Go Big or Go Home
How much can a rider really prove before Valentine's Day?
Following cycling is much like riding a race. You can’t get too excited about everything. You have to pick your spots. Conserve your energy. When the biggest, most important moments of the season come, you’ll know.
Because based on this season’s results so far, I’d single out three riders as worthy of re-evaluation. These are serious, established players on the professional circuit—two of them are world champions—but what they’ve done in their first action of the 2024 season could be a sign that even more impressive peaks await.
The first is Brandon McNulty, who I wrote about last week. He had looked like the next great American GC threat on the junior circuit, then been displaced by a series of teammates at the senior level, put in a monster performance to kick off his 2024 campaign. Is that a sign he could win a one-week World Tour stage race, or perhaps even challenge for a Grand Tour podium under the right circumstances?
We’ll see. But as great as McNulty has looked early this year, we need to talk about a pair of elite classics riders: Mads Pedersen and Lotte Kopecky.