Biography

Born into a keen cycling family - his father and grandfather having both ridden competitively - Owens started the sport at the age of 11 and was racing by the time he had reached 16.

His first national-level achievement was a second place in the time trial at the 2011 National Junior Track Championships in the under-16 category although a calf injury forced the youngster to miss the 2012 season as he was sidelined for 11 months.

Fully fit once more, it was obvious that the rider’s future lay in sprint events and Owens’ progress continued in 2013 with a bronze medal in the keirin at the National Junior Track Championships and a fourth place in the team sprint in the senior British National Track Championships.

Having started at Loughborough University in September 2014, Owens won bronze in the team sprint at the British National Track Championships in 2014 with Peter Mitchell and Thomas Scammell.

Owens then went on to dominate the BUCS University National track championships at the National Cycling Centre, Manchester in May 2015, winning three golds.

Owens set a new BUCS University record for the 200-metre time trial, with 10.653, on his way to gold in the sprint competition; won the kilo in 1:05.658 and led Loughborough to gold in the team sprint in a new record time of 49.758.

At this stage of his career, Owens was driving nearly 600 miles every week between Lee Valley VeloPark in London and the Derby Velodrome to train.

But on the back of his improving performances, Owens was handed a trial by the Great Britain Cycling Team in September 2015, winning a place on the Senior Academy and moving to Manchester full-time to pursue his dream of one day winning an Olympic gold medal.

He also competed in the 2015 National Track Championships, finishing fifth in the team sprint and seventh in the keirin.

Medal moments

Following his impressive progress and selection as a reserve to the Rio Olympic Games team sprint squad, Owens justified the faith shown in him in Montichiari, Italy, in July at the UEC Under-23 Track European Championships.

Teamed with Joe Truman and Jack Carlin, Owens helped the British under-23 team win qualification by over half a second, posting a time of 43.930. In the gold medal ride against the Czech Republic, Great Britain once more broke 44 seconds with a winning margin of over half a second again.

With senior sprint colleagues taking a post-Olympics break, the trio of Carlin, Owens and Truman received senior Great Britain Cycling Team call-ups for the first time and quickly established themselves as three of the most exciting young sprinters in the track world.

At the UEC European Track Championships, the trio took silver in the team sprint, before going one better in back-to-back World Cups. They won gold in the 2016-17 UCI Track Cycling World Cup opening round in Glasgow before repeating the trick one week later in Apeldoorn, Netherlands.

Those performances earned Owens his first world championships selection, named in the Great Britain Cycling Team squad for the 2017 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Hong Kong.

Once again selected alongside Carlin and Truman, Owens qualified third fastest in the team sprint, before missing out on a medal ride by less than two-hundredths of a second. Owens then turned his hand to the individual sprint, finishing fourth at his maiden world championships.

Alongside Carlin and Truman once more, Owens successfully defended his team sprint title at the 2017 UEC Under-23 Track European Championships in Anadia, Portugal before winning bronze in the same event at the first round of the 2017-18 UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Pruszkow, Poland.

Owens then won his first-ever world championship medal at the 2018 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Apeldoorn - taking silver in the team sprint as part of a five-man squad alongside Kenny, Hindes, Carlin and Truman, losing out in the final to the home Dutch team - the start of a long-running rivalry with the Netherlands.

The following month, Owens added a first Commonwealth Games medal to his growing collection - teaming up with Hindes and Truman for England to win team sprint silver in Gold Coast, Australia.

The sprint team rounded off 2018 with three podium appearances at UCI World Cup meetings in Milton, Canada (bronze), Berlin (silver) and London (silver), being edged out by Dutch teams on each occasion - including losing to two Dutch squads in the first of that trio.

It was a theme that continued in 2019, a year which started with a bronze medal ride in the European Games in Minsk, Belarus. Silver medals - inevitably, behind the Netherlands - followed at the UEC European Championships in Apeldoorn and UCI World Cup rounds in Minsk and Glasgow before 2020 opened in similar fashion, the team of Owens, Kenny and Carlin losing to the Dutch in the UCI World Championships in Berlin.