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: every time a retiring rider has had a major impression on an period of the game – or in Cavendish’s case, maybe a fair higher timespan – the ensuing media consideration can threaten to eclipse the information that different prime names are additionally handing up their wheels.
The top of 2024 isn’t any totally different. For the 2025 season, it is price remembering that aside from 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 prime staff employee like Christine Majerus. And that’s to call however a number of.
Within the sprints, in the meantime, if Mark Cavendish was clearly in a category of his personal, then Denmark’s Michael Mørkøv was typically described because the world’s best lead-out man – and he’ll not be within the peloton, both, in 2025.
Right here then, in alphabetical order, is a evaluate of a few of the prime 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 staff employee and teammate
- Prime victories: Tour de France, 3 levels; Giro d’Italia, 1 stage; GP Ouest-France; Gent-Wevelgem; Vattenfall Traditional; Critérium du Dauphiné, 5 levels; Eneco Tour, 2 total wins and 5 levels; Tirreno-Adriatico, 2 levels
- Profession 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 skills of biking.” But when 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 last tally of 81 victories speaks volumes for simply how profitable Boasson Hagen was in his youth – and the way gifted 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 12 months as an beginner, his devastating late accelerations and racecraft allowed him to say three small group dash stage wins within the 2006 Tour de l’Avenir. Then in 2007, a sequence of 12 wins by way of the season, in all method of terrain barring the excessive mountains – arguably his greatest Achilles’ heel all through his profession – hinted at a fair higher capability to triumph throughout the board.
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And so it proved, nearly as quickly as he turned professional subsequent January. A key part of the staggering successful machine that was Staff 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 levels 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. However 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 staff more and more focussed on Grand Tour classifications, Boasson Hagen’s no much less vital contributions to the staff’s sensible marketing campaign had been more and more eclipsed.
Boasson Hagen’s transfer to Qhubeka in 2015, the staff the place he spent the longest interval of his profession, helped keep his chief’s standing, with 9 wins in 2016, probably the most notable a stage within the Critérium du Dauphiné, exhibiting that early consistency had but to die out. However the goals of an enormous win within the Classics had been progressively fading and by the point he reached TotalEnergies in 2021, he’d largely moved into the position of a extremely appreciated staff employee. But for older, Boasson Hagen’s pure successful class in his heyday at Sky, Qhubeka and HTC would linger lengthy within the reminiscence.
Australia’s prime girls’s racer with each Olympic and World Championships titles
- Prime victories: Olympic Video games time trial; World Championships time trial; Liège-Bastogne-Liège; Tour Down Underneath; Traditional Brugge-De Panne; Brabantse Pijl
- Profession win tally: 26
It was a brief profession, however a really outstanding one. Australia’s prime feminine street bike owner Grace Brown might have began skilled racing in 2018 and ended it this September aged 32. However in simply seven years as a professional, Brown solid 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 come back. Brown’s immense expertise within the speciality noticed her then declare gold medals in time trials at Commonwealth Video games (2019), Olympic (2024) and World Championship degree (2024). So in some methods, it was greater than becoming that her last success was the Chrono des Herbiers time trial in France this October.
But to focus purely on Brown’s famend capability towards the clock could 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.
Different prime one-day wins included Brabantse Pijl (2020) and the Traditional Brugge-De Panne (2021). But when her French staff FDJ-Suez had been possible significantly delighted to see her claiming as essential an area victory because the Bretagne Women Tour in each 2023 and 2024, personally talking Brown would certainly have a delicate spot for her standout residence soil triumph in Australia’s prime stage race, the Tour Down Underneath 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 mates and it’s one thing that’s tougher and tougher to go away,” 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
- Prime victories: Tour de France, 35 levels; Giro d’Italia, 17 levels; Vuelta a España, 3 levels; World Championships; Gent-Wevelgem; Milan-San Remo
- Profession win tally: 165
“I’ve achieved the whole lot 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 would be laborious to disagree.
