Retirement is the final finish line which every pro rider must someday cross. The last race represents the conclusion of the first part of an entire adult life, the death of a tumultuous, obsessive athletic dream.
On the plus side: no more obligatory leg shaving, living out of a suitcase in hotels of widely varying quality, or meticulously planning every calorie.
A select few, usually the champions, can choose their final race well ahead of time and bow out with ceremony. But for the peloton’s rank and file, the length of a career is often dependent on external circumstances and the job market.
Whether their end comes by choice, necessity, or economics, it’s doubtful any pro rider envisions their swan song coming at the season-ending Tour of Guangxi, 6,000 miles from the sport’s European heartland. But then, pro cycling doesn’t really do grandiose goodbyes – or long-term job security.
“Maybe this is my last race,” Intermarché-Wanty’s Lilian Calmejane tells me ahead of stage 2. His hope was to do another year with the Belgian-registered squad and one more Giro d’Italia, giving him a chance to achieve the Grand Tour grand slam of stage wins (he took a Vuelta stage in 2016 as a neo-pro and won a Tour stage the following season).
Il Lombardia, this certainly is not: humidity is high, a fair few competitors bemoan the coffee quality and several teams stay clear of the hotel meat. There is also precious little fighting for position on four-lane roads which make Flemish Classics resemble races through the eye of a needle.
WorldTour status or no, Guangxi is the place where many teams send riders who are deemed superfluous to requirements. Aside from the few go-getting young guns harvesting UCI points, there are plenty more riders never in consideration for a Grand Tour squad, riders who are switching teams in the offseason, and riders without a contract for the next season. The latter category comprises two groups: those who know their road ends here, and – perhaps the group most motivated to really race – those hoping it doesn’t.
Those dreaded words “contract year” play on a struggling bike racer’s mind. Theirs is a season-long performance review to encourage a renewal offer from their current squad or attract new suitors. Aging domestiques sweat the last deal, while young riders with undergrown palmarès nervously eye the next group of callow, barely-pubescent prospects hungrily waiting in the wings.
Many WorldTour squads already have 2025 season team-building camps immediately after the Tour of Guangxi, so if a rider doesn’t have a contract by mid-October, they are in a perilous scenario. By then, to use a splendid Dutch word, it’s komkommertijd – cucumber time.
“Because it’s a vegetable that doesn’t have a lot of taste,” explains Lotto-Dstny rider Arjen Livyns. “You eat it, but it’s nothing really. It’s like getting news, but also not some news.”
According to Pro Cycling Stats, 23 riders competing at the Tour of Guangxi – 15% of the field – appear to be without a contract for 2025. A good number of those simply had not had extensions (or new contracts) publicly announced. That goes for former Lombardia winner Esteban Chaves, who was not especially happy to be asked about it; Italian stalwart Davide Cimolai, continuing for a year with Movistar; and Lucas Hamilton, on the move to Ineos Grenadiers.
Livyns, who is 30, was one of the luckier riders at Guangxi. He was one of fair few nervously waiting into autumn for confirmation of a future in the peloton. A verbal agreement with Lotto was only officialised while in China on the eve of the race.
Lotto has been particularly unsteady for riders this season; according to Wielerflits, in August, Dstny was still due to pay the last part of its sponsorship money, and the latest word, just this week, is that top talent Maxim Van Gils will try to exit his own contract. Livyns’ deal came down to getting the right approvals from relevant boards. He trusted the management’s word that an agreement was just a matter of time.
“It’s quite stressful because as long as [the contract] isn’t signed, you never know. I’m happy it’s behind me. We had some talks with other [WorldTour] teams, but I pretty fast felt I didn’t really want to change.
“But in the end, if they don’t come with a proposal, then you need to search for other teams … I hope the next negotiations go a little bit easier.” He’ll find out soon enough; Livyns’ deal is for one season so next autumn may be komkommertijd, the sequel.
Others are still waiting. Taco Van der Hoorn, a Giro d’Italia stage winner in 2021, is confident of an extension with Intermarché or a deal elsewhere in the WorldTour after a recent solo win at the Elfstedenrace showed his return to form following an arduous 499-day fight to recover from a concussion at the 2023 Tour of Flanders. But as of mid-November, there was no news.
Even once-prominent riders may wave goodbye to the sport against their will. Seven years ago, Calmejane was a 24-year-old French prodigy, a freshly minted stage winner in the Tour de France. “The [Thomas] Voeckler of tomorrow,” his then-team manager Jean-Réne Bernaudeau said after Calmejane’s buccaneering ride to victory on stage 8 of his home race, despite suffering cramps in the final kilometres.
