Robert Power is only 19 but he is already being considered one of the biggest talents in cycling. He spoke to Café Roubaix about his 2014 and what he hopes to achieve in 2015, where he will remain in the U23 ranks.

“I really enjoyed it this year, it was a real challenge in my first U23 season and I liked to do longer, harder races, especially the Italian one-day races, which are terrific and very tough. There are so many good riders and so many good teams in Europe, and everyone wants to win. In Australia you have 20 guys that want to win, while in Europe there are 200 that want to do it, and this goes on day after day. Everything’s much more competitive and much more of a challenge.”

Power came to the World’s attention with some great performances, taking a couple of one-day wins in Italy, a scene notorious for being tough to win on and the winners of these races often produce the best champions.

Then, the 19 year old impressively finished on the second step of the Tour de l’Avenir podium, a big step for such a young rider.

“I liked L’Avenir, is a tough race and we had a very strong team, with guys who came at the start for stage wins and guys who aimed at the GC. The team really had to work hard for the sprint stages, as well as the mountain ones. It was a completely different level there, with many national teams and I was happy to take second. Obviously, I would have liked to win L’Avenir, but we did everything we could to try and take the GC, but it just didn’t work.”

He has spent plenty of time in 2014 racing against pros, and he says he hopes to learn from them in order to make himself a better rider. He also went on to discuss his programme for the 2015 season in the interview.

“I think it’s going to be similar to the races I did this year, with L’Avenir hopefully on the cards and the U23 National Championships at the start of the year. Then I hope to go to Europe again with the Australian National U23 Team and try to go for the Italian one-day races and a few more tours. Now I’m focusing on the Nationals and see where I’ll go from here. Nationals is a big race for me, I’ve been training really hard these past weeks and I’m very eager to try and get a result there. After that, Europe will come.”

And for 2016, he only has one thing on his young mind: turning professional.

“I think I would like to become a pro then, although I really didn’t thought much about it. I’ve really enjoyed working with the GreenEdge guys in the camp over the last week and it seems that they are a really organized team and have good fun, but I want to take it easy, enjoy next season and spend another year in the U23 races.”