Now it’s good to come back, almost with a second chance, a second start in WorldTour life,” he says. “Knowing a bit of what’s required rather than going in straight from under 23 and not knowing it, what’s really to come.”
“This team is completely different, they don’t care about stage racing at all… you can race, go in the early break, attack from early on, if there’s an opportunity go for yourself in the sprints. It’s just exciting to get some actual racing in”