The 41 Most Interesting Riders in Cycling, Part 2
Riders 21 through 31: A late-blooming American star, a guy who can sprint with one shoe, and a fan favorite who's not quite as beloved within the peloton.
The Top 41 list continues into a second installment (click here for Part 1 if you missed it), with more big personalities, comeback stories, and breakout stars. And more questions about who will be on Tadej Pogačar’s wing at UAE Team Emirates.
No. 31: Marc Hirschi, 25, UAE Team Emirates, Switzerland, Puncheur
In 2020, Hirschi was one of the most exciting young stars in the sport. He was all over the Tour de France, where he won a stage, and he finished the season with a bronze medal at the world championships, a win at La Flèche Wallonne, and second place at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, where he could’ve won the sprint if Julian Alaphilippe hadn’t bashed him halfway across the road just before the line.
That performance got Hirschi a big-money move from Sunweb (now DSM) to UAE, where he was set up to become the team’s leader in the hilly classics. And it just never happened. Pogačar just absorbed that role as well, becoming nearly unbeatable over moderate terrain, and now we’re left wondering if Hirschi just cashed in on one incredible six-week run.
The end of the 2023 season brought some renewed signs of life for the young Swiss rider; after Worlds in August, Hirschi finished in the top 10 in every race he entered except Il Lombardia. Which, I’ll concede, is a big one.
This is a make-or-break year for Hirschi, whose contract at UAE is up at season’s end, and so far the biggest win he’s had in that team’s colors was the Tour de Luxembourg, which is fine, but doesn’t match expectations.
No. 30: Juan Ayuso, 21, UAE Team Emirates, Spain, Climber
One of the riders who' buried Hirschi on the depth chart at UAE. In 2022, as a 19-year-old, Ayuso started four World Tour stage races, including the Vuelta, and finished in the top five in three of them. That includes a third-place finish at the Vuelta, where he took over team leadership of a strong UAE squad. In 2023, more of the same: stage wins at the Tour de Romandie and Tour de Suisse, including a time trial in the latter, plus fourth overall and the young rider classification at the Vuelta.
Racing at UAE is a double-edged sword, because Ayuso is part of strong teams whenever he races, but he’s also getting buried because Pogačar thinks (not unreasonably) that he can enter and win every race on the calendar. And that’s before you get to Adam Yates, João Almeida, Hirschi, Brandon McNulty, and so on. On 90 percent of the teams in the sport, Ayuso would be lining up to take a legit shot at the Tour de France. Instead, he’ll be just another in Pogačar’s mountain train.
No. 29: Mads Pedersen, 28, Lidl-Trek, Denmark, Classics Specialist
Pedersen is the best example I can think of for how cycling distorts perception. Seeing him ride, I thought, “wow, this guy is huge, he’s so much bulkier than most other cyclists,” and it turns out he’s 5-foot-10, 155 pounds.
Pederson’s defining win was a surprise victory in the 2019 world championship, contested in horrendously rainy conditions. Since then he’s won various classics, as well as stages in all three grand tours. But everywhere he’s good, it seems like someone else has a leg up on him. In 2023 he finished in the top 10 in the first three monuments of the season but didn’t come particularly close to winning.
In an effort to hold his own against the likes of Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert, Pederson is consulting a nutritionist for the first time in his career. This feels like the scene in For All Mankind when Gordo claims he can run 50 meters on the moon without a spacesuit in 15 seconds, and can only offer: “I started jogging again!” by way of reassurance. I hope it works out for him.
No. 28: Carlos Rodríguez, 22, Ineos Grenadiers, Spain, Climber
Rodríguez is sort of like what you’d get if Ayuso got to lead his own team. I don’t think he’s as special a rider as Ayuso, but Rodríguez will be able to ride for his own ambitions in 2024. Last year, he finished fifth at the Tour de France, including a tremendous victory on Stage 14, in which he put something like 30 seconds into Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard on the descent of the Col de Joux Plane.