It is price remembering that even earlier than he powered to victory quantity 35 within the 2024 Tour de France, Cavendish already held the document – along with Eddy Merckx – for stage wins in biking’s greatest bike race. But to focus simply on the Tour with Cavendish is to disregard the staggering vary of his victories, from a number of levels two years operating within the long-departed Tour of Missouri to the venerable large 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 forth and so forth, all the best way to 165 wins, the second-highest street 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 best academy for his sprinting methods and abilities, too.
With regards to establishing Cavendish’s standing in modern-day biking, his successful in all three Grand Excursions is already the privilege of solely a choose few of the world’s finest racers. However to steer Giro, Tour and Vuelta in his profession, as Cavendish additionally did, whittles down the numbers of that elite collective even additional. Certainly, 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 routinely 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 Nationwide Championships by way of the Scottish Lowlands, and even some brief time trials. Solely the excessive mountains and the GC rankings appeared past him.
Arguably probably the most outstanding high quality of Cavendish as a racer was that, when it comes to physiognomy, he not at all had the best construct for sprinting. And but he succeeded in his chosen speciality with such brilliance. Again and again, dedication and tenacity, coupled with a prodigious pure flip of velocity and a much-feared double acceleration, allowed him to function in a category of his personal.
However maybe slightly than the Tour de France stage document 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 despair is the place Cavendish’s capability to encourage others, in and outdoors the game, in the end issues most of all.
A second-to-none breakaway specialist with wins in all three Grand Excursions
- Prime victories: Tour de France, 2 levels; Giro d’Italia, 2 levels; Vuelta a España, stage; Paris-Good, 2 stage wins; Volta a Catalunya, 5 stage wins; Tour de Suisse, stage win; Tour de Romandie, stage; Critérium du Dauphiné stage.
- Profession win tally: 17
“Thomas is Thomas,” longstanding Lotto-Dstny sports activities director Mario Aerts used to love to say when requested about what plans they’d for Thomas De Gendt in a selected 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 route, 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. As an alternative, he opted to go for what was arguably a fair tougher path, searching 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 – frequently triumphing in long-distance strikes is more and more laborious to do.
But De Gendt triumphed in his chosen subject an excellent deal. Actually, it occurred so typically that his breakaways grew to become seen as the last 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 in addition in such excessive calibre stage races because the Tour de Suisse, Tour de Romandie, Paris-Good 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 tough Montjuic Circuit on the ultimate day, and one other, memorably, by almost three minutes on the opening stage of the 2017 race.
A lot success in a self-discipline with such a excessive fail fee put De Gendt honest and sq. on the radar of any GC staff wanting to regulate the early strikes. However when he was not doing his justifiable share and extra of the teamwork, all too typically, De Gendt typically 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 possible be used as masterclasses within the artwork of breaking away for years to come back.
Longstanding prime staff employee for all-conquering SD Worx-Protime staff
- Prime victories: Boels Women Tour; Nationwide Championships time trial – 17; Nationwide Championships street race – 10, Cyclo-cross Nationwide Championships – 12
- Profession victory tally: 45
When Christine Majerus introduced mid-season that she was retiring on the finish of 2024, you can nearly hear a groan of collective disappointment that the information produced in her staff, SD Worx-ProTime. Not as a result of she was a born winner – though a staggering 17 Luxembourg nationwide time trial titles would possibly 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 typically.
“No person is aware of how essential Christine is within the improvement of this staff. For those who can keep for 10 years inside a staff and do such an excellent job, as Christine does, everybody is aware of how a lot of a great rider and good person who she is,” mentioned the staff’s supervisor Danny Stam on the time.
“We all the time converse in regards to the winners, however it’s by no means attainable with out riders like Christine. She is likely one of the most essential keys to getting your victories achieved.”
