It does not matter if it was Alejandro Valverde in 2022, Annemiek van Vleuten and Peter Sagan in 2023 or now Mark Cavendish in 2024: at any time when a retiring rider has had a major influence on an period of the game – or in Cavendish’s case, maybe a good larger timespan – the ensuing media consideration can threaten to eclipse the information that different high names are additionally handing up their wheels.
The finish of 2024 isn’t any totally different. For the 2025 season, it is price remembering that other than the large lack of Cavendish, we’ll even be lacking retirees of the calibre of Olympic and World Champion Grace Brown, with the charisma of Colombian ‘rock star’ racer Rigoberto Urán, the breakaway genius of Thomas De Gendt or the behind-the-scenes dedication of a high workforce employee like Christine Majerus. And that’s to call however a number of.
In the sprints, in the meantime, if Mark Cavendish was clearly in a category of his personal, then Denmark’s Michael Mørkøv was usually described because the world’s best lead-out man – and he’ll not be within the peloton, both, in 2025.
Here then, in alphabetical order, is a evaluation of a few of the high names throughout the game bowing out on the finish of 2024 – and why they matter a lot.
Rider with an excellent early profession who later grew to become a massively valued workforce employee and teammate
- Top victories: Tour de France, 3 phases; Giro d’Italia, 1 stage; GP Ouest-France; Gent-Wevelgem; Vattenfall Classic; Critérium du Dauphiné, 5 phases; Eneco Tour, 2 total wins and 5 phases; Tirreno-Adriatico, 2 phases
- Career win tally: 81
When Norway’s Edvald Boasson Hägen claimed his third and final Tour de France stage win from a breakaway in 2017, the Norwegian was described by the Guardian newspaper as “remaining one of many nice unfulfilled abilities of biking.” But if there will be little doubt that the profession of the quietly spoken ‘Eddy the Boss’, as he was as soon as nicknamed, light notably results-wise in its second half, a ultimate tally of 81 victories speaks volumes for simply how profitable Boasson Hagen was in his youth – and the way proficient he remained.
Ranked third within the UCI world rankings in late August 2009 when he was simply 22, Boasson Hagen initially appeared fated to shake biking’s hierarchies to its core. In his second final yr as an novice, his devastating late accelerations and racecraft allowed him to assert three small group dash stage wins within the 2006 Tour de l’Avenir. Then in 2007, a collection of 12 wins by means of the season, in all method of terrain barring the excessive mountains – arguably his largest Achilles’ heel all through his profession – hinted at a good larger skill to triumph throughout the board.
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And so it proved, virtually as quickly as he turned professional subsequent January. A key part of the staggering profitable machine that was Team Colombia and HTC in 2008 and 2009, and the place sprinters like Mark Cavendish and Andre Greipel had been additionally flourishing, Boasson Hagen cracked out victories starting from sprints within the Tour of Britain to the Gent-Wevelgem and phases within the Giro d’Italia. Barely in his twenties, it appeared that he was already going locations – and quick.
Snapped up by Sky in 2010, Boasson Hagen saved their Tour de France in 2011 as chief Bradley Wiggins crashed out, with not one however two transition stage wins. But that success was later overshadowed by the rise of Wiggins and Chris Froome within the 2011 Vuelta a España, after which in 2012 because the workforce more and more focussed on Grand Tour classifications, Boasson Hagen’s no much less important contributions to the workforce’s sensible marketing campaign had been more and more eclipsed.
Boasson Hagen’s transfer to Qhubeka in 2015, the workforce the place he spent the longest interval of his profession, helped keep his chief’s standing, with 9 wins in 2016, essentially the most notable a stage within the Critérium du Dauphiné, exhibiting that early consistency had but to die out. But the goals of an enormous win within the Classics had been step by step fading and by the point he reached TotalEnergies in 2021, he’d largely moved into the function of a extremely appreciated workforce employee. Yet for older, Boasson Hagen’s pure profitable class in his heyday at Sky, Qhubeka and HTC would linger lengthy within the reminiscence.
