Five weeks after competing in Italy, King is in the Austrian Alps, relaxing in a booth at a hotel restaurant in the Tyrolean ski town of Kitzbühel. He’s just finished stage two of the Tour of Austria, which ended with one of cycling’s most challenging climbs—Kitzbüheler Horn, where the winding two-lane road to the summit reaches a 22 percent gradient, an angle so steep that most spectators take a gondola up to the finish.

Once a warm-up for the Tour de France, this weeklong tour is now held at the same time, attracting the best cyclists on the pro circuit not riding in the sport’s marquee event.

For King, Austria is a more valuable experience than riding in France, where he would be working as a domestique (the French term for “servant”) for Cervélo’s top contenders. Though cycling is, at its core, an individual sport, a solid support crew is vital to success in most races. The domestiques help by sheltering the strongest teammates from the wind (a cyclist who is drafting another rider uses about 30 percent less energy than he would alone). They also chase down attacks from rival teams and fetch water bottles or food from the team car that follows the peloton (the main bunch of cyclists in each race).

Here in the land of Freud, schnitzel, and beer, King is momentarily freed from that duty and has an opportunity to stretch his legs. After ordering a mineral water from the waiter, he tells me that most pros, like any elite athletes, start training early in life.

From the junior ranks, the strongest cyclists are placed onto their respective national youth programs or plucked by pro squads looking to fill out their second-team rosters. For instance, the rider who will eventually win the Tour of Austria, 29-year-old Swiss native Michael Albasini, first competed at age 11. By 17, he had won Switzerland’s junior national road championship and before his 20th birthday had a professional contract.

For King, however, the process started much later. A good athlete growing up, he played hockey, soccer, and tennis at Exeter High School in New Hampshire.

And though his older brother Robbie had started a mountain biking team at Holderness and spurred him to buy his own bike, King was more satisfied to cruise wooded trails than compete. In fact, he’d ridden in just one race growing up: the 1993 Tour of Brentwood. It was in fourth grade—a short five-mile road course through his hometown—and he finished second to his best friend in their age category.

So when he stepped on campus at Middlebury as a Feb in early 2002, he had little inkling that a career in cycling was in his future.

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