Throughout her profession, Majerus grew to become well-known for being one of many prime domestiques of all time, be it within the Classics or the Grand Excursions. In 2020, when she was named one of many prime 10 staff employees of the season by Cyclingnews, colleague Dani Ostanek wrote that “the undisputed street captain was within the staff for 4 of the their seven commerce staff wins throughout the season, together with all 4 of the Girls’s WorldTour triumphs.” Additionally they cited her work for the successful staff that 12 months 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 an alternative, she did as she all the time does to offer a peaceful, skilled head out on the street, key to their continued success,” Ostanek concluded. Actually that assertion might have actually been about any 12 months – though Majerus herself additionally notched up 47 triumphs, together with 29 nationwide street and 11 cyclocross titles.
“Once I began [at Boels Dolmans, the former sponsor for SD Worx squad in 2014 – Ed.], it was about attempting to change into the very best staff on the planet and that was rapidly achieved,” Majerus, now 37, mentioned when she introduced her retirement.
“The purpose modified to staying primary, which was laborious work, additionally as a result of all the opposite groups stepped up, and it by no means bought simpler. We all the time made it occur. That is an excellent achievement.”
Broadly thought of the best MTB Downhiller of all time
- Prime victories (MTB): Mountain Bike World DH sequence – 3; MTB DH World Cups – 22; MTB World Championships (DH) – 4.
Simply as Mark Cavendish’s retirement has marked the tip of an period in street racing, the absence of South African downhill MTB racing star Greg Minnaar from subsequent 12 months’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 might appear, is his nickname the GOAT.
In accordance with WhistlerMountainBike, Minnaar was “identified for his easy, understated racing fashion.” That fashion scored him extra World Cup factors than anybody – 19,434 – and a podium strike fee 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 say the Nationwide DH title. After shifting into the worldwide ranks in 2000 when he rode as a junior for British squad Animal Orange, in 2001 he moved on to International Racing, the place he received the World Cup sequence 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 head of his World Cup success, podiuming in each one of many eight rounds and successful three. All of it however went with out saying that he took the general title. Nonetheless, 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 document his personal, claiming his 18th win of the sequence at Lenzerheide. By comfortable coincidence, the Swiss resort was additionally the place he took his last Downhill World Cup title, though the ultimate main success got here in 2021 when he received the Mountain Bike World Championships Downhill race in Val di Sole, Italy.
After taking over a semi-managerial position at his last squad, Norco, Minnaar lastly hung up his wheels, at World Cup degree not less than, this October within the last spherical of the season at Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada. Nonetheless, he has not dominated out persevering with within the sport in much less high-profile DH occasions in 2025. This is hoping.
Olympic monitor gold medallist and broadly rated as world’s best lead-out man
- Prime victories (street and monitor): Olympic Madison; World Monitor Championships staff pursuit – 1 and Madison – 3; Vuelta a España, stage; Nationwide Championships Highway Race – 3; Nationwide Monitor Championships – 13.
- Highway profession win tally: 5
When information broke that Michael Mørkøv is ready to change into Denmark’s new nationwide staff coach in 2025, it was hardly stunning. In any case, as a not too long ago retired rider who has performed such a important position in staff constructing, to the purpose the place he was typically described by Mark Cavendish and others as the best lead-out man on the planet, Mørkøv should have felt like a pure match for the job.
Mørkøv’s work with Cavendish, guiding him to within reach of 1 stage victory after one other at QuickStep and once more at Astana might be his best-known side as a racer. Nevertheless it’s removed from his solely success story. A Vuelta a España stage win in 2013 got here after the bunch caught a breakaway within reach of the road, and there have been three Danish street titles as properly.
But it was on the monitor – Mørkøv’s old flame as a bike owner, watching the Copenhagen Six Days within the Eighties and 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 have been additionally three World Championships titles in the identical speciality and one within the Staff Pursuit.
On the street, Mørkøv’s lead-out work and his insights and experience into certainly one of 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, in fact, Cavendish in QuickStep from 2018-2022 and once more in his ‘Undertaking 35’ Tour de France stage wins with Astana in 2024, all benefited from his expertise, ability and information.
