'That was the first time I really understood how good the best are' - Quinn Simmons calibrates his place in the peloton

His clearest marker comes from the 2022 Tour de France. Stage six, his first Tour, his first proper day with a green light to make the break. “Two and a half hour fight for the breakaway,” he told in the Watts Occurring podcast, and then the race snapped into place on a false flat rise with a crosswind. 

“Suddenly, the three [Simmons, Van Aert and Fuglsang] of us were off the front. And I am like, well, guess we are committed now.”

Then it became two. Jakob Fuglsang stopped, and Simmons was left alone with Wout van Aert in yellow.

He describes it like being towed, but without the relief. “He was treating me like he was motor pacing me. It was insane,” Simmons says. The detail that sticks is the effort that should have been enough. “It is just this slight uphill, and he is seated, and I am doing like 650 watts on the dude’s wheel, and he just rides away from me.”

He is careful about what it was not. “It is not that I cracked,” he says. The gap was simply too clean, too matter of fact. “That was the first time one on one I really felt how good the best guys are in the world.”

From the Tour de France anecdote, the talk turns to Simmons’ 2026 calendar, and he is direct about what he is leaving out.

He will not race the Belgian Classics. No Tour of Flanders, no Paris Roubaix. It is not presented as a snub, but as a consequence of how Lidl Trek structures its cobbled campaign around Mads Pedersen.

“The team is so good, and with Mads is such a big leader and so many guys that support him, there is not really much of a spot for me,” Simmons says. He is blunt about the internal logic. “When you go with a guy like Mads as the leader, he deserves to have seven guys there for him.”

Simmons does not pretend it is an easy choice, but he makes it sound simple. “I would prefer to do a slightly different calendar and have my own opportunities,” he says.

So his spring shifts to races where he can lead. “I will go to Strade as leader,” he says, and he pairs it with a second clear target. “I can also target Amstel. For me those would be the two biggest one day goals.”

There is realism under the selection. The biggest races are currently defined by riders who can make everyone else look normal. Simmons does not claim he is there yet. “There is still a long ways to those best guys,” he says. “All I can hope to do is keep chipping off a few percent each year.”