Juniors to watch in 2015: Part III

Welcome to the last part of my "Juniors to watch in 2015" list. Following the pattern from last year, below you can read about two riders that recently moved into junior category and 2015 season will be their first as under 19 rider but their results clearly show that we are dealing with incredibly talented riders.

Jasper Philipsen (Belgium, 1998)

Jasper recently crowned award for the best Flandrien cadet in yearly Het Nieuwsblad competition. Philipsen is riding for Balen BC team and as a junior he will continue to develop in the team he managed to achieve the biggest success so far in his career. Jasper scored fourteen wins last season in the under 17 races which also included several wins on the international level. The most important one was for sure overall classification of Askö Radjugendtour, one of the most important stage races for cadets. Philipsen managed to win three stages during the race, all ended up with a bunch sprint. He was a little behind on the queen stage but thanks to bonifications he managed to keep the overall lead ahead of Jonas Rutsch and Marc Hirschi (you can keep an eye on those two kids, won't be the last time your read about them on my blog). In addition, Jasper scored a stage win during Tour de Himmelfart where he has beaten Anton Charmig on the line. Young Belgian rider from Ham also managed to finish in third place of West-Vlaanderen Cycling Tour, important stage race for cadets, behind the big names from his category: Sasha Weemaes and Gage Hecht. This year, we can expect Jasper to shine on local circuit but with extensive calendar that his team, Balen BC usually has, Philipsen will have a chance to compete against top juniors in various races.

Below you can see one of his wins during Askö Radjugendtour 2014:

Anthon Charmig (Denmark, 1998)

There aren't many races in u17 category that can be considered as big, international event with riders  from various countries fighting for  a victory. I could name four, maybe five such events. And last year, Anthon Charmig, current vice-champion of Denmark in time trial (junior category!) has won two of them. First sights of his remarkable talent was seen (as for many other riders actually) in European Youth Olympic Festival 2013 in Utrecht. As a fifteen years old kid he managed to win a sprint for fourth place (ahead of guys like Blikra, Welten, Holt or Kulikovskiy, all one year older), jest 22 seconds behind winner, Leo Appelt. But the best season was for sure 2014. As a second year cadet, Charmig won various races in his country giving him overall win in Tornado Cup but I will keep a focus on international level races. Like I said, there were two big events were Anthon shined. The first one was Grand Prix Matoušek, stage race that consists five stages and you can consider it as under 17 version of Course de la Paix. Charmig won four stages during the race including prologue, time trial and two reduced bunch sprint, he missed the leading group on stage three but thanks to bonifications and the final time trial he managed to keep the leaders jersey and win the race ahead of his teammate Rasmus Lund Pedersen and Czech Jakub Otruba. The second big race Anthon managed to win was Tour de Himmelfart. This time Charmig was racing for his club Odder CK and he managed to win only the first stage where he won reduced bunch sprint. On the next two stages he narrowly missed the win being beaten by other high prospects in u17: first it was Jasper Philipsen who has beaten Anthon in sprint and the next day Norwegian Sedrik Engebø Ullebø (another important name to follow, trust me) has beaten Anthon in time trial. But young Dane was always up there in all the stages and managed to win overall classification ahead of Ullebø and another Dane Jakob Egholm. In addition, Charmig has won two big one day races: Rund um Ascheffel and Giro Nortof. For 2015 season Charmig decided to join the biggest cycling junior team in Denmark, Team Kel-Berg Roskildeand we can expect him to be in contention in many big events during the season.