![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/January-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe 2026 season is almost upon us, so what better moment to look back at the past 12 months in men\u2019s road cycling?<\/p>\n
The sport follows a reassuringly seasonal pattern, from warm-weather early-season races in Australia and the Middle East, to the spring classics in northern Europe and then the three Grand Tours, in May, July and August\/September. Increasingly, the early-winter close-season is dominated by big-money rider trades, as cycling\u2019s transfer market begins to resemble that of football.<\/p>\n
Here then are 12 snapshots from a memorable year.<\/p>\n
January<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a shimmering optimism about the first WorldTour race of the season, The Tour Down Under \u2014 which is held each January in and around Adelaide in the state of South Australia. For European and North American riders, it\u2019s a warm (often too warm) escape from winter training, and a first chance for fans to see them in new kit, on new bikes and, for many, in new teams. Sometimes, though, that view can be a bit too close for comfort\u2026<\/p>\n
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\n (Sarah Reed\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
February<\/p>\n
Tadej Pogacar, alone. A familiar sight throughout the year that followed but pictured here during the queen stage of the UAE Tour \u2014 the unsettlingly-wide climb to Jebel Hafeet. Victory here on the final day wrapped up the Slovenian\u2019s first stage-race win of the season.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/February-scaled.jpg\")
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\n (Dario Belingheri\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
March<\/p>\n
The unofficial campaign to make Strade Bianche \u2014 held each March on the white-gravel roads of Italy\u2019s Tuscany region \u2014 the sport\u2019s sixth Monument grows louder each year. It is one of the most anticipated events of the season, and the 2025 edition did not disappoint, with Pogacar (twice) and Tom Pidcock, its winners over the previous three years, duking it out. Pogacar crashed on a descent but recovered to catch and then drop the British rider, winning by nearly a minute and a half.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/March-scaled.jpg\")
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\n (Marco Bertorello\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
April<\/p>\n
Bike racing is a numbers game. Normally, if one team has three riders in a race\u2019s finale and another has just one, there is only a tiny chance the solo competitor will win \u2014 but it doesn\u2019t always work out that way.<\/p>\n
That was the case in this month at Dwars door Vlaanderen (Across Flanders), a WorldTour race in Belgium, when Neilson Powless of EF Education-EasyPost outwitted three Visma\u2013Lease a Bike riders, including fellow American Matteo Jorgenson and home superstar Wout van Aert.<\/p>\n
Instead of working the EF Education-EasyPost rider over in turn in the closing kilometres, Van Aert had been confident of winning a sprint against Powless. He was wrong, and teammate Tiesj Benoot\u2019s hand on his helmet in the background shows just how badly they messed up a golden opportunity. Van Aert later apologized to his colleagues, saying, \u201cI was just too selfish.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/April-scaled.jpg\")
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\n (Jasper Jacobs\/Belma Mag\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
May<\/p>\n
Stage 20 of the Giro d\u2019Italia was arguably the best single day of Grand Tour racing in 2025.<\/p>\n
Simon Yates\u2019 redemption arc on the gravel slopes of the Colle delle Finestre, the same climb where he collapsed seven years earlier, saw him turn a deficit of 1:21 on erstwhile leader Isaac del Toro into an unassailable lead of almost four minutes. And spare a thought for the stage winner Chris Harper, whose victory rarely gets mentioned, such was the GC carnage taking place a few kilometres behind him.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/May-scaled.jpg\")
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\n (Luca Bettini\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
June<\/p>\n
The opening stage of the Criterium du Dauphine in southeast France witnessed the cycling equivalent of a solar eclipse \u2014 the sport\u2019s four biggest names off the front battling each other, mano-a-mano.<\/p>\n
On a lumpy stage that everyone expected to be a day for the race\u2019s few sprinters, Jonas Vingegaard instead instigated a deluxe breakaway in the latter stages \u2014 one that also included former or reigning world champions Pogacar, Mathieu van der Poel and Remco Evenepoel, and which stayed away from the chasing pack, with Pogacar outsprinting Vingegaard to take the win.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/June.jpg\")
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\n (Dario Belingheri\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
July<\/p>\n
Roadside fans cheer as Dylan Groenewegen passes by during the stage-five time trial at the Tour de France.<\/p>\n
Road cycling remains one of the only major sports that\u2019s almost completely free to attend, though there are some working in it who want that to change. The ASO, organizer of its biggest and most famous race, does not agree \u2014 for now, at least.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/July-scaled.jpg\")
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\n (Dario Belingheri\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
August<\/p>\n
Matthew Brennan is a name to monitor in 2026.<\/p>\n
The young Englishman \u2014 who only turned 20 in August \u2014 won 14 races this year, shattering numerous historic records along the way. And despite the image below \u2014 which shows him outsprinting arguably the peloton\u2019s strongest man, Lidl-Trek\u2019s Jonathan Milan, on stage one of the Deutschland Tour in this month \u2014 Brennan is a versatile rider, who is capable of winning on cobbles and hilly courses too.<\/p>\n
His team, Visma-Lease a Bike, wisely extended and enhanced Brennan\u2019s contract earlier this month, tying him up until 2029.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/August-scaled.jpg\")
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\n (Federico Gambarini\/picture alliance via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
September<\/p>\n
Remco Evenepoel celebrates his third successive time-trial victory at the UCI Road World Championships \u2014 held in the African nation of Rwanda in 2025. The Belgian now only needs one more victory to equal the record, shared by Fabian Cancellara and Tony Martin, but a bigger target in 2026 will be performing for new team Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe after a big-money transfer over the winter.<\/p>\n
Peerless in time trials on flat terrain, the rider nicknamed \u2018Aero-bullet\u2019 needs to improve his climbing if he is to compete with the likes of Pogacar and Vingegaard at the Tour de France.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-2236103224-scaled.jpg\")
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\n (Dirk Waem\/Belga Mag\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
October<\/p>\n
Pogacar sticks his tongue out as he rides to victory in Italy\u2019s Il Lombardia for the fifth successive year.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old \u2014 arguably even more impressive in one-day races like this than he is in multi-stage events \u2014 needs wins at Milan-Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix to complete his set of the sport\u2019s Monuments.<\/p>\n
That fact makes those two races must-watch TV (as if they weren\u2019t already) in 2026.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/October-scaled.jpg\")
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\n (Luca Bettini\/Pool\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
November<\/p>\n
Geraint Thomas \u2014 pictured here being honored by his fellow professionals at the Tour of Britain, his final race, in September \u2014 officially retired in November. Wales\u2019 2018 Tour de France winner was immediately appointed as INEOS Grenadiers\u2019 director of racing, and has since been given a shiny new signing to play with in 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n (Alex Livesey\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n December<\/p>\n Pogacar exits a Benidorm hotel on two wheels on December 13.<\/p>\n That area of eastern Spain remains the pre-season training venue of choice for the WorldTour peloton, and while the meet-ups there in the final month of the calendar year used to have more of a gentle, social-gathering vibe, these days the training is considerably more competitive.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/November-scaled.jpg\")
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/December-scaled.jpg\")
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