Lewis Askey and the leaner man in the mirror

A few minutes into a conversation with Lewis Askey ahead of the Vuelta a España, he mentions that he lost nine kilograms in preparation for his debut Grand Tour. It’s a double take moment: ‘ok, next question… hang on… how much?!’

“Nine, yeah,” he confirms. “It’s massive.”

Askey, who stands at 6’1”, tipped the scales at 82kg as he started his Classics campaign in February. Ahead of the Vuelta, he weighed in at 73kg.

When a rider says they lost more than a tenth of their bodyweight, alarm bells start ringing. In pro cycling’s increasingly regimented modern guise, governed by the dogma of watts-per-kilo, disordered eating is a very real pitfall, especially for youngsters like Askey.

“I know it’s a sensitive subject,” says the 22-year-old, slightly cautious at first. “It comes with the connotations of ‘ah, he’s just stopped eating’. It seems like a lot, and it is a lot, but I haven’t done anything crazy.”

But before long, Askey was happy to delve deeper, speaking openly about his own experiences and the issues surrounding weight and eating more generally. As he does so, the alarm bells fade away.

“A big thing is looking at yourself in the mirror and going: ‘do I look in good shape or not?’ And for me, I sort of know,” he says. “A lot of people look in the mirror and they could be in the best shape of their life but they think ‘ah I’m so fat’. But I think I’m quite good in that regard. I know what looks right, what looks healthy.”

The 82kg that Askey reached was not quite his normal benchmark. In the winter, he’d made a conscious effort to bulk up in preparation for the Classics, the races where his heart and future lie.

“The goal was to be heavier but stronger, and I was. I was going super well, but I realised that in the other races, as soon as it started going up, it affects you. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to come to the Vuelta and compete at 82kg,” he says.

“The weight loss was all gradual – over four or five months – and all focused on making sure I could keep my power. I lost a very little bit of explosivity at the very top end – like five-second pure power – but even there my watts-per-kilo has stayed the same. I did my first altitude camp in the summer and then in the Tour of Poland I was flying – I was getting over hills I should never be getting over.”

Explaining how he got up to 82kg, Askey says he puts muscle on “really easily” and doesn’t struggle to put away his food: “There’s a normal person meal, then a cyclist’s meal and then there’s me.”

As for how he got down to 73kg, it was mostly that muscle that came off, especially around the upper body. He made no changes to his breakfast, nor his pre, mid, or post-ride fuelling. Instead, he only exercised caution with his evening meals and reduced his carbohydrate intake in the hours before sleep.

“I did end up weighing what I was having,” he says, a hint of caution returning to his voice. The idea of a cyclist counting out his rice to the grain comes with a side helping of those connotations, after all. “It was mainly because I wanted to know and make sure I was losing the right amount each week."

“You have to listen to your body, but I think I know my body quite well. I know a lot of people who struggle with it, but it’s not something I’d say I struggle with. I was also doing the Supersapiens [glucose monitoring] stuff –  I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing anything that was going to damage me.”

It’s hard to know exactly from the outside whether this is all healthy for Askey, but his attitude certainly seems so.

“One thing I’ve realised is really finding a balance between the healthiest version and what’s best for your performance, because they’re not always the same thing,” he says.

“What cyclists can do when they’re super motivated - and I’ve seen guys do this - is go too far. They might lose a lot quickly and feel super good but suddenly a month later they fall ill and it’s like ‘I wonder why’. For me, I’m also super motivated - if you told me riding 10 hours each day would make me better I’d probably have the head to do it - but I also know the dangers of it all.”

And so, while nine kilos may sound shocking, it’s still clear of what Askey considers the danger zone:

“For sure, I could be 4kg lighter still, but I’d have to lose muscle, I’d be skinny, I’d probably get sick more. They’re all big indicators. Maybe I could be a little bit better if I was a bit lighter, but personally I take the health side over the pure performance.”

Incidentally, this is borne out by Askey turning up late for our interview due to a lengthy session with the osteopath. The reason? He’s a bit stiff from tennis last week.

“Some people would be like ‘what are you doing playing tennis? That’s not serious,’ but there’s a reason I still do lots of sports and that’s because it makes me feel good.”

As Askey embarks on his first Grand Tour, the question is whether he has indeed struck the right balance.

The early signs are good, with an eighth-place finish on the draggy finish into Tarragona on stage 4 and fifth into Burriana the following day, but the true test will come later on. Askey’s longest race so far was eight days. Here he’ll do nine before the first rest day, and then 12 more after that. In any case, these three weeks are as much about laying the foundations for the future, as much as anything else, and he already has one eye on it.

“Next year I am going to start on the lighter side, probably keeping where I am now. It might be that I’m getting further in the races but have no punch left, or it might be that I’m that much fresher that I’m going super well. Luckily I signed a three-year contract, so that gives me time to be able to play around and find what works best for me.

“That’s the thing - it’s so individual. Everyone is different; male, female; if you’re 20, 30, 40; if you’re doing 30 hours a week, or more gym stuff. There’s so much information out there, but everyone is so individual. You can read one thing and yeah that might work for one guy but it also might ruin your career.”

As long as he can keep looking at himself in that mirror with a balanced view, Askey seems in safe hands.