Australia’s high ladies’s racer with each Olympic and World Championships titles
- Top victories: Olympic Games time trial; World Championships time trial; Liège-Bastogne-Liège; Tour Down Under; Classic Brugge-De Panne; Brabantse Pijl
- Career win tally: 26
It was a brief profession, however a very outstanding one. Australia’s high feminine highway bike owner Grace Brown might have began skilled racing in 2018 and ended it this September aged 32. But in simply seven years as a professional, Brown cast a palmarès of outstanding depth, selection, and, above all, brilliance.
Capturing the Australian time trial title in 2019, the primary of 4, was greater than a hefty indicator of the form of issues to return. Brown’s immense expertise within the speciality noticed her then declare gold medals in time trials at Commonwealth Games (2019), Olympic (2024) and World Championship stage (2024). So in some methods, it was greater than becoming that her ultimate success was the Chrono des Herbiers time trial in France this October.
Yet to focus purely on Brown’s famend skill in opposition to the clock can be removed from doing her profession justice. Her small group dash win within the one Monument in her palmares, Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2024, got here on the finish of an epic 70km battle throughout names as redolent of La Doyenne’s historical past because the Stockeu, the Côte de la Redoute and the Cote de la Roche-aux-Faucons.
Late on within the race Brown regained contact with an elite group additionally containing Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek), Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) and Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-Sram), and regardless of almost crashing on a roundabout, subsequently managed to outsprint all of them for victory.
Other high one-day wins included Brabantse Pijl (2020) and the Classic Brugge-De Panne (2021). But if her French workforce FDJ-Suez had been probably significantly delighted to see her claiming as essential a neighborhood victory because the Bretagne Ladies Tour in each 2023 and 2024, personally talking Brown would certainly have a comfortable spot for her standout residence soil triumph in Australia’s high stage race, the Tour Down Under in 2022.
“I do know that I might have many extra years in biking however I actually miss my life in Australia with my husband, my household and my buddies and it’s one thing that’s more durable and more durable to depart,” mentioned Brown within the Instagram publish in July that introduced her retirement on the finish of the season.
Come what might, although, as newly nominated president of The Cyclists Alliance rider’s affiliation, she will definitely stay absolutely in contact with the game.
The sprinter who outlined an period of the game
- Top victories: Tour de France, 35 phases; Giro d’Italia, 17 phases; Vuelta a España, 3 phases; World Championships; Gent-Wevelgem; Milan-San Remo
- Career win tally: 165
“I’ve achieved every part that I can on the bike” was how Mark Cavendish described his profession on the day he hung up his wheels, and given the size, length and variety of his achievements, it might be onerous to disagree.
It’s price remembering that even earlier than he powered to victory quantity 35 within the 2024 Tour de France, Cavendish already held the report – along with Eddy Merckx – for stage wins in biking’s largest bike race. Yet to focus simply on the Tour with Cavendish is to disregard the staggering vary of his victories, from a number of phases two years working within the long-departed Tour of Missouri to the venerable big of the game that’s and stays the Giro d’Italia, from the streets of Copenhagen within the 2011 World Championships to the cobbles and grit Driedaagse Brugge–De Panne, from Milan-San Remo to the Tour of Oman.
And so on and so forth, all the way in which to 165 wins, the second-highest highway race complete within the historical past of the game.
That complete comes with out mentioning his achievements on the monitor, scene of two World Championships Madison titles, and when it comes to method, the perfect academy for his sprinting methods and expertise, too.
When it involves establishing Cavendish’s standing in modern-day biking, his profitable in all three Grand Tours is already the privilege of solely a choose few of the world’s greatest racers. But to steer Giro, Tour and Vuelta in his profession, as Cavendish additionally did, whittles down the numbers of that elite collective even additional. Indeed, though his professional. profession lasted – remarkably for a sprinter – for almost 20 years, there was a interval from round 2009 to 2012, when it appeared that Cavendish was the fastman’s equal of Tadej Pogačar.
He was mechanically the standout favorite for any bunch dash and with a capability to grab victories on programs as demanding as Gent-Wevelgem and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and the 2022 British National Championships by means of the Scottish Lowlands, and even some quick time trials. Only the excessive mountains and the GC rankings appeared past him.
