A lot of familiar faces are departing the pro ranks at the end of the season, and some have already left.
Gruber Images, Cor Vos
Every year, the list of riders retiring from the professional ranks seems more stacked, and especially this year, it feels like a real changing of the guard. With Ellen van Dijk, Lizzie Deignan, Sarah Roy, and Chantal van den Broek-Blaak among those stepping away from competition, there are fewer and fewer riders from the pre-WorldTour days remaining in the peloton.
It wasn’t that long ago that even the top riders in the sport worked second jobs to make ends meet, recent enough that some riders in the peloton now were very much present in those pre-live coverage days. Riders didn’t have agents; it was a game of accumulating enough results to get noticed while maintaining some semblance of teamwork.
Women’s cycling now is almost unrecognizable compared to the sport ten years ago. And as the sport itself changes, so does the peloton. Normally, the biggest set of retirements come in an Olympic year. Riders tend to stick to four-year cycles when it comes to goals. But this year, a surprising number of notable riders are signing off from the peloton and stepping into the real world.
Ellen van Dijk
Van Dijk, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent time trial specialists, signed her first UCI contract in 2006, at the age of 19. Throughout her 20 years in the sport, Van Dijk rode for some of the best teams: HTC-Highroad, Boels-Dolmans, Sunweb, and, of course, Lidl-Trek. During her seven years with the American team, she took a break to give birth to her son. She returned to racing with an eye on the Paris Olympics, but her final two years in the sport were plagued by bad luck.
Van Dijk, now 38 years old, announced her plans to retire back in July, citing higher risks from crashing.
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