Ten riders were picked at the start of the year, time to see how they got on.
Pablo Torres (pictured second from left) started the season with the longest contract in pro cycling, six years after UAE hired the Madrid teenager out of their development team following second place at the Tour de l’Avenir in 2024. As the post at the time mentioned, he was incoming like the new Del Toro but more inexperienced and probably needed more time. So there were no sizzling wins, instead some solid riding. Torres was often working for others, doing long pulls on climbs to set up colleagues and thin the field. So visible on TV as he was on the front when many were going backwards, but less so on a results website although he was part of the team effort at times.
As well as being the meat tenderiser weaponised to soften up the field for the likes of João Almeida and Isaac Del Toro, perhaps his best result might be 13th place in the Tour of Luxembourg’s 26km time trial stage. Nothing spectacular but improve and soon top-10s in more competitive fields are not far off which is just what a climber like him needs. Next year look to see him in a grand tour and doing the mountains work while getting some kind of joint leadership in a couple of smaller races.
Jørgen Nordhagen was unveiled to the media alongside Vingegaard and Van Aert at Visma’s training camp but probably didn’t finish the season any more recognisable to the general public. He had a solid season, in the past just the kind of year that would have had keen observers nodding with approval. Think a top-10 on the Tour de Romandie summit finish stage and fifth overall in the Tour de Guangxi. These days if a hyped neo-pro isn’t winning it’s almost a disappointment but Nordhagen is being lined up to replace Vingegaard and there’s no rush.
Matthew Brennan got a mention in passing below Nordhagen and he’s been the neo-pro revelation of the year (well done DJW for picking him in the commments), 12 wins and 43rd on the UCI rankings, the best among first-year pros. A year ago he looked like a handy sprinter but the thinking was he’d be down the pecking order on a team that had Van Aert and Kooij among others and so not get many opportunities. But he took a good win in the GP Denain and by chance got a start in Catalunya, replacing Vingegaard who had crashed out of Paris-Nice. Brennan made winning look easy to the point where you could see him at times on the approach the finish and somehow know he was going to win, he was floating. Able to produce the same power as Kooij but several kilos lighter, he’s one to watch for 2026.
2025 started without Gianni Savio after he died just before the new year. Diego Pescador was the Italian’s last import and he had his moments at Movistar during the season but nothing spectacular. Ninth in the Lagunas de Neila summit finish in the Vuelta a Burgos was good and the sign that he can climb with the best if he can get to the climb in position. Whether it was to learn this or more likely the short end of the straw he rode plenty of races that didn’t suit, including a Paris-Roubaix debut which ended in the broom wagon but it all sets up him for better next year.
Afonso Eulálio came good in the final part of the season despite a busy year that saw him rack up 64 race days starting Down Under and then doing Tirreno, Catalunya and the Giro. His 9th place in the Worlds road race was impressive and it came after a top-10 in the Tour of Britain too. At the start of the year the question was whether he could cope with swapping the Portguese domestic scene for the World Tour and he delivered in a season when plenty of colleagues at Bahrain did not.
Paul Seixas is probably on everyone’s radar now and most people can now pronounce his name too. Decathlon had cascade chart with goals to achieve in the year ranging from modest to dream season and he achieved every one and more, surpassing expectations. Fifth in the GP La Marseillaise, second in Paris – Camembert was impressive. Donating a win to Nicolas Prodhomme in the Tour of the Alps may have looked wrong with hindsight as Prodhomme would win a Giro stage the next month but surely it was even more noble because Seixas went against team orders, le patron (boss) while still a teenager. Eight overall in the Dauphiné was a big result, especially as it was no fluke, he was top-10 in the time trial stage.
The Tour de l’Avenir win looked like formality – and you can argue whether a World Tour pro out to regress back to an amateur race – but he’d been ill and almost didn’t start and so it wasn’t easy. He finished the season with a bronze medal in the Euro championships and a top-10 in Lombardia.
There are already a collection of ambidextrous articles about whether he should ride the Tour de France; “on the one hand yes, on the other hand no” and even if you don’t form a view just the fact that it’s a long-running talking point shows the media climate he exists in. You can see the interest too, this is a review post but it’s what comes next that’s fascinating. There’s also who is next too and the piece did mention Léo Bisiaux in passing and he got a Burgos stage win ahead of Ciccone, Del Toro, Fortunato and Pellizzari. Plus Aubin Sparfel is coming too.