Arguably essentially the most outstanding high quality of Cavendish as a racer was that, when it comes to physiognomy, he on no account had the perfect construct for sprinting. And but he succeeded in his chosen speciality with such brilliance. Time and once more, dedication and tenacity, coupled with a prodigious pure flip of pace and a much-feared double acceleration, allowed him to function in a category of his personal.
But maybe somewhat than the Tour de France stage report and all his different dazzling successes, maybe his best achievement of all got here off the bike. Late in his profession, the Manxman’s brave dedication to combat psychological sickness and medical melancholy is the place Cavendish’s capability to encourage others, in and out of doors the game, finally issues most of all.
A second-to-none breakaway specialist with wins in all three Grand Tours
- Top victories: Tour de France, 2 phases; Giro d’Italia, 2 phases; Vuelta a España, stage; Paris-Nice, 2 stage wins; Volta a Catalunya, 5 stage wins; Tour de Suisse, stage win; Tour de Romandie, stage; Critérium du Dauphiné stage.
- Career win tally: 17
“Thomas is Thomas,” longstanding Lotto-Dstny sports activities director Mario Aerts used to love to say when requested about what plans that they had for Thomas De Gendt in a specific race. And in the perfect sense of the expression, De Gendt was a rider who merely refused to play by the traditional guidelines – and whose ensuing breakaway successes made him each an inspiration to different non-conformists and a cult hero within the sport.
De Gendt might simply have taken issues in a really totally different path, had the Belgian opted to observe up his third place total within the 2012 Giro d’Italia and triumph on the Stelvio with additional cracks at GC. Instead, he opted to go for what was arguably a good more durable path, on the lookout for success within the enamel of the iron management of the GC groups in main stage races and the place – except you’re within the league of Tadej Pogačar or Remco Evenepoel – repeatedly triumphing in long-distance strikes is more and more onerous to do.
Yet De Gendt triumphed in his chosen subject a fantastic deal. In truth, it occurred so usually that his breakaways grew to become seen as the final word triumph of a biking underdog. Victories included a double success within the Tour de France – together with one on the Mont Ventoux – two within the Giro d’Italia and one within the Vuelta a España, but additionally in such excessive calibre stage races because the Tour de Suisse, Tour de Romandie, Paris-Nice and the Criterium du Dauphiné.
Remarkably all bar two of his 17 victories – a stage within the 2009 Tour de Wallonie, his first-ever professional win, and one other within the long-defunct Circuit de Lorraine in 2011 – got here in WorldTour occasions.
De Gendt’s talisman race, although, was undoubtedly the Volta a Catalunya, the place he took 5 stage wins, two of them within the notoriously troublesome Montjuic Circuit on the ultimate day, and one other, memorably, by almost three minutes on the opening stage of the 2017 race.
So a lot success in a self-discipline with such a excessive fail price put De Gendt truthful and sq. on the radar of any GC workforce wanting to manage the early strikes. But when he was not doing his justifiable share and extra of the teamwork, all too usually, De Gendt usually proved greater than a match for his pursuers.
And victories like his final one, in an all-out three-up dash in Naples seafront within the Giro d’Italia because the peloton closed remorselessly in behind, will probably be used as masterclasses within the artwork of breaking away for years to return.
Longstanding high workforce employee for all-conquering SD Worx-Protime workforce
- Top victories: Boels Ladies Tour; National Championships time trial – 17; National Championships highway race – 10, Cyclo-cross National Championships – 12
- Career victory tally: 45
When Christine Majerus introduced mid-season that she was retiring on the finish of 2024, you may virtually hear a groan of collective disappointment that the information produced in her workforce, SD Worx-ProfessionalTime. Not as a result of she was a born winner – though a staggering 17 Luxembourg nationwide time trial titles may counsel the other – however as a result of she was so instrumental behind the scenes in serving to the game’s primary squad succeed so usually.
“Nobody is aware of how essential Christine is within the improvement of this workforce. If you may keep for 10 years inside a workforce and do such a fantastic job, as Christine does, everybody is aware of how a lot of an excellent rider and good individual that she is,” mentioned the workforce’s supervisor Danny Stam on the time.
