The cycling community left La Vuelta 22 shocked by the achievement of Juan Ayuso, who finished third in the overall classification and climbed onto the final podium in the company of Remco Evenepoel, first, and Enric Mas, second, five days before celebrating his 20th birthday! “When you see what he’s capable of doing at this age, it’s just incredible”, commented on that day Rudy Molard, leader of the race for the second time in his career and wearing La Roja before Evenepoel took it from him for good at the end of stage 6. “First Grand Tour, he’s on the podium even though he’s only in his second year as an u23! It’s as impressive, if not more impressive, than seeing Remco win the overall. I hope we’ll see Romain Grégoire and Lenny Martinez at La Vuelta next year. Given what young riders are capable of doing in their first year as a pro, there are high expectations around them.
”The precocity of these great hopes of world cycling is confirmed. A year ago, Grégoire and Martinez were members of the Groupama-FDJ continental team. The former won Liège-Bastogne-Liège u23 as soon as he left the junior ranks, where he was European champion and world vice-champion, and the latter became the first Frenchman since Thibaut Pinot (in 2009) to win the very mountainous Giro della Valle d’Aosta. Both met the expectations with the WorldTour team this year: Grégoire won the Quatre Jours de Dunkerque and Martinez the CIC-Mont Ventoux, a mountain pass that sets the class of a climber (ahead of Michael Woods, who won two stages in La Vuelta before taking victory at the summit of the Puy de Dôme in the recent Tour de France).
Both showed that they were ready for La Vuelta 23: Grégoire by taking the lead in the Tour du Limousin on stage 1, Martinez by finishing 12th in the highly competitive Tour de Pologne. They will be joined by 22-year-old New Zealander Reuben Thompson, winner of the Giro della Valle d’Aosta a year before Martinez. Molard will captain these guys in their first Grand Tour, starting with a team time trial in Barcelona on August 26.
A year ago, Cian Uijtdebroeks added his name to the record book of the Tour de l’Avenir, the Tour de France for under-23s, following in the footsteps of Miguel Angel Lopez, Marc Soler, David Gaudu, Egan Bernal, Tadej Pogacar, Tobias Foss and Tobias Halland Johannessen. Since the “nieuwelingen” (cadet or u17) category, the Belgian has been touted as the next Evenepoel, but with a much more discreet personality. To avoid any comparisons, he preferred to do his apprenticeship with a foreign team and take his time, but his results in the WorldTour stage races this year already speak for themselves: 9th in the Volta a Catalunya, 6th in the Tour de Romandie, 7th in the Tour de Suisse. He is 20 years old.
It remains to be seen where he might fit into the Bora-Hansgrohe line-up at La Vuelta 23, because while Groupama-FDJ is banking exclusively on its young riders, the German team has plenty of experience as well in Aleksandr Vlasov, Sergio Higuita, Emanuel Buchmann and Lennard Kämna, but it could also be an opportunity to get to know 22-year-old Florian Lipowitz, winner of the Czech Tour overall this summer.
DSM-Firmenich is the great specialist in launching young riders from La Vuelta. Under different names, the squad made its mark on the history of the race with John Degenkolb’s five sprint victories, his first in a Grand Tour, in the 2012 edition alone, a year after Marcel Kittel had also opened his palmarès in three-week races in Spain by beating Peter Sagan and Oscar Freire in Talavera de la Reina. Warren Barguil was 21 when he won his first two pro races on La Vuelta 13. Tom Dumoulin had his breakthrough as a protagonist for GC at La Vuelta 15 (leader on the morning of the final mountain stage) before winning the Giro and finishing 2nd in the Tour de France. The Dutch team, which brought out two-time stage winner and King of the Mountains Michael Storer two years ago, is back with Romain Bardet as its headliner, but it has also signed up some young prodigies: Italian Lorenzo Milesi, 21, new u23 world champion for individual time trial, Englishman Max Poole, 20, 4th in the Tour de Romandie, his compatriot Oscar Onley, also 20 and recent 4th in a stage of the Tour de Pologne behind Matej Mohoric, Joao Almeida and Michal Kwiatkowski...
Germany’s Felix Engelhardt, the reigning u23 European champion, has already started to win races for Jayco-AlUla, including a stage in the Vuelta Castilla y León. At the start of the year, Kevin Vauquelin was the 21-year-old French rider who had the makings of a future Grand Tour protagonist, winning the Tour des Alpes-Maritimes et du Var, being both a climber and a strong time trialist. In order to build his career slowly but surely, his team Arkea-Samsic opted to forego his services in the Tour de France and schedule his Grand Tour debut for La Vuelta 23. It will come as less of a surprise to see new, very young faces emerge, as this seems to have become the norm.