Albert Withen Philipsen impressed but did he exceed or match expectations in 2025? While Paris-Tours saw Paul Lapeira and Thibaut Gruel play poker and lose, Philipsen got on the podium with Matteo Trentin and Christophe Laporte, his second podium of the week after the Tre Valle Varesine too. His versatility stands out, winning the U23 Paris-Roubaix in April, in May he one place ahead of Nordhagen in a summit finish at the U23 Giro suggesting range that could even make Tadej Pogačar envious but it’s more likely AWP will have to see what suits in the coming years but at Lidl-Trek he’s got team mates from Mads Pedersen to Juan Ayuso to learn from.
Tim Torn Teutenberg was in the mix for sprints on the road but arguably fared better on the track at times. A pick in January more out of curiosity than promise, a champion on the track and the latest from the Teutenberg family. Could he branch out into sprints after gruelling days? Not yet but he’s been a handy helper at times and as Lidl-Trek take a more German identity he’s surely part of this.
Jelte Krijnsen was riding club races a couple of years ago and then started winning and placing in pro races in 2024. Jayco are among the keenest to recruit overlooked riders and so they signed the Dutchman but results didn’t come as easily, even in smaller races. In a season where the team needed UCI points to stave off relegation he wasn’t among the team’s top-20 scorers.
Brieuc Rolland was a pick as a puncheur but with the question of whether he could extend his range into the mountains. Normally turning pro means picking a niche rather than expanding but it’s more the space is crowded, whether with Romain Grégoire at Groupama-FDJ or in general. He showed he can climb well at times and had three top-10s in the Vuelta and one in the Dauphiné too but becoming a GC contender is still a big ask.
Florian Kajamini joined XDS-Astana and the idea was a signing that looked beyond their relegation challenge, he was not hired to harvest points. Luckily so as he did not finish many races and not much to write home about but then likewise from their other neos in Darren van Bekkum and Haoyu Su. With this comes the challenge for the team, it’s retained World Tour status but now that’s secure where does it go?
Comment
For all the hype around youth, even Paul Seixas spent most of the season learning how to race at the top level but this apprenticeship is more structured rather than the sink-or-swim experience of the past.
As well as younger on average, a neo-pro today is in a different place than a few years ago as they can have special calendars to suit. The likes of Seixas, Torres, Philipsen and Nordhagen have been able to participate in amateur events like the U23 Giro or the Tour de l’Avenir, all while being part of a professional structure and the boundaries are blurred further by development teams which mean others are full-time riders but legally not professionals yet. Riders within these vertical structures make incremental career moves compared to the likes of Pescador, Eulálio or Krijnsen for whom turning pro has meant changing a lot more, whether teams to languages to moving home.
Not a bad group, but there are two clear standouts. Brennan and Seixas look like riders that will be big names for the foreseeable future. I don’t like it when youngsters are overhyped, but I can see both of them being in media reports as favorites for big races within the next two or three years. Still, I hope their teams don’t throw them in the deep end too early.
Maybe for both, but cycling progress is unpredictable rather than linear. If they can both consolidate with similar seasons, that will be enough. As for Seixas, the French press should avoid excessive hype, Decathlon too despite the new-found big budget and expensive recruits. Visma, with more depth and experience, may be better equipped to manage the expectation with Brennan.
The new found big-budget at Decathlon is motivated by the promise of Seixas. Without him, the budget would not be there. Lets hope it doesn’t end in disappointment since we can not know how Seixas will develop over the next few years.
Yes, I agree there are two clear standouts. For the others, some did well as juniors, and might need more time to have an impact in the pro-peloton. But a few are “clear punts” without giving much reason to believe they will be getting big results in the future. Of course, not everyone can be “a leader” but nevertheless these riders can play a valuable role for their teams.
Does it show how much the dial has shifted in the last few years that two teenagers [yes, Brennan turned 20 in August] already on the World Tour – one with 12 wins and a Top50 ranking, the other a podium at the Euros and Top10 placings in a Monument and probably the best one-week race on the calendar – can make fans worry that they aren’t thrown in to the deep end too early?
