Hello and thank you for opening this week’s Wheel Talk Newsletter. As the 2025 season approaches, riders are busy at various team camps from Dénia, Spain to Lapland, Finland. As you read this teams are meeting up and laying the groundwork for 2025. Plus, one of the best times of year is upon us: New Kit Season.
Wheel Talk
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We’re weeks away from 2025 but we’ve already got a glimpse of Demi Vollering in her new FDJ-Suez jersey. The jersey reveal isn’t official until later this week, but some photos have been circulating around the internet. It’s a similar jersey to 2024 but with more red down the side of the kit. It looks great, IMO.
Lidl-Trek have also dropped their only slightly altered kit for 2025. It’s the same pop of primary colours but cleaned up a bit. Honestly, I think it’s way better. They left the red band around the Trek logo behind in favor of a subtle darker blue than the lower portion of the jersey, and thus the whole kit seems to flow better.
Since we got a few new kits in 2024, it’s unlikely we will get many jersey changes to the 2025 peloton, which is fine. For example, Canyon-SRAM is on an every two-ish years redesign cycle so their jersey likely won’t change (it might, what do I know, but that’s been their pattern). We’ll all have our hands full trying to figure out who is riding for what team anyway.
When we’ve seen all the new looks I’ll rank them, mostly for my own enjoyment.
Racing Continues…
… in 43 days at the Tour Down Under!
But also World Cup Nordic skiing continues this weekend in Davos, Switzerland with three days of racing, starting Friday with a Team Sprint (one of the most fun events to watch!), followed by an individual freestyle Sprint on Saturday and a 20 km Classic ITT on Sunday. (Has anyone tuned in yet? Last week was AWESOME)
Wheel Talk Podcast
We continue our conversation series this week with Alexa Cunningham, Road Marketing Manager at Shimano. Alexa chatted with Loren about sponsorship in women’s cycling, what the sport’s growing profile has meant for brands and their marketing decisions, and her own story of working in a male-dominated industry.
Let’s Discuss
Development teams attached to WorldTour teams.
Prior to 2022 a WorldTour team with a development team attached wasn’t really a thing, especially for teams that were connected to men’s organizations. Canyon-SRAM really started the ball rolling on that front with the formation of their Generation team.
The Generation team was created with the long-term goal of diversifying the sport in mind. From the beginning, the plan was to create a pathway into the WorldTour for riders who might find themselves up against unique hurdles. For example, riders who come from African countries who need visas and additional help getting to Europe to race.
The team has always had a few German riders, but they also seek out riders from all over the world. In its first year, Generation riders hailed from Paraguay, Sierra Leone, Malaysia, Rwanda, Jamaica and Namibia. For the 2025 season, they have announced eight riders so far: two from Germany, and one each from Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Great Britain and Nigeria. Four riders are returning to the team and one is yet to be announced. Quite the mix.
Canyon-SRAM’s Generation team is a really cool program, and unique from the other Women’s WorldTour “feeder teams” that have popped up over the past couple of years. Nowadays AG Insurance-Soudal, Fenix-Deceuninck, Liv AlUla Jayco, and UAE Team ADQ also have attached development programs. It’s also worth mentioning that AG Insurance-Soudal also has a nine-rider U19 team in addition to their Development team.
When Canyon-SRAM Generation first hit the scene there weren’t many rules or regulations in place for women’s devo teams. Men’s teams have had development/feeder programs for years and most of the men’s WorldTeams have a devo program of some kind, but for the women there was no precedent for such a situation. In the last couple of years, there have been some rules set in place by the UCI around these teams. For example: the sponsors of a women’s WorldTour team can also manage a Continental/development program with the same team name. A development team is registered with whichever national federation has the majority of riders on the team, hence why Canyon-SRAM always has two German riders. They can also be registered through the national federation that the WorldTeam is registered with.
But what exactly does a development team program look like?
AG Insurance-NXTG U23 team raced mostly one-day events in Belgium, plus the Tour de Feminin in the Czech Republic. They won the Czech stage race with home-country rider Julia Kopecký, who signed for SD Worx-Protime on a two-year deal starting in January.
The Generation team raced some of the bigger non-WT races like Setmana Valenciana in February in Spain, Omloop van het Hageland, Trofeo Oro and Trofeo Ponente. They also raced a number of one-days in Belgium, France, and Spain including Durango-Durango, and they finished their season with Tour Feminin l’Ardeche.
