“I was on the bus with the Visma guys, like with Wout van Aert and Pascal Eenkhoorn, and really from then, all I’ve aspired to do is to race for Visma one day, and hopefully ride the Tour de France with them.”
Xander Graham is reflecting on an extraordinary day six years ago, which burns bright in his memory, when, during stage seven of the 2021 Tour of Britain, he kept pace with a breakaway group as they rode towards his hometown of Edinburgh. Aged just 12 at the time, he was rewarded for his efforts by being handed a bidon by Eenkhoorn, who was then riding for Jumbo-Visma. The video clip of the moment went viral, but now the story has gone almost full circle.
Now 17, Graham still has that bidon and knows exactly where it is (“on a shelf in my garage”). But as of this week, he also has something else, something that is putting him within touching distance of the dream he’s been holding onto for the last five years: a contract with JEGG-SKIL-DJR, a Dutch team who are directly affiliated with Visma-Lease a Bike.
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“I was already a fan of Visma back then,” he tells Cycling Weekly. “But from that day onwards, it definitely made me love them, and they became my favourite team now. So, yeah, it really is like a dream come true.”
But it hasn’t come out of nowhere. In the intervening five years, Graham has been working hard to make his fream come true. A key member of the Yorkshire-based Prologue Cycling Team, he is halfway through a two-year programme with the Manchester Cycling Academy.
“I’m also a beneficiary of the Braveheart programme in Scotland,” he tells me. “The fund supports riders with funding for transport and costs, so they can get across to Europe to race, which is a massive help for me.”
As commentators Ned Boulting and Adam Blythe noted at the time, when they described the encounter as the best moment of the tour thus far, the Scottish youngster showed remarkable pace even as a pre-teen.
“I rode my bike from being four years old,” Xander tells me. “I used to do local mountain-bike dirt grits and then from there some cyclocross and a bit of road. From under-14 to under-16, I did every discipline – mountain biking, cyclocross, road and track – but for this last year, I’ve fully focused on road riding.”
And it has paid off. In spring this year, he was made aware of a young talent day being held by JEGG for under-19s.
“Loads of people applied, but I got through,” Xander explains. “Then we had to do testing in Belgium. Two or three weeks later I got a message from the head of JEGG, and he invited me to a training camp in Germany. After that he said that there was a space on the team for me.”
“I’ll be based at home in Edinburgh, but I’ll fly out to races and training camps and stuff like that. I’ve got a training camp with them later in the year – that will be the first time that I’ll actually meet up with them.”
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