And still race after race after race sleepwalks unthinkingly into an U-26 ‘young’ rider’s classification ……………
The best one week race on the calendar being… Tour of the Alps? UAE Tour? 😛
Surely you’re not speaking of the race with a new very long name better known as TAURA, which not only sits well below Pa-Ni or Tirreno but can often be deemed inferior to Itzulia or Catalunya which may have slightly lesser startlists, but the top competitors are normally there in order to win them, full stop, and in top shape or so, whereas at the Dauphiné there are other clear priorities, everybody having the TDF in mind rather than winning that specific race (there are a few exceptions, of course, but the general standard is what I described).
Dauphine podiums – https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/dauphine/results/palmares – top riders not in good shape. Obvs.
Catalunya? Not bad on that metric. The Ion Izagirre benefit race is less. Tirreno can be up and down, often dependent on its parcours which is by no means always either imaginative or very testing. Paris-Nice is a lovely, competitive and frequently thrilling race but you’d have to be Jean Leulliot to think its podiums were top, top quality.
Ranking them is always going to be a movable feast because, like so much else in pro cycling, it’s difficult to compare like with like. There’s so much variability, sometimes from year to year. But there’s not many would have the Dauphine bottom of those five, well below or no.
De gustibus non est disputandum as the Greeks used to say 😉
The Dauphiné has set piece stages at the top level but Paris-Nice is a week of stress, sometimes there’s not one off-day because of the bad weather. What’s good is we have races with these subtle and sometimes non-subtle differences.
You also need to watch races not mere results, but more on that below. First things first, reading again I’ll concede that I extended your daring appreciation above to the race in general, not just the 2025 edition, which many, me included, expected much from since the course was unveiled and which, indeed, delivered (without being a memorable spectacle in absolute terms, but the sum of factors was surely there). Yes, Seixas raced the 2025 edition which was probably the best one week race this season, although personally I liked best Catalunya for its climax.
That said, as in your answer you also go back in time, it’s hard not to acknowledge that the Dauphiné’s had a number of lacklustre editions – or that’s simply its standard, the contrary being an exception. 2024 was a show of tactical nous by Rogla but little more, his main rivals then went on to have a mediocre TDF by their own standards while Remco had raced Dauphiné on intentionally (?) poor shape (which proved itself a good idea anyway). The Tirreno clearly had a way higher level and Itzulia was much more emotional and entertaining. 2023 Dauphiné was a copycat of this 2025 Vuelta but edition but without the only good part, i.e., the protests. Vingo dominating over pure nothing. Very poor technical and athletical level of the final top 10. Pa-Ni and Catalunya 23 just destroy any possible comparison. The 2022 Dauphiné was instead another Vuelta-like farce, this time around think the 2023 Vuelta a España edition. Ok, not that bad, but bad enough. No need to say that Ti-Ad was an absolute delight that year, and so were Catalunya and Itzulia. Porte’s Dauphiné 2021 victory was another technically poor edition, with all the best sticking to the traditional light-June prep, which normally works better except if you’re athletically one level up. The 2021 Tirreno was simply beautiful but Itzulia was also extremely impressive.
I could go further back to the Dani Felipe or Fuglsang years, but, seriously, if you had really been following all those races you’d never have written the above…
->gabriele
“Vingo dominating over pure nothing. Very poor technical and athletical level of the final top 10. Pa-Ni and Catalunya 23 just destroy any possible comparison.”….
You really – *really* – don’t like Vingo, do you?
Nobody’s ever going to say that gab doesn’t have pog-tinted glasses. 😉
@Michael Eisner and Ryan Felt
You might have noticed that when Pog won against pure nothing in Catalunya that race didn’t make my highlights. It’s a shame for Vingo that, because of his (normal) degree of specialisation, essentially he’s been having only one rival, and the best races are when they both are in (and/or WVA is in superwout climbing mode). Pogi has indeed won the one week ones – which we were speaking about – but the TDF 2022 won by Vingo is still better as a show than those won by Pogi, and also 2023 as a GC race is clearly superior to 2020, 2021 or 2025, on par with 2024 or even slightly better. As I said back then, and it’s now even more true, for the show it’s better when the strongest athlete as a little less team support than his or her rivals. Might not be enough, as with AVV at Movistar, but exceptional athlete on a power-up team… well, personally I hope it’s going to be a 3-4 years cycle at most.