“I actually take pleasure in working with all of them,” Mørkøv advised Cyclingnews in an interview in 2022. “I’m typically requested what are the variations between them they usually definitely have totally different personalities. However 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 try this, every time he was main them out, Mørkøv was nearly all the time precisely the place he and his sprinter wanted him to be.
Charismatic Colombian allrounder whose fame stretched properly past the game
- Prime victories: Tour de France, 1 stage; Giro d’Italia, 2 levels; Vuelta a España, stage; GP de Québec; Tour de Suisse, 2 levels; Volta a Catalunya, stage; Milan-Torino; Gran Piemonte.
- Profession victory tally:14
To get a full impression of how compelling a racer and public determine Rigoberto Urán could possibly be, three totally different off-the-bike incidents instantly come to thoughts. The primary 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 youngster he then needed to take over as household breadwinner, doing the whole lot from washing automobiles 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 exterior the EF staff bus to chant his identify and cheer him on. This was regardless of a notable dearth of ends in that 12 months’s race and certainly any signal in anyway of Urán himself.
The third, far more lighthearted second, got here throughout a pre-race press convention this 12 months at O Gran Camiño in Galicia, the place one key ambition, he advised 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 suggest someplace good.
It is a roundabout manner 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 Excursions, podium finishes within the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, and an Olympic silver medal within the 2012 street race in London in addition.
However his significance as a racer did not finish there. After some tough years for Colombian biking to make breakthroughs within the sport, Urán’s pioneer position within the later noughties, taking youthful riders below 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 time, he has constructed up his personal line of clothes, cafeteria chain and bike manufacturers again in Colombia, which based on Forbes journal had been globally price over 42 million {dollars} in 2022.
However slightly than monetary success or his extraordinarily stylish racing fashion, what arguably strikes residence probably the most about Urán was his larger-than-life persona and charisma – and the place that has taken him. Who else however Urán might handle to have a Grammy-nominated (and by all accounts highly regarded) 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.
Extra notable retirements
The listing of riders taking a last bow in 2024 runs properly past these outlined above and whereas it might 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, certainly one of Britain’s most gifted younger cyclists, who needed to retire aged 22 due to coronary heart points. A former U23 street champion, and bronze medallist within the equal class on residence soil Glasgow’s World Championships in 2023, Shackley in the end needed to take what she referred to as “a devastating choice,” and cease racing.
Additionally bowing out on the finish of this season are Human Powered Well being duo, Audrey Cordon-Ragot, the massively gifted allrounder with seven French TT Nationwide titles and two on the street to her identify, and Alice Wooden. Wooden, 29, is a former double British Nationwide Champion on the street and towards the clock in 2019, and one of many few riders capable of say she as soon as beat Marianne Vos in a two-up duel, in her case within the opening stage of the 2017 BeNe Women Tour.
In males’s racing, Robert Gesink‘s longstanding providers as a excessive mountains staff 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.
Equally, 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 way of the Gargano Nationwide Park in 2017. However like Gesink, each will possible be finest remembered for his or her equally sturdy, and constant, staff employee roles for a few years.
Others additionally enjoying their half in with too typically 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 certainly one of Italy’s prime leadout specialists, Jacopo Guarnieri (Lotto-Dstny) are additionally saying goodbye to skilled racing this 12 months.
New Zealander Patrick Bevin (DSM-Firmenich-Publish 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 inside workings of the peloton. Tour Down Underneath winner Bevin bounced again twice after cardiac arrhythmia in 2020 after which resurfaced in 2024 and Pozzovivo etched out a fair longer profession regardless of a number of crashes and main accidents. Each, although, have now opted to name instances on their careers – Bevin at 33, Pozzovivo at 41.
A part of prime 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 identical goes for Simon Geschke (Cofidis). The variety of bearded winners of mountain levels of the Tour de France there have been will possible stay a pub quiz query for a few years, however Geschke is amongst them.
