‘When I tell people at home I’m involved in cycling, they say, “Ah, keirin?” I’m like, “No, road cycling.” And they look perplexed.’
Takuya Sakamoto has been a soigneur – the great multi-taskers of any cycling team – for American WorldTour team EF Education-EasyPost since 2021 and has worked in cycling since 2015, a career path that he admits is unusual for a young man from Japan.
‘I never thought I’d leave Japan and work in Europe,’ he says. ‘Certainly not in cycling.’
In Japan, track-based keirin racing is big business thanks to the fact that it’s