For the first decade of its existence, Ineos was a machine that transplanted British track cyclists onto the road: Bradley Wiggins, Ian Stannard, Geraint Thomas, (briefly) Mark Cavendish. And while Chris Froome came from a slightly different background, he was just as methodical and unflappable as anyone.
Of those, Thomas is the only rider left on the team. Even though he narrowly missed out on winning the Giro, he’s 37 and fully aware that his best days are behind him. So Ineos switched recruitment strategies, and even branched out beyond the ultimate goal of winning the Tour de France every year. They’re going after classics and hunting stages; in other words, acting like a normal cycling team instead of the implacable Death Star they started out as.
I don’t think Rodríguez has it in him to return Ineos to Tour supremacy, barring some catastrophic accident that takes out two or three other contenders. But he’s probably the team’s best hope for the time being.
No. 27: Christophe Laporte, 31, Team Visma-Lease a Bike, France, Classics Specialist
Laporte was a pretty solid sprinter for several years on Cofidis, but in two seasons with Jumbo-Visma (now Visma-LAB), he’s turned into…kind of a flat ground Sepp Kuss? Laporte can get close enough to Wout van Aert’s classics performance that he’s useful as a tactical foil or to just flat-out launch a decisive attack that van Aert can follow…and sometimes nobody else. The decisive example was Stage 1 of Paris-Nice in 2022; Laporte found an uphill section, opened the throttle, and in an instant he was off the front of the peloton with van Aert and Primož Roglič in tow.
When an attack goes off the front of the peloton like that, one of the major dangers is that it falls apart when the riders involved start thinking about positioning themselves for the decisive sprint. But when all three escapees are teammates, infighting stops being an issue. Roglič and van Aert are both so accomplished they don’t need to contest a single stage of Paris-Nice, so they let Laporte cross the line first as thanks for his hard work. Roglič took second, as he was going for GC and could use the extra bonus seconds, while van Aert rolled across in third.
Something similar happened this past year at Gent-Wevelgem; van Aert attacked on the cobbles, Laporte followed, and everyone else fell behind. The two raced to the finish together and van Aert let Laporte take the win. Laporte is a pretty handy classics rider on his own, but he’s winning far more as van Aert’s sidekick than he ever did on his own.
No. 26: Egan Bernal, 26, Ineos Grenadiers, Colombia, Climber/GC Specialist
Bernal looked like the future face of cycling when he won the Tour in 2019, wresting team leadership at Ineos from Thomas in the process. Bernal struggled with back problems in 2020, around which time Pogačar emerged as the next big GC rider, but the Colombian stormed back to win the Giro in 2021.
The Ineos gravy train fell apart partially because of the emergence of Pogačar and Vingegaard, but also because of an injury Bernal suffered in January 2022.
For my money, cycling is the most dangerous professional sport there is. In rugby, tackling and contact are heavily policed; hockey and football players take brutal hits but they get armored up to mitigate damage. Motorsports has spectacular crashes, but both vehicles and circuits are designed with tremendous safety margins.
Cyclists? They perform their sport on open roads; occasionally a race organizer will toss a couple hay bales over by a tricky downhill corner, but otherwise they’re at the mercy of nature. And with barely any protection, just a helmet and some spandex. The danger multiplies on training rides, when riders have to share the road with cars.
Bernal was in a position to lead Ineos in 2019 because Froome had sustained essentially career-ending injuries during a recon ride at the Critérium du Dauphiné earlier that season. Two and a half years later, Bernal was on a training ride in Colombia when he drove his time trial bike into the back of a parked bus at 30 miles an hour. His injuries were so severe doctors initially thought he would either die or be paralyzed.
Bernal returned to racing, barely, by the end of 2022 and was a virtual nonfactor in 2023. He finished 36th at the Tour, and he managed to finish in the top 10 in just one of the 41 individual grand tour stages he contested.
Even after writing off three of his first six years on the World Tour, Bernal still has a long career ahead of him, if he manages to recover anything like his previous form. That recovery, if it happens, would be one of the biggest stories of the season.
