You used to watch Vincenzo Nibali tear down mountains at eye-watering speeds, you’ve seen Tom Pidcock follow in his wheel tracks in recent years, and you’ve also marvelled at Matej Mohorič winning Milan-Sanremo as a result of a daredevil descent. Now the professional men’s peloton is about to welcome its latest downhill master – only very few people outside of Spain have heard of him.
British rider Lucas Towers has spent the last four years racing Spain’s U23 calendar, the last three of which he’s been riding for Caja Rural-Alea, the U23 feeder team to the ProTeam. In that time, Towers has won five fiercely-competitive national races, two of which have come courtesy of attacking on a descent. Few north of the Pyrenees might have taken note of Towers who has embarked on a traditional but now increasingly rare career path, but George Hincapie has – one of the finest American cyclists in the early 2000s signing Towers to his new American ProTeam Modern Adventure Racing in 2026.
Towers has bags of potential, as Hincapie has assessed, but it’s his ability to go downhill faster than the rest of the bunch that sets him apart as prepares to make his mark on the professional scene. “Descending is definitely my strongest point – when races come down to such small margins, and everyone’s doing the same training and the same fuelling, there is such a small percentage to be gained in a performance sense, so having that descending card up my sleeve is a real bonus,” Towers, who turns 22 in November, tells Rouleur. “I don’t use it every race, and I don’t go crazy on every descent – there is a time and place to ride a really good downhill – but my two biggest wins have come through using that skill.”
Attacking off the front: just like Towers likes it.
The fact that Towers has that skillset should not come as a surprise: he and his sister Alice, who rides for Canyon//SRAM-Zondacrypto, were both taught how to ride bikes by their father Jonny, who is a former British and European motorcycling champion. The descending gene was passed down to both of them, and then refined through years of family rides. “Descending comes naturally to me and I have my Dad to thank for that,” Towers says. “My sister and I would ride together with our Dad and follow his lines, and we picked the skill up without ever really realising. When I’ve got that adrenaline buzz and the race win is on the line, I can go into that flow state, nail the apexes and put it out and nail it on the line.”
To reduce Towers to just a descender would be doing him a disservice, though. He’s also a lightweight climber, someone who prefers to be at the front animating the race, rather than waiting for the action to spring into life. That racing style is a consequence of his years in Spain. “I was 16 when I first raced in Spain and I was nervous, a little daunted. But in my first race, coming up against riders I’ve never heard of, I had a good experience, went over the final climb in the front group of 10 and it gave me confidence from the off. I immediately loved it and became hooked.” The winner of that race? Juan Ayuso. Towers was in esteemed company from the off, and soon made a name for himself in his adopted country.
Lucas Towers might not be a name many recognise in the UK, but in Spain he's become a marked figure. Image: Oskar Matxin
“The racing in Spain naturally suits me,” he says, having made Pamplona his home and mastered the language. “After my first year as an U23 rider, I had options to go elsewhere and to ride for WorldTour development teams, but I was so fixated on the Spanish racing style, and really enjoying my racing that I thought this was the best place for my development pathway.” Winning Memorial Valenciaga in May 2024, arguably Spain’s most prestigious domestic U23 race, cemented his belief that he had made the right call to resist the overtures of a more UCI-focused calendar. “If you ask any young Spanish rider what race they want to win, they’d say Valenciaga as it’s the biggest one-day race. To then win another Copa de España race this year was just as great. The whole experience of learning how to win races and be a good teammate has been crucial for my development and I wouldn't change a thing.”
Caja Rural understandably wanted to promote Towers to their ProTeam for the 2026 season, but Towers was intrigued when he caught wind of Hincapie’s ambitious project. “From reading the original press release, it looked like an extremely unique opportunity and extremely exciting project,” he says. “A week or two later one of the DSs, Alex Howes, followed me on Instagram. I was in a very relaxed state as I had a verbal agreement with Caja from the previous year and I was very comfortable and well supported there, but I sent Alex a message to see if we could have a chat about racing for them in 2026. We got chatting and I felt like I couldn’t deny myself the chance to explore it.”
Towers has since penned a two-year deal with the start-up team. “The majority of us will be neo-pros, so the expectations will be that everyone has to prove and show themselves,” he says. “We’re all racing new races, a new calendar, at a level we've not experienced before, but the team is confident we’re all capable of stepping up and providing ourselves worthy of being a pro rider. Personally I feel confident and prepared that I can find my place in the pro peloton and adapt to the race rhythm.
“My dream is to race at the highest level possible, and it’d be amazing to experience WorldTour tracing, but first I just want to find a level where I can be competitive at, feel like I’m making an effect on the races, and am not just there to make up the numbers.” If Towers’ race calendar takes him to northern Spain, he can draw on plenty of past experience and deploy his ace card. “After doing so many races in the Basque Country and winning there, it would be a bucket list thing to ride a pro race there. And if there’s a descent where I can put it all on the line to win, that’d make it even more special.”
Cover image: Oskar Matxin