“We all the time converse concerning the winners, nevertheless it’s by no means potential with out riders like Christine. She is among the most essential keys to getting your victories carried out.”
During her profession, Majerus grew to become well-known for being one of many high domestiques of all time, be it within the Classics or the Grand Tours. In 2020, when she was named one of many high 10 workforce staff of the season by Cyclingnews, colleague Dani Ostanek wrote that “the undisputed highway captain was within the workforce for 4 of the their seven commerce workforce wins through the season, together with all 4 of the Women’s WorldTour triumphs.” They additionally cited her work for the profitable workforce that yr at Le Samyn (the place she took second herself), at La Flèche Wallonne, Gent-Wevelgem and the Tour de Flanders.
“There was nobody standout efficiency for Majerus in 2020; as a substitute, she did as she all the time does to supply a peaceful, skilled head out on the highway, key to their continued success,” Ostanek concluded. In proven fact that assertion might have actually been about any yr – though Majerus herself additionally notched up 47 triumphs, together with 29 nationwide highway and 11 cyclocross titles.
“When I began [at Boels Dolmans, the former sponsor for SD Worx squad in 2014 – Ed.], it was about attempting to turn out to be one of the best workforce on this planet and that was rapidly carried out,” Majerus, now 37, mentioned when she introduced her retirement.
“The purpose modified to staying primary, which was onerous work, additionally as a result of all the opposite groups stepped up, and it by no means received simpler. We all the time made it occur. That’s a fantastic achievement.”
Widely thought-about the best MTB Downhiller of all time
- Top victories (MTB): Mountain Bike World DH collection – 3; MTB DH World Cups – 22; MTB World Championships (DH) – 4.
Just as Mark Cavendish’s retirement has marked the tip of an period in highway racing, the absence of South African downhill MTB racing star Greg Minnaar from subsequent yr’s World Cup competitions will finish one other lengthy and really wealthy chapter within the historical past of the game.
In a profession spanning properly over twenty years, Minnaar, 43 has been an integral a part of the downhill scene, claiming 4 World Championships titles – the primary in 2003, the final in 2021 – three World Cup titles and a record-breaking 23 World Cup rounds. Not for nothing, it could appear, is his nickname the GOAT.
According to WhistlerMountainBike, Minnaar was “identified for his clean, understated racing fashion.” That fashion scored him extra World Cup factors than anybody – 19,434 – and a podium strike price of 51.8% (86 podiums from 166 begins).
Minnaar’s involvement in top-flight downhill racing started in 1997 on the precocious age of 16, when he gained particular permission to participate in an elite World Cup race in Stellenbosch, South Africa.
In 1998 Minnaar was nonetheless sponsored by native bike retailers in South Africa however he nonetheless managed to assert the National DH title. After transferring into the worldwide ranks in 2000 when he rode as a junior for British squad Animal Orange, in 2001 he moved on to Global Racing, the place he gained the World Cup collection for the primary time, in addition to claiming his first World Cup in Kaprun, Austria.
Minnaar was rightly seen as one of many main names in Downhill racing by this stage, however 2008 was arguably the top of his World Cup success, podiuming in each one of many eight rounds and profitable three. It all however went with out saying that he took the general title. However, maybe the excessive level of his profession got here in 2009, with a World Championships victory on residence soil in his residence city of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
Then in 2015, Minnaar lastly made the World Cup downhill victory report his personal, claiming his 18th win of the collection at Lenzerheide. By completely happy coincidence, the Swiss resort was additionally the place he took his ultimate Downhill World Cup title, though the ultimate main success got here in 2021 when he gained the Mountain Bike World Championships Downhill race in Val di Sole, Italy.
After taking over a semi-managerial function at his ultimate squad, Norco, Minnaar lastly hung up his wheels, at World Cup stage not less than, this October within the ultimate spherical of the season at Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada. However, he has not dominated out persevering with within the sport in much less high-profile DH occasions in 2025. Here’s hoping.
