{"id":301012,"date":"2025-11-22T07:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T07:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/301012\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T07:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T07:49:10","slug":"the-inner-ring-neo-pros-to-watch-for-2025-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/301012\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inner Ring | Neo-Pros To Watch For 2025 Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Ten riders were picked at the start of the year, time to see how they got on.<\/p>\n

Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019Avenir 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.<\/p>\n

As well as being the meat tenderiser weaponised to soften up the field for the likes of Jo\u00e3o Almeida and Isaac Del Toro, perhaps his best result might be 13th place in the Tour of Luxembourg\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

J\u00f8rgen Nordhagen was unveiled to the media alongside Vingegaard and Van Aert at Visma\u2019s training camp but probably didn\u2019t 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\u2019t winning it\u2019s almost a disappointment but Nordhagen is being lined up to replace Vingegaard and there\u2019s no rush.<\/p>\n

Matthew Brennan got a mention in passing below Nordhagen and he\u2019s been the neo-pro revelation of the year (well done DJW for picking him in the commments<\/a>), 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\u2019d 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\u2019s one to watch for 2026.<\/p>\n

Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

2025 started without Gianni Savio after he died just before the new year. Diego Pescador was the Italian\u2019s 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\u2019t suit, including a Paris-Roubaix debut which ended in the broom wagon but it all sets up him for better next year.<\/p>\n

Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

Afonso Eul\u00e1lio 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.<\/p>\n

Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

Paul Seixas is probably on everyone\u2019s radar now and most people can now pronounce his name too<\/a>. 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 \u2013 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 Dauphin\u00e9 was a big result, especially as it was no fluke, he was top-10 in the time trial stage.<\/p>\n

The Tour de l\u2019Avenir win looked like formality \u2013 and you can argue whether a World Tour pro out to regress back to an amateur race \u2013 but he\u2019d been ill and almost didn\u2019t start and so it wasn\u2019t easy. He finished the season with a bronze medal in the Euro championships and a top-10 in Lombardia.<\/p>\n

There are already a collection of ambidextrous articles about whether he should ride the Tour de France; \u201con the one hand yes, on the other hand no\u201d and even if you don\u2019t form a view just the fact that it\u2019s 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\u2019s what comes next that\u2019s fascinating. There\u2019s also who is next too and the piece did mention\u00a0L\u00e9o Bisiaux in passing and he got a Burgos stage win ahead of Ciccone, Del Toro, Fortunato and Pellizzari. Plus Aubin Sparfel<\/a> is coming too.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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 Poga\u010dar envious but it\u2019s more likely AWP will have to see what suits in the coming years but at Lidl-Trek he\u2019s got team mates from Mads Pedersen to Juan Ayuso to learn from. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s been a handy helper at times and as Lidl-Trek take a more German identity he\u2019s surely part of this.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t come as easily, even in smaller races. In a season where the team needed UCI points to stave off relegation he wasn\u2019t among the team\u2019s top-20 scorers.<\/p>\n

Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019s more the space is crowded, whether with Romain Gr\u00e9goire 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 Dauphin\u00e9 too but becoming a GC contender is still a big ask.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s retained World Tour status but now that\u2019s secure where does it go?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019Avenir, 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, Eul\u00e1lio or Krijnsen for whom turning pro has meant changing a lot more, whether teams to languages to moving home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ten riders were picked at the start of the year, time to see how they got on. Embed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-301012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}