With the season he’s had, Derek Gee needs a new set of goals.
The 27-year-old cyclist from Ottawa surprised “everyone” — including himself — by finishing third at the Criterium du Dauphine in June and ninth overall at the Tour de France in July.
After shattering his own expectations, even he isn’t sure about what’s next.
“It's hard to put an actual result on my goals for the future, because I've already kind of surpassed what I had hoped to do,” Gee said during a video conference Wednesday.
“Is it to target a different Grand Tour? Because obviously the Tour de France is always going to have the biggest start list. Is it going to be trying to move up into the top five? What's the next goal?
“(My goals have) shifted massively this year. It definitely shifted the window that I thought I would fall into as a rider.”
In the short term, Gee sees one-day races as an area for improvement, given that most of his success has come in stage racing.
The Israel-Premier Tech rider will compete in a packed field, including Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar, at the Cycling Grand Prix in Quebec City and Montreal, part of the UCI World Tour, on Sept. 13 and 15.
By next year, winning a Grand Tour stage will be one of his goals. Gee’s best result at the Tour de France was third place on the ninth stage. In 2023, he placed second overall in points as the breakout star at the Giro d’Italia but had four second-place finishes without a victory.
“I rode (general classification) at the tour, but I came close to one stage and then the Giro, obviously I had a lot of close calls so that one's still just a little out of reach,” Gee said. “I want to check that one off next year.”
Gee became only the third Canadian to finish in the Tour de France top 10, joining Steve Bauer (fourth in 1988) and Ryder Hesjedal (fifth in 2010).
If no one expected it, how does Gee explain it? He said it was “an accumulation of small things.”
Gee, who debuted on the UCI World Tour in 2023, pinpointed areas for improvement after his first pro season, dedicating time to altitude training camps and aerodynamic testing.
His unexpected podium at Dauphine — an eight-day stage race seen as a key warm-up for the Tour de France — boosted his confidence to compete with the best.
“I'd never performed at that level before. I'd never been able to be up there on the long climbs or the (time trials) with guys of that level,” Gee said. “The biggest thing coming out of the Dauphine was just the confidence of knowing that I can be up there and competing with the best on my day."
But Gee’s season hasn’t been perfect every step of the way. At this summer’s Paris Olympics, he placed 20th in the time trials and 44th in the road race.
Gee drove home to Girona, Spain, for just one day after the Tour wrapped in Nice, France, before heading back to Paris for the Games — and felt the fatigue of competing back-to-back.
“I definitely felt the tour in my legs at the Olympics,” he said. “It was a brutally hard road race, and obviously the (rainy) conditions in the time trial were pretty unique.
“But I have managed to recover quite well since then, I took a little break, and now back to training for a couple weeks (ahead of Quebec City and Montreal).”
Gee placed 105th in Quebec and 47th in Montreal last year, his debut in both races.
Despite his growing reputation in cycling, he said he hasn’t felt much additional pressure to perform yet.
"It's definitely going to be something that builds a little more in the future,” he said. “The expectations will change next year. Going into those same races or similar styles of races, I'm sure there'll be more pressure and more expectation, and I'll just have to adapt to it and embrace it. It's a privilege, because you have that pressure for a reason.”
“The really exciting part is I feel like there's still untapped potential that the team's already identified, I've already identified and we're already working on improving little things here and there,” he added.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 28, 2024.
Daniel Rainbird, The Canadian Press