No. 25: Veronica Ewers, 29, EF Education-Cannondale, United States, GC Specialist
One fun thing about professional cycling is that even elite riders can come to the sport relatively late. The peloton is full of former high-level speed skaters, skiers, soccer players. Occasionally, a normal 20something with a day job will get discovered on a group ride or an amateur race and end up having a professional career.
Ewers, a former college soccer player from Idaho, was 23 when she tagged along with a friend on a group ride in Seattle, having never ridden seriously before. Three years later she finished third at the national road race championships and signed her first professional contract. The year after that, she finished in the top 10 at the Tour de France.
Now, Ewers is the top American GC rider in the women’s peloton. She finished fourth at last year’s Giro and was eyeing a similar finish at the Tour, but before the race hit terrain that favored her she got bounced out of the peloton and into a ditch. A broken collarbone ended her season.
Ewers is back in 2024 to lead the restructured EF women’s team, and should have a little more support than in 2022 and 2023. With the way she’s improved rapidly throughout her career, the podium at a grand tour is definitely a possibility.
No. 24: Jasper Philipsen, 25, Alpecin-Deceuninck, Belgium, Sprinter
The breakout star of Netflix’s Tour de France miniseries, Unchained, which I maintain should’ve been called Pedal to Survive. At the start of his professional career, Philipsen was third in his team’s pecking order behind van der Poel and Tim Merlier, and he kept finishing second in big sprints and making stupid mistakes. In the 2021 Tour, the other big sprinters kept crashing out, and Philipsen still could not get a win. He finished second or third on six different stages, and kept getting cooked by Mark Cavendish’s ancient ass.
In Unchained, the bigwigs on Philipsen’s team had an air of “I am so done with this stupid idiot’s stupid shit.” They called him “Jasper Disaster,” which is not the nickname an up-and-coming rider wants. And it didn’t let up that much after Philipsen finally won two stages in the third week of the race, including the prestigious Champs-Élysées sprint.
Well, in 2023, Philipsen beat wholesale ass. He won seven one-day races, four stages and the green jersey at the Tour de France, and seven stages of other races. He also finished a surprise second at Paris-Roubaix. At this point, he’s the consensus best sprinter in the world, so up yours, smug Belgian management types.
No. 23: Matteo Jorgenson, 24, Team Visma-Lease a Bike, United States, Climber
I don’t really know what to make of Jorgenson, but it feels like he’s on the verge of something big. As a stage hunter for Movistar at last year’s Tour de France, Jorgenson came close to winning a couple stages. He also won the GC at the Tour of Oman (against not great competition), and came within a couple seconds of winning the Tour de Romandie.
Visma-LAB has no shortage of leadership candidates; however, if the leaked Giro d’Italia roster turns out to be accurate, Jorgenson seems pretty well-positioned to mount a challenge for...maybe not to win the whole thing, but definitely a top-10 or maybe top-5 finish. There hasn’t been an American man in the top 10 of the Giro since Levi Leipheimer in 2009. Levi Leipheimer!
To be totally honest, Leipheimer’s generation was the last time we had such a crowded field of promising Americans in the peloton. All those guys turned out to be doing so much EPO their blood had the consistency of a McFlurry, but I guess we didn’t know that until later. The point is, I don’t really know what to expect from Jorgenson this season, but he has the potential to bring in some big results.
No. 22: Arnaud de Lie, 21, Lotto Dstny, Belgium, Classics Specialist
Lotto Dstny got relegated from the World Tour at the end of 2022, which means that in order to go to big races they have to get invited by the organizers. It helps to have a big star to lead the way.
You wanna see some wild shit? Let’s see some wild shit.
This is the finish of the Famenne Ardenne Classic, a second-tier one-day race across rolling terrain that comes up to a sprint finish. It’s a pretty strong field: Laporte is in this bunch; along with Biniam Girmay, whom I wrote about last week; and Kaden Groves, winner of three stages and the points classification at this year’s Vuelta.
De Lie is on the left side of your screen in the red jersey and light blue helmet. He launches his sprint from nowhere, a (figurative) mile from the finish line, and absolutely smokes Groves. Again, Groves had just finished wrecking house at the Vuelta.
