Young Holloway talks about his solo break in Philly

Holowesko Partners/Felt U23 rider Daniel Holloway put in an ‘early’ attack at the Philadelphia International Championship last Sunday, with the entire U23 squad racing as the US National Team. While it is not an official parade start, the pace is normally easy until the riders enter the main part of the 156 mile-long course. Not so for Holloway who threw caution to the wind and attacked off the line. What resulted was a longer day that he bargained for, as he was on his own off the front for the better part of 80 miles.

Holloway spoke with Podium Insight about his unintended adventure, with teammate (and team wisenheimer) Alex Howes jumping in with the occasional reality-check.

PC: Why did you go off so early today?

Holloway: So I had this dream. I had a dream. No, I thought that the race was going to start fast, it didn’t start fast. I heard there was daylight so I got aero and nobody caught me for 80 miles.

Holloway: I didn’t know…. I was just expecting a fast start and had it in the big ring, and c’est la vie.

Howes: He doesn’t play by the rules.

Howes: With this clown up front, the whole crowd every time we went up was just chanting USA. That worked out pretty well (both chuckle) It was kind of cool.

Holloway: Yeah, it’s cool for the morale. That doesn’t happen too often that you get a whole, hundreds of people into one team and that was cool for me because I was solo and cool for the guys in the field because I’m sure they haven’t really experienced that especially in a 150+ field with huge names like Freddie, the BISSELL boys, the OUCH boys, Liquigas and Columbia. For the whole wall to be chanting USA, nobody really expects that, to have that happen and all of us being under 23 and everybody is rooting for us at Philly is phenomenal. I think that was hair-raising and I don’t think that anybody that whatsoever for that to happen. It’s pretty awesome.
Tells the crowd to drink after his wave

Tells the crowd to drink after his wave

Alex, what did you think of it?
Howes: It was pretty rad. The one time we went up, we went up as a team, there was five or six of us all lined up and as we went up, the whole chant followed us like ‘USA, USA, USA’ , a bunch of drunk people. It was awesome (chuckles) People spraying beer on us and everything, yeah, I was feeling the brotherly love. It was good stuff.