Olympic monitor gold medallist and extensively rated as world’s best lead-out man
- Top victories (highway and monitor): Olympic Madison; World Track Championships workforce pursuit – 1 and Madison – 3; Vuelta a España, stage; National Championships Road Race – 3; National Track Championships – 13.
- Road profession win tally: 5
When information broke that Michael Mørkøv is about to turn out to be Denmark’s new nationwide workforce coach in 2025, it was hardly stunning. After all, as a just lately retired rider who has performed such a vital function in workforce constructing, to the purpose the place he was usually described by Mark Cavendish and others as the best lead-out man on this planet, Mørkøv should have felt like a pure match for the job.
Mørkøv’s work with Cavendish, guiding him to close by of 1 stage victory after one other at QuickStep and once more at Astana might be his best-known side as a racer. But it’s miles from his solely success story. A Vuelta a España stage win in 2013 got here after the bunch caught a breakaway close by of the road, and there have been three Danish highway titles as properly.
Yet it was on the monitor – Mørkøv’s past love as a bike owner, watching the Copenhagen Six Days within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties alongside his father – that he shone the brightest in his personal proper as a racer, taking the 2020 Madison Olympic Gold with Lasse Norman Hansen. There had been additionally three World Championships titles in the identical speciality and one within the Team Pursuit.
On the highway, Mørkøv’s lead-out work and his insights and experience into one in all biking’s trickiest specialities bordered on the legendary. As he has recounted, he solely grew to become a lead-out man full-time comparatively late in his profession, with Alexander Kristoff at Katusha in 2016 and 2017.
After that riders of the calibre of Elia Viviani, Sam Bennett, Fabio Jakobsen and, after all, Cavendish in QuickStep from 2018-2022 and once more in his ‘Project 35’ Tour de France stage wins with Astana in 2024, all benefited from his expertise, ability and information.
“I actually get pleasure from working with all of them,” Mørkøv informed Cyclingnews in an interview in 2022. “I’m usually requested what are the variations between them they usually definitely have totally different personalities. But on the finish of the day, all of them should be delivered 250 metres earlier than the road in the very best place.” And to do this, at any time when he was main them out, Mørkøv was virtually all the time precisely the place he and his sprinter wanted him to be.
Charismatic Colombian allrounder whose fame stretched properly past the game
- Top victories: Tour de France, 1 stage; Giro d’Italia, 2 phases; Vuelta a España, stage; GP de Québec; Tour de Suisse, 2 phases; Volta a Catalunya, stage; Milan-Torino; Gran Piemonte.
- Career victory tally:14
To get a full impression of how compelling a racer and public determine Rigoberto Urán may very well be, three totally different off-the-bike incidents instantly come to thoughts. The first was an interview I did with him within the mid-2000s for Cycle Sport journal, the place in calm however extraordinarily highly effective language, he mentioned the unintended killing of his father, a lottery ticket salesman, in a paramilitary shoot-out and the way as a younger little one he then needed to take over as household breadwinner, doing every part from washing vehicles to working in bars.
A second incident that springs to thoughts was in a Tour de France end city, the place an enormous crowd of Colombian followers gathered outdoors the EF workforce bus to chant his title and cheer him on. This was regardless of a notable dearth of leads to that yr’s race and certainly any signal in any respect of Urán himself.
The third, rather more lighthearted second, got here throughout a pre-race press convention this yr at O Gran Camiño in Galicia, the place one key ambition, he informed journalists, was to discover a good place for dinner when the race was over. He duly requested the race director, additionally current on the stage, if he might advocate someplace good.
This is a roundabout means of claiming that due to Urán’s resourcefulness and resilience, his good-natured sense of humour and his refusal to take himself (or his sport) too critically, Urán struck quite a few chords with each the general public and the media. It goes with out saying, too, that Urán might stroll the stroll in addition to discuss the discuss, with stage wins in all three Grand Tours, podium finishes within the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, and an Olympic silver medal within the 2012 highway race in London as well.