Then, just meters from the finish line, de Lie breaks the cleat off one of his shoes. What a normal cyclist would do in that situation is panic, crash, get run over by the 20-odd riders behind him, and end up getting flattened into the pavement and covered in tire marks like Wile E. Coyote.
Not de Lie. The young Belgian kept on pedaling with one leg, stayed upright, and even managed to keep ahead of Groves, Laporte, and the others to win the race. Incredible stuff. This time next year he could be one of the top classics riders in the world.
No. 21: Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig, 28, FDJ-Suez, Denmark, Climber
Uttrup Ludwig is one of those riders whom I suspect would benefit from a women’s race calendar that more closely resembled the men’s: More climbing, more mountaintop finishes, longer stage races that allow bigger breakaways and more stage hunting. As it is, she gets knocked around a little on the cobbles and can get toasted by more powerful riders on short, punchy climbs.
But she’s a fan favorite because she’s the best interview in the sport. Here’s an example, from after her third-place finish at the the 2019 Tour of Flanders. If you didn’t bother to click on the video of de Lie winning a sprint on one leg, you should click this.
The question: “Tell me all about the final.” (I don’t know if Belgian sportswriters are as anal about the form of a question as American sportswriters are, but they’ve got “Talk about…” over there too.)
Here’s Uttrup Ludwig’s answer:
“Oooh! (Laughs.) Well, it was a hot one—started from (blows raspberries) Kanarieberg. Then it was, you know, a little bit stop-and-go, stop-and-go. Then, we knew coming into Hotond it would be one line, it would be really (scoffs) hard, and it was. A little bit counterattack, and stop-and-go, and then one group gone. Then we knew on Kwaremont (pulls a face) things would really happen.
“And then it was just going FULL GAS into the Kwaremont and then BAM! Let’s (possibly accidental Arnold Schwarzenegger impression) put the hammer down! And we tried, and it was fun, you know, it was super much fun—people screaming on the side, like (screams) AAAAAAH! You just feel that energy, you just suck it all in, like, ‘Hahaha, they’re cheering for me!’ Not especially because they are cheering for me, but it was super cool, like, I just enjoy that energy this race has. So many specators, it’s crazy!
“And you know this finish line, (growling) oh, you can see it from far, far, far, and you just go, and you know (silent scream). Then we looked back, and they were coming full gas from the back. And we were just like, “AHHHH! Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit! Fuck, they can’t come, they can’t come! AHHHHH!” And then, yeah, I was a dead fish at the end. But it was cool and I enjoyed today.”
As a sportswriter, who lives and dies professionally by athletes’ willingness to play along and speak candidly, I would give a kidney to have stars like Uttrup Ludwig in every MLB clubhouse. I’ve run into plenty of fun personalities, but nobody with such an expressive face, fondness for onomatopoeia, and total lack of emotional filter.
So obviously she’s hugely popular among fans, journalists, and sponsors.
But other riders? Well, at least some of them can’t fucking stand her!
Last spring, three-time world time trial champion Ellen van Dijk started a podcast with fellow Dutch pro Roxane Knetemann (which is always a huge mistake—athletes get on a podcast and immediately think nobody outside the room can hear them), and the two of them lit Uttrup Ludwig up.
Knetemann called her “annoying,” which is impolite but understandable; nobody hates happy people more than I do. “She’s always yelling or whining,” Knetemann continued. Van Dijk then criticized the Danish champion for “never get(ting) her face in the wind.”
Essentially, she’s calling Uttrup Ludwig a freeloader, which is a serious charge. When cyclists are in a break together, everyone needs to pull at the front in order for the break to move quickly. Anyone who skips a turn at the front not only slows the group down, they conserve energy for the moment the group breaks up and starts attacking each other. And there’s a thin line between savvy and selfish; cross it too many times and people will stop working with you.
True or not, van Dijk’s criticism did not go over well in Uttrup Ludwig’s native Denmark. Van Dijk had to apologize and walk (ride?) back her comments.
I’m going to stop short of calling this a professional wrestling-type feud, but it’s always interesting to find out which fan favorites are disliked within the sport, and for what reasons.