Quinn Simmons is back on European soil, driven by special memories of the Netherlands

The Colorado native has been crossing the Atlantic for several years now. Most cycling fans first got to know Simmons in 2019, when he became junior world champion in Yorkshire after an outstanding season in the age category.

Nowadays you see it more often, but that year the bearded American was one of the first to move straight from the juniors into the WorldTour. The path wasn’t always smooth: in his first season he finished second overall in the Tour of Hungary and sixth at the Bretagne Classic, and a year later he won the Tour de Wallonie — but Simmons only took his first WorldTour victories in 2025.

He won a stage in both the Volta a Catalunya and the Tour de Suisse, which felt like a breakthrough. The latter, in particular, carried extra weight after Simmons had been one of the first riders at the scene of Gino Mäder’s fatal crash in the same race two years earlier. Riding the Tour de France as US champion — just as he did in 2023 — and this time making it to Paris healthy, also laid the foundation for a strong autumn.

Simmons already won plenty of hearts in the Tour with his attacking style, but at the GP Montréal and especially at Il Lombardia he backed it up with results. “I think I really did take a nice step in 2025,” he says. “I want to confirm that level — or rather improve it — next year.”

“At the end of last season I was already quite a bit better than at the beginning,” explains Simmons, still the only rider on Lidl-Trek coached by Steven de Jongh. “That win in Catalunya was a bit strange, but the victory in Switzerland felt real. And then I just kept getting better during the Tour.”

“The level I hit at the end of the season, I haven’t reached yet this year,” the American concludes. “I knew I was good, but Montréal was really more like training towards the Worlds. I’d never finished that race before… but I could see I wasn’t getting worse, while others were. And suddenly, with my weight, I was riding for the win in a race with 4,000 metres of climbing.”

“I lost that confidence again at the Worlds, where nothing really worked, and then found it again in Lombardia,” Simmons laughs. “And that’s really important to me, because finishing the year well is an underrated thing. I’ve ended seasons with COVID, with a crash in Roubaix, illness, and so on. This time there was no stress.”

“If I can add a few more percentage points on top of that, it can be a really good year. I’ve got big ambitions — in one-day races and in stage races. If I have to name one goal, it’s a stage win in the Tour. But having another year like last season would also be a success,” says the American, who begins his campaign in France at the Classic Var.

The first big appointment for Simmons is Strade Bianche, a race where he has already shown himself on several occasions. “The build-up is more or less the same as in recent years, but it’s definitely a target,” he says. After that, the focus shifts towards races including the Amstel Gold Race, where he feels a special connection.

“Because it’s close to Sittard, where I stayed as a junior with the national team. Some of my best memories as a 16- or 17-year-old happened there — when I was in Europe for the first time.”

Last year he saw teammate Mattias Skjelmose take the win. “And I’d marked that race down too. After two hours I already felt: this is going to be a race for climbers. It was so fast. That will always make it difficult for me, but you still have to keep trying,” concludes the training fanatic from the other side of the Atlantic.