Even if, indeed, I am a Pogi fan.
Mixed feelings about Vingo, he did great at the 2024 TDF, and I also liked his 2025 Vuelta (not his fault if it generally was a poor race), the EC left me perplexed and his 2025 TDF didn’t convince me, either. Not for the result, more the way he raced. But he sure is better than I had estimated in 2022-23, when I wrongly had imagined that the contribution of merely being at Jumbo to his performances was proportional to that of most teammates.
gabriele
Luckily, Vingo “did great” in Pog’s two outlier wins in ’24 and ’25. It makes him so much more likable when he doesn’t trash Pog. 😉
No need to go down that rabbit hole. I think your level of dislike or distrust toward Vingo mirrors my feelings toward Pog, and that’s one of the beautiful things about cycling. 🙂
My real disgust is more with the UAE (and Israel) sportwashing machines. Those are the true horrors of cycling.
@Ryan Felt
Again, check up what you I wrote to see why your assumptions are totally wrong. Although Pog dominated the ’24 as the ’25 TDF, it’s not the factor which made Vingo more likeable: in fact, I didn’t appreciate much his ’25 TDF as I indeed made clear.
(Equally, there’s a big difference between the ’22 and the ’23 TDF, the former being a great edition with the “normal” prevailing of a superior team playing it top level, with, at least, consistent performances, Vingo acting as an excellent captain. The ’23 edition was also good, especially the first attack by Vingo and what followed until Combloux, but then that day it lost that point of realism.)
You also fail to catch another point: considering that a rider may have enjoyed a plus in a given moment of his career for team reasons… isn’t detracting anything from the whole, it just requires adjusting expectations and evaluations. Recently retired Viviani (now national team manager) was really a great rider for me, and during one of his seasons, at QS, he probably briefly became the world’s top sprinter. Do I think that Viviani is actually one of the best 3-4 pure sprinters of his generation? Frankly, no. This doesn’t detract from the fact that he showed before and after that year that he’s a versatile champion who made the most of his talent across different situations, and when circumstances allowed him to climb to the very best of the world in his class, he did.
Another clear example. I never expected that WVA was going to perform throughout his whole career as he did in, say, 2021-22, unless of course team Jumbo kept its status – which it didn’t. But Wout showed – before and after that – what’s his own quality as a rider.
As I wrote I had doubt about Vingo’s intrinsic qualities because even including the 2021 TDF, still there was too little material to weigh him outside the Jumbo very peak seasons. The team was making too much of a difference which was “noise” to a proper evaluation of the individual. When team impact decreased a little, it became more apparent what belonged to Jonas.
In my original – “probably the best one-week race on the calendar”
In your second reply – “probably the best one week race this season”
Seems we agree! 😁 [At least as far as it concerns Seixas, which was the basic point.]
As for the rest? Arrogant, smug, self-righteous condescension is more likely to subtract from your argument than add to it. I’ve no wish to fight you over something as nebulous and relatively trivial as ranking WT one-week stage races. De gustibus, movable feasts, each to their own, etc.
Arrogance, smugness and self-righteousness are all qualities that we sometimes see even when they are not present at all.
That is probably why I thought I could perceive some in your reply 🙂
The argument is so good that I can afford detract from it as much as I like, and it still stands – imagine that!
Tastes are tastes, so I’m not questioning if it’s your personal fav or inrng’s (a sweet spot for it, no doubt), but while Dauphiné as any other cycling race has its up-and-down, and notwithstanding a good 2025 edition (shining even more over the current gloomy background as far as GC competitions are concerned), yet it’s hard to go around the simple fact that for years it’s been producing great editions with *less frequency* than the other races named above, considering for example stages rich in events, a high level of hard fought competition and the likes. In fact, my recollection above quickly brought up as an answer merely personal appreciations and a hasty retreat to the “nebulous” realm of unspeakable.
Finally, before leaving the excursus aside untile the next off-season, your self-quoting above (“on the calendar”) makes clear enough why your first commentary might also be understood in general terms and not only as referring to the 2025 edition. But whatever! As you say, for what now matters, Seixas proved himself excellent on a serious and high-level race before even turning 19, and it’s hard to disagree on that.