Well, it didn’t turn out that way. The attacking puncheur took all 12 of his victories in his first four years as a pro and a move to Intermarché in 2023 failed to arrest his career’s slow decline.
“I’m starting to be a little bit tired and for me, it’s hard to be in this bunch without victories, with what I live in the past. My level is still good, but not good enough to chase big victories,” he admits.
And in a youth-obsessed sport, experience counts for less than it once did. “Now, the teams all the time prefer to bet on a young guy at good value,” Calmejane says. “In the end, one in 10 become a good rider and a lot of young riders now just do three years in the WorldTour and then they stop because they don’t have a contract. That’s the reality.”
He also wonders if his early career typecast him in the minds of some managers, who might believe his salary is too expensive. “Or also they think I cannot just be a teammate. When in the past, you’re a leader or a guy who wins more than three races a year, it’s more, ‘We cannot take this guy as a helper,’” he says.
He can be a helper and has, but at Intermarché he was somewhat caught between roles. “You can also become a good teammate, but here in Wanty, this is not a team of big leaders,” he observes. “You have just Bini [Girmay] for the sprint and then this is more a team where you need to chase some points to be in the top 15 or top 10 in the WorldTour ranking. They take a rider like me to do this and this year was not so good for me for that.”
It’s always a buyer’s market in the WorldTour, but with Arkéa-B&B Hotels potentially winding up after 2025 and Astana Qazaqstan overhauling its line-up this winter, there are even fewer available spots in the sport’s top tier.
“You have a lot of riders on the market the same age as me: Larry Warbasse, Kenny Elissonde, Ben Hermans, more than 50 guys like this,” Calmejane suggests. Warbasse won a one-year reprieve with second-division Tudor Pro Cycling, but Elissonde, Hermans, and others are still looking.
The Frenchman has not been blindsided by the prospect of retirement. He has saved money during his career, taking away some stress for the next few years. Calmejane’s desire to continue in top-end sport will likely see him dip a toe into triathlon, one of his first passions, in 2025. But the end of his time in pro cycling becomes increasingly certain.
Soon, it’s on his Instagram page. On stage 4, two days after we talk, Calmejane has posted a message announcing his retirement. “It’s over, but the next challenge will be good, man,” he says to me as he pedals to sign-on.
Far from every rider can be as sanguine with an uncertain future. UAE Team Emirates rider Michael Vink only made it to the WorldTour big leagues last season and after just two years he is now in danger of falling back out.
The 32-year-old New Zealander scrapped on the club and Continental circuits for a decade, working in bike shops to make ends meet, before being signed ahead of 2023. A hard-working domestique, he notably supported Tadej Pogačar to the Slovenian’s Flèche Wallonne victory last year and raced Paris-Roubaix.
However, his annus horribilis came during a contract year. He endured COVID-19 in Australia then contracted Epstein-Barr virus during the spring Classics. In all, he missed over five months of racing in 2024, following an abortive comeback at the Critérium du Dauphiné, after which it transpired he was still positive for EBV.
“You want to be a part of it, to race, to train. Your head wants to do everything but your body just says no,” Vink says.
“There’s no timeline, there’s nothing you can do. You sort of feel helpless, which is the worst thing as a bike rider because the mentality is always to fight … seeing the team do so well, it was really hard to not be in that group.”
Vink is under no illusions about his chances of staying on. “With the level of the team now, it’s really, really difficult. You have to be one of the world’s best bike riders to have a spot here. For sure, I haven’t shown that this year,” he says. “In the end, results are all that matters.”
At his age, time is not on his side and being a worker with few results to his name means only a few sports directors know his worth. Number of bottles ferried to leaders and kilometres ridden in the wind are not metrics which appear on any online cycling database.
“The trust has to go both ways. It’s very much a business at this level; the sooner you understand that, the better. In the end, you have to look out for yourself and do what’s right for you, which has probably been the big lesson for me this year,” he says.
With his love for the sport still burning bright, Vink hopes he can continue his career for as long as possible. He has entrusted A&J All Sports, the agency managed by the Carera brothers, with the contract search.
Vink acknowledges it would take great faith from a team to sign him after his problems: “Mentally, this year has been harder than physical, to be out for it for so long. Knowing that, potentially, it could be the beginning of the end.”
