The 40 Most Interesting Riders in Cycling, Year 2, Part 4
Playing the classics
The previous installments:
13. Lotte Kopecky, 29, SD Worx, Belgium, Classics Specialist
I feel like I just completely missed a monster season from Kopecky: She defended her world road race championship and won Paris-Roubaix, Strade Bianche, the Belgian national championships in both the road race and time trial, and won a bronze medal in the Olympic road race. After some promising signs as an all-around stage racer in 2023, she consolidated those gains by finishing second on GC at the Giro, winning the UAE Tour,1 and winning both the GC and the mountains classification at the Tour de Romandie against extremely tough competition.
But to me, her 2024 was defined by the intra-team struggle for leadership against Demi Vollering. Well, Vollering is off of SD Worx now. On the other hand, Anna van der Breggen is back in the saddle. I guess I’ll get to van der Breggen later, but until we figure out how diminished she is after a three-year layoff, I don’t know if Kopecky is going to be the outright dominant leader in every race for SD Worx, or even more pigeonholed than she was before.
12. Mathieu van der Poel, 29, Alpecin-Deceuninck, Netherlands, Classics Specialist
We’ve established by now that when the road gets flat and bumpy and the weather gets crappy, the primary factor in a one-day race is whether van der Poel is on his game. Somehow it took him until now to win the Tour of Flanders-Paris-Roubaix double, but he’s done that now.2 And while I wouldn’t say he was competitive in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, he did finish on the podium, in a group with many of the world’s best pure puncheurs.
But he’s barely been noticeable at the Tour de France the past two years, and just this week he told Belgian publication Sporza that the Tour is “a race that I don’t really like,” and that he has “nothing to gain” from participating. So while we were all out here saying it’s beneath his dignity to show up and be a leadout man for Jasper Philipsen, van der Poel himself has no other aspirations. He’s won a stage and worn the yellow jersey already.
The funny part of that interview is that van der Poel said he doesn’t like having to race for three weeks in an event where he can only be competitive a handful of times. Which does jive with my grand unified theory of van der Poel: A lot of the cool shit he does stems from him not having the attention span to execute a traditional tactical approach. He attacks because he gets bored.
It seems like van der Poel is starting to get bored with road racing altogether; he’s announced plans to target the mountain bike world championship this summer, and to race the event at what he called his final Olympics, LA 2028.
Which kind of snuck up on me. “Final” Olympics? Yeah, it could be, since van der Poel—who only started road racing properly within the past six years—turns 30 the week after next. The end does seem to be nigh, and perhaps nigher than we’re ready for if he loses interest in road racing.
11. Remco Evenepoel, 24, Soudal-Quick Step, Belgium, All-Rounder
There’s one rider out there right now who I think has the potential to possibly, maybe one day challenge Tadej Pogačar on equal footing. He’s not there yet, obviously. Remco got smoked in the Tour de France, and is just one month removed from a training crash with a mail delivery van, in which he suffered fractures to his shoulder blade, hand, and rib, and contusions to both lungs.
Nevertheless, he’s already back to limited activity, and is targeting Brabantse Pijl as his first race of 2025, which, if he can pull off that recovery schedule, would allow him to jump into Ardennes Week healthy, if somewhat cold.3
I think what we saw from Evenepoel in 2024 is a reasonable expectation: If Pogačar doesn’t race, Remco wins. If he does, Remco finishes second or third. But I wonder if there’s just another couple percent left in the little Belgian that would allow him to get into a rock-paper-scissors relationship with the best rider of his generation.
10. Gaia Realini, 23, Lidl-Trek, Italy, Climber
A year ago I pushed the boat out for one of the smallest professional athletes in any sport. I thought that Lidl-Trek leader Elisa Longo Borghini was vulnerable, and that as the women’s cycling calendar got longer, hillier, and more demanding, that Realini could make a bid for team leadership. And by extension, GC at major stage races, up to and including the grand tours.
It hasn’t happened yet. And to be honest, Realini’s results were worse in 2024 than they were in 2023. But now, Longo Borghini’s gone. So there’s a power vacuum at the top of this team, and nobody else better suited to climbing. Last week, I wrote about the potential for a next generation of GC stars in the women’s game. That’s as true for Realini as it is for Neve Bradbury, and Realini’s got a better opportunity in terms of team situation. She’s only got to take advantage.
9. Kristen Faulkner, 32, EF-Oatly-Cannondale, United States, Classics Specialist
Another breakthrough rider, albeit on the other end of the age curve, is the inaugural Wheelysports Rider of the Year.
If you’re not already aware of my feelings about the reigning U.S. and Olympic road race champion: Welcome, I see it’s your first time reading the newsletter. What I want to know about Faulkner this year is whether the success she had in 2024 was the limit of her abilities as a rider in her late prime, or signs of a light turning on for a rider who didn’t join her first World Tour team until she was 29. Because based on her performance at the Olympics…why not Paris-Roubaix or Tour of Flanders?
8. Matteo Jorgenson, 25, Visma-Lease a Bike, United States, All-Rounder
Speaking of riders I got perhaps a little too excited about in 2024. But after Jorgenson won Paris-Nice and put on a series of dominant performances in the classics, and finished eighth at the Tour de France despite racing for Jonas Vingegaard, can you blame me?
A genuine Tour de France GC challenge is probably not going to be in the cards while Vingegaard is ambulatory and on Visma-Lease a Bike. Ditto genuine classics leadership in the context of Wout van Aert. But Jorgenson proved in 2024 that he’s good enough to be used as a tactical foil for any elite rider in basically any race.
Which is wild! I’m not used to feeling this combination of optimism and total loss as to what to think. Especially when it comes to an American male rider.
7. Primož Roglič, 35, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Slovenia, GC Speclialist
The 2024 season showed the extent to which poor Roglič—like every other GC rider except for one—has just had his career eaten by Pogačar. With each passing year, the lifetime grand tour GC triple crown becomes less and less likely. I would never have guessed it at the time, but it looks like 2020 was the only real shot Roglič is ever going to get to win the Tour de France.
At the same time, Roglič was just as much of a monster at the Vuelta as Pogačar was at the other two grand tours. And it seems like that’s the compromise he’s making in his competitive dotage. Roglič is racing both the Giro and the Tour this coming year. Maybe wearing yellow into Paris just isn’t in the cards for him, but he can establish a legacy in other ways: Rack up GC wins at the Giro and Vuelta (he already has five total), show that even in his mid-30s he can crush any mere mortal stage racer, and go down as the greatest modern stage racer never to win GC at the Tour de France. It wasn’t Plan A—probably still isn’t—but it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
One more installment of this series to go, then the Tour Down Under starts a week from Friday. We did it, everyone! We’ve killed off the offseason!
Where she beat Neve Bradbury, Gaia Realini and Elisa Longo Borghini up Jebel Hafeet
Though he’d won both races independently in previous years.
I’m used to baseball and football injuries with year-long recovery schedules. Cyclists heal like Deadpool