Omrzel at Bahrain is a contender for the next big Slovenian hope. Otherwise I hope teams use a bit of long term thinking when dealing with teenagers.
Was it the Dauphiné where Seixas hit the deck on a climb, knocking his bars out of line? Really impressive the way he juts got back on with the job and limited his losses despite the technical issue and the pressure of the race.
Yes, the final stage and on the Col du Mont Cenis.
He’s something special, that’s for sure. Shades of Pog there too — like at Marseillaise, racing it his way.
It’s crazy that Seixas and Phillipsen are going to race two full pro seasons before even turning 20. I understand starting them both pro at 18, because they are too physically good for u23. But are they going to develop mentally as winners when racing against hard men at their age? Or are they going to accept that defeat in their heads before they truly mature?
If I had a kid like Seixas on my team, I’d steer him clear of Pogacar for a year or two. Let the kid get some wins while Pogacar reaches his decline. Alas, Pogacar can decline a lot before it really matters
I found quite interesting that anyway, with all the caveats, Seixas at the Avenir didn’t actually look on a wholly different level to the rest of top competitors until the very last half-stage, the uphill Rosière ITT.
Of course, besides what Inrng already noticed above, he surely felt the impact of previous racing, obviously *not* in terms of quantity (barring Finn, in par with him, he came into the Avenir with *the least race days* among rivals), but surely in terms of quality and intensity – and not only because he had been racing all the time against the pros, but even more so because very often he was there to win, have a try or place high, whereas his Avenir competitors rarely had a shot to top placings in their .1 or above races.
All that said, it was a tight fight when they were racing mano a mano through most stages, which is promising if we consider that it’s not like they were actually much older or more expert than Seixas. They’re mostly 2005, Finn again being an exception… given he’s even younger than Seixas: in fact, the Avenir has the same “problem” as major races, it’s got a “young rider” classification for 19 and 20 yo only… but for high rankings, it’s 90% the same as the GC!
Among other more obvious athletes (Widar, Finn), I’d highlight as a not-still-pro Maxime Decomble with a string of top-10 in ITTs with the elite, be it in the Nats or racing with his major team (Groupama-FDJ), both at Besseges and Gran Camiño, in both cases on his way to a final top-15 in absolute GC.
Another interesting case is Héctor Álvarez, 2006 but as Finn still 18 yo as his birthday is in late December. Again, not a neo-pro as… he’s not a pro, but the curious fact is that he raced more days (27) against pro athletes on Lidl-Trek’s major team or in Spain’s national elite team than against U23 (17). Very strong and intense Worlds and European Championship for him, racing both in his category, in these cases, but always in all the races available to him (ITT, road, relay), and always with good results.
Nearly at a conceptual opposite, the Swiss Jan Huber (2005), racing as a true amateur, no Pro Conti, no offical or unofficial Devo… pure local calendar plus Avenir and the Worlds + Euros. Yet, a very solid series of performance even when confronted with the big guys of the category, who, unlike him, are now often living a “professionalised” cycling since they’re 17… if not even a couple of seasons before. In the Avenir final top-20, the *only* exceptions are just him, and partially so Mateo Ramírez and Simone Gualdi, who at least were in much much smaller local realities until 2023-24 (but now Ramírez has been hired by UAE gen Z and Gualdi has actually spent much of his 2025 season racing in the major Intermarché team).
Which brings me to the same sort of doubts expressed by others above re: having teenagers training and living like pros, the ethical aspect, the human one; but probably the technical and sporting one, too. Are we sure we’re really catching all the best true talent if we focus on what we can *physically detect at 16*? Even leaving aside the first two points (which are obviously paramount), I’m left wondering if this approach won’t actually reduce “total talent” in the peloton (the greats would have surfaced all the same, now we lose those who’d mature later) and also priorise physical endowment over skills which are learnt more slowly or simply later on. The consequence are dire in terms of racing quality. The only “advantage” is that you’ve got marketable and highly competitive athletes 5 years before… let’s at least hope that their careers won’t also end up 5 years before. My impression is that most athletes (not all of them) will face a faster turnover, again, something which may be good for agents and perhaps, only perhaps, for teams, but which is terrible both for athletes themselves and the sport as a whole.