But his significance as a racer did not finish there. After some troublesome years for Colombian biking to make breakthroughs within the sport, Urán’s pioneer function within the later noughties, taking youthful riders underneath his wing and serving to them get began in Europe cannot be forgotten, both. Nor ought to the highest businessman side of Urán be ignored both. Over the years, he has constructed up his personal line of clothes, cafeteria chain and bike manufacturers again in Colombia, which in keeping with Forbes journal had been globally price over 42 million {dollars} in 2022.
But somewhat than monetary success or his extraordinarily stylish racing fashion, what arguably strikes residence essentially the most about Urán was his larger-than-life character and charisma – and the place that has taken him. Who else however Urán might handle to have a Grammy-nominated (and by all accounts very talked-about) cleaning soap opera made about his life, for instance? Or choose (as he says he now will do) to go for a profession in soccer – enjoying, not managing?
If Uran’s profession and background are fascinating and galvanizing in equal measures, what he’ll now do when he is retired is hardly going to be missing in curiosity, both.
More notable retirements
The checklist of riders taking a ultimate bow in 2024 runs properly past these outlined above and whereas it could take too lengthy to say all of them there are a number of extra that instantly stand out.
A retirement particular cannot go previous with out mentioning Anna Shackley, one in all Britain’s most proficient younger cyclists, who needed to retire aged 22 due to coronary heart points. A former U23 highway champion, and bronze medallist within the equal class on residence soil Glasgow’s World Championships in 2023, Shackley finally needed to take what she referred to as “a devastating resolution,” and cease racing.
Also bowing out on the finish of this season are Human Powered Health duo, Audrey Cordon-Ragot, the massively proficient allrounder with seven French TT National titles and two on the highway to her title, and Alice Wood. Wood, 29, is a former double British National Champion on the highway and in opposition to the clock in 2019, and one of many few riders in a position to say she as soon as beat Marianne Vos in a two-up duel, in her case within the opening stage of the 2017 BeNe Ladies Tour.
In males’s racing, Robert Gesink‘s longstanding providers as a excessive mountains workforce employee with Visma-Lease a Bike rounded out a complete profession in the identical Dutch squad, and in addition included a excessive mountains stage win on the Aubisque within the Vuelta a España.
Similarly, each Briton Luke Rowe (Ineos Grenadiers) shone in his personal proper within the Classics in his personal proper, and Gorka Izagirre (Cofidis) was a memorable winner of an ultra-hard transition stage within the Giro d’Italia by means of the Gargano National Park in 2017. But like Gesink, each will probably be greatest remembered for his or her equally robust, and constant, workforce employee roles for a few years.
Others additionally enjoying their half in with too usually underrated behind-the-scenes teamwork and ending their careers embody Italian climber Dario Cataldo (Lidl-Trek) and Texan TT specialist Lawson Craddock (Jayco-AIUIa). Lithuanian Ignatas Konovalovas (Groupama-FDJ), who as soon as beat Bradley Wiggins in a TT stage of the Giro d’Italia, 2017 Tour de France Alpine stage winner Lilian Calmejane (Intermarché-Wanty) and one in all Italy’s high leadout specialists, Jacopo Guarnieri (Lotto-Dstny) are additionally saying goodbye to skilled racing this yr.
New Zealander Patrick Bevin (DSM-Firmenich-Post NL) and Domenico Pozzovivo (VG Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizanè) had been well-known each for his or her dedication and consistency in addition to their articulate insights into the internal workings of the peloton. Tour Down Under winner Bevin bounced again twice after cardiac arrhythmia in 2020 after which resurfaced in 2024 and Pozzovivo etched out a good longer profession regardless of a number of crashes and main accidents. Both, although, have now opted to name occasions on their careers – Bevin at 33, Pozzovivo at 41.
Part of high WorldTour groups like BMC in his prime, former US nationwide champion Joey Rosskopf (Q36.5) is one other notable retiree, so too is breakaway specialist and environmental campaigner Luis Angel Maté (Euskaltel-Euskadi). The similar goes for Simon Geschke (Cofidis). The variety of bearded winners of mountain phases of the Tour de France there have been will probably stay a pub quiz query for a few years, however Geschke is amongst them.