As we head closer to December, there is no deadline he’s giving himself to wait for that hallowed offer. “Like always in cycling, just keep fighting for as long as possible until there’s nothing left,” Vink says.
If a rider imagined their very last bike race, it would most likely carry a far greater sense of occasion, prestige, familiarity and proximity to their loved ones or home country than the Tour of Guangxi.
However, two riders chose a low-key farewell in China. An emotional sendoff on home soil at the Sparkassen Giro – as happened for compatriot Simon Geschke – was not for Rüdiger Selig of Astana Qazaqstan.
“For me, I was maybe always a bit too professional, so I was always doing what the team was telling me,” he reflects at Guangxi. “I never needed a special race that I want to finish my career at. I mean, Paris-Roubaix would be nice, but it’s always a bit stressful.”
An alumnus of Bora-Hansgrohe and Katusha, Selig sprinted to second place on both a 2016 Vuelta a España stage and a 2017 Giro stage but found his long-term niche helping other sprinters. “I had many chances to improve myself and be a good sprinter, but it was never enough. I found my role as a lead-out guy and I’m happy with it. I think I did the best that I could do,” Selig says.
Ahead of the final race of his career, the emotional processing has largely been done. “I’m not feeling so bad. It’s a long period where I was thinking about making that step. It’s not a big surprise for me, so I’m fine with the decision,” he says.
Is Selig’s retirement on his own terms? “50-50, I would say. I was trying to catch one more year [in cycling], but the biggest problem was not the performance, it was more age,” the 35-year-old says. He echoes Calmejane’s observation: “The young boys are so strong all the time. Experience is still necessary, but not the most important anymore.”
What comes next is a leap into the unknown for a man who has been a pro cyclist since the autumn of 2011. Selig faces a drastic change to his income and his routine: “I’m a bit scared, honestly, but I think every rider will reach this point. First of all, I will do a nice vacation with my future wife and the wedding [in Austria] is coming up.” That’s the next Rudi Project sorted, at least.
He and another veteran, Gorka Izagirre (Cofidis), received a surprise send-off at Guangxi. Ten minutes before the start of the sixth and final stage around Nanning, their peers lined up in a human tunnel, cheering and spinning their front wheels, as the duo rode through. Both men were touched by this guard of honour.
“Yesterday they told me about it,” Izagirre says after his last day of racing. “I didn’t know that they were thinking that. A lot of years, we suffer in this sport. Sometimes we are fighting. Bad moments, good moments. So, for that special moment, it’s beautiful.”
Izagirre joined the WorldTour in 2010 on the now long-defunct Euskaltel-Euskadi team; his best years, from 2014-2018, came at Movistar – learning at the flank of Alejandro Valverde – and Bahrain. He was a breakaway Giro d’Italia stage winner in 2017 and Spanish national road champion the following summer.
He decided back in March that it was time to walk away. “The head was cansado, tired. Physically, I am good, but the head is not the best, so we stop,” he says. He had never raced in China before, so there was wanderlust behind his decision to wind his career down at Guangxi.
The suggestion of a retirement party back in his native Basque Country is batted away with modesty. “I don’t celebrate nothing. My career? I celebrated it, winning a stage with my friends,” he says.
After a career spanning all or parts of three decades in the narrow confines of the professional cycling world, what’s next for him? His brother Ion continues another year on Cofidis, so sports director or coach maybe, I say, glancing at the adjacent steering wheel of the team car? “No, no, no. In cycling, I don’t stay. You don’t see me here ever,” he says, firmly. “Maybe on the road[side] seeing the races, yes, but I hope now I stay with my family, my kids, and stay tranquil.”
Will he ride his bike for fun? “Maybe [not] for one year, no? We’ll see. I like sport, I like cycling, I assume I’ll ride a bike,” he says.
After 18 Grand Tours, over more than 170,000 km and 1,148 days of racing as a professional cyclist – a little more than three years straight spent with a number pinned on – it’s all over for Izagirre in downtown Nanning. He crosses the line in 78th place in a small group of backmarkers, finishing over seven minutes down on the stage winner, Matevz Govekar of Bahrain Victorious (signed through 2027).
Behind Izagirre, the Chinese fans cheer and jump like basketball players with outstretched hands as Lotto riders throw their water bottles into the crowd. (From Nantes to Nanning, everybody loves a freebie).
No more suffering, I tell the Basque rider. He laughs, slaps me on the shoulder and rides off into the sunset.
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