Other sports seem to chase youth and there might be lessons to be learned from football, tennis etc… or perhaps just that it’s very hard to prevent it. Decathlon and Ag2r before it has long had an insistence on continuing some kind of education, it’s commendable.
Seixas might look back his Avenir win as the most influential result of the year as he had to struggle the most to get it and he describes it as a win against the odds.
A pity he was ill in August as the Tour de l’Ain could have been interesting if he was up against Uijtdebroeks but it gave Seixas more to think about.
One thing not mentioned above as didn’t want to make it into a Seixas blog post but he did a tour of the media in France in the autumn and it was like listening to a 29 year old more than a 19 year old, and a wise one too. He was even asked about if he’d had media training and said not really. So for all the pressure he seems, outwardly at least, to have found a way to deal with it all.
And in past times much was very very far away from any healthy golden standard in so many of the smaller (or bigger…) local realities, no doubts on that.
What I perceive, anyway, is a thinning up of the recruiting process, both on the side of potential candidates and in early bottlenecks, much of it, as in other sports, quite related to the preminent role of a few powerful agents.
It’s nothing new, of course: those who read the details of the catfight between Acquadro and Unzué now got a confirmation about the feelings of Movistar racing not that aggresively against Sky back in the times. But it’s a growing trend.
For all the new athletes discovered through Zwift, you don’t have anymore as solid and widespread a grassroot system, although part of it is still in place, especially in France.
The lessons to be learnt from other sports, be it football in Europe or basketball in the USA or tennis in Italy in the last decade or two is that investing in a broad system of juvenile practice rather than on single juvenile athlete is paramount. The tip of the pyramid may be as small as you need to monetise it, but the base must be broad.
The Science of Sport podcast had a good episode (sometime in the past 1-2 years) about the risks of pushing children to excel in a specific sport. There are a few issues. One is that children who stand out before puberty may not do so after the physical changes of puberty, which can make them less suited to a given sport. Another is that pushing children in only one direction limits their exposure to other sporting opportunities: perhaps they’re good at football but would be even better at running, high jump, or archery. But they’ll never know if a tunnel-vision approach is taken.
I think the former is less of a concern for the current crop of young cyclists, given that world tour teams (I think) aren’t scouting for 10 year olds (are they??). The latter could be an issue as it relates to burnout. And who knows, if Remco hadn’t focussed on football and also raced bikes as a 12-year old then perhaps he’d have much better race craft now?
My biggest concern with the Zwiftification of cycling (i.e. focussing on physiological performance metrics) is that we might be missing those who excel at race craft, or who perform at their peak only in a race situation. Mark Cavendish is one example of an excellent racer who never performed well in lab tests. How many of his type are we missing out on?
I think the earliest a pro team might have gone a deal with a young rider might be with a 14 year old but don’t have all the details to hand right now and the rider in question is now joining another squad’s devo team now, so it wasn’t the football-style ownership.
Another rider and I heard Paul Seixas had an agent at 16, perhaps even 15 too but that’s single source and its Jérôme Pineau who shoots his mouth off on a weekly podcast which is entertaining but not always gospel (like his recent idea on ticketing fans which has filled November’s quieter moments despite no chance of the numbers adding up).
Hopefully a rider with race craft can still make it through even if they don’t have winning data from the start. But we’re also seeing the perils of “Zwiftification” with riders coming to race with little bunch racing experience and reduced skills, sometimes causing them to crash or to arrive with big expectations only to have to spend a year or more learning skills.
Ben Healy also has poor lab-test metrics, but good results (I believe). The fact that race craft and tactics matter, rather than pure “physiological performance metrics” deciding the winner is what makes cycling interesting (to me) in a way running, for instance, is not.
According to him, Seixas was well below what he expected for most of the L’Avenir stages, due to illness. I don’t know if it’s completely true or mental game with others.
Alvarez seems to be the future spanish rider for the Classics ; from what I could see I like this type of rider, not afraid of bad weather.
There is still some ways to develop as a rider later, and I think that’s the main reason of the existence of Conti Pro, or even some Conti, and it should be their goal (it’s already very often the case) : give a chance to the later talents, or second chance for those who crashed for their first chance. Mentally it’s not given to everybody to be shaped so closely and so young, so some of them will need a second breathe in a less competitive environment. We can see a lot of these stories in french teams like TotalEnergies and Saint-Michel.