Fenix-Deceuninck Development stuck mostly to Belgium and the Netherlands, only venturing out to race GP de Plumelec-Morbihan and La Choralis Fourmies in France and Giro Toscana in Italy.
Liv AlUla Jayco formed when Jayco-AlUla and Liv merged to make a WorldTeam and a development team. They also raced a healthy number of one-days in Belgium and the Netherlands while venturing into France slightly more than a couple of the other Devo teams.
UAE Development Team was much the same, including a few races in Croatia, Poland and Denmark.
Overall, considering there aren’t a whole lot of non-WT races, all five development teams had decent calendars. What they really lacked was stage races, but a few teams did Ardeche, Baloise Ladies Tour, Giro Mediterraneo or Ruta Del Sol. Anastasiya Kolesava had the most race days of the Generation team at 42 and more than the members of Liv AlUla Jayco Continental, UAE and AG Insurance. Two riders on Liv AlUla Jayco, Emma Jeffers and Noa Jansen, raced 45 days in 2024.
As far as the number of riders and ages, AG Insurance’s NXTG team had nine riders in 2024, mostly 20 and under with only one 21-year-old. In 2025 they are set to increase their roster to 15 riders. Canyon-SRAM’s Generation team had nine riders from 19 to 27 years old in 2024 and will have roughly the same roster number in 2025. UAE had 12 riders ranging from 19 to 23 years old and are set to race with nine, potentially more, next season.
Fenix-Deceuninck Development had nine riders in 2024, all 25 and under, and has yet to announce any information about their program for the 2025 season. It appears they will have a team, but there are no details yet on its composition. Similarly, Liv AlUla Jayco devo raced with 10 in 2024 but hasn’t announced their roster for 2025 apart from 21-year-old Lucinda Stewart.
A number of riders from all five development teams levelled up to either their attached WorldTour teams or other WorldTour teams for the 2025 season. I already mentioned Kopecký who will ride for SD Worx-Protime. Amber van der Hulst will jump up from Liv AlUla Jayco’s devo program to their WT team while Kolesava will ride for Canyon-SRAM’s WT team in 2025. A number of AG Insurance-NXTG riders are graduating to WT programs: in addition to Kopecký, Lore de Schepper was brought up to the AG WorldTour team mid-season in 2024 and Mire Knaven was a similar mid-season acquisition by EF-Oatly-Cannondale. Three riders are leaving UAE’s devo team: Carlotta Cipressi to Human Powered Health, Sara Fiorin to Ceratizit-WNT and Lara Gillespie to UAE Team ADQ.
As more attention and money is drawn to women’s cycling one of the aspects that will benefit is these development programs. Teams will need a way to invest in the future of the sport, and at a certain point, there will need to be another path that isn’t hiring riders straight out of juniors into the WorldTour teams. It’s in the best interest of teams, sponsors and the sport as a whole to support these development teams and other programs like them that aren’t already attached to a WorldTour outfit.
A picture worth a couple of words
No one loves a snowy training camp more than SD Worx-Protime. This year they spent some time in Lapland, Finland rolling around in the snow, learning the art of teamwork from some furry friends, and proving that off the road they definitely know how to have fun.
Taylor Swift corner
I don’t know about you all but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the new film adaptation of Wicked since I saw it the night of its release. I’ve been lucky enough to see the musical four times, and it is by far my favourite musical of all time, probably in part because The Wizard of Oz is my favourite movie of all time (long story). The promo around Wicked has been hard to ignore; everywhere you turn you see stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. I have consumed as many interviews and behind-the-scenes videos as I have time for and one of my favourites is a chat between Erivo, Grande and the first-ever Elphaba/Glinda duo from the musical, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth. It’s a real passing of the torch-type situation.
So what’s the Swift connection? Back in 2015 on Halloween she was performing in Tampa, part of the 1989 World Tour. During that tour, she had a series of surprise guests from a horde of Victoria’s Secret models to Lorde to Lisa Kudrow (they sang Smelly Cat). On the night of Halloween, Swift came onto the stage to perform “Style” while wearing an Olaf costume from the movie Frozen, a movie in which Menzel voices one of the lead characters, Elsa. Menzel then joined Swift on stage to sing “Let It Go” from the movie.
Bonus content: Another guest Swift brought out was Wiz Khalifa. The two sang “See You Again” and it was a tour highlight.
Until next time
Before we close up, two bits of news.
SD Worx-Protime announced one more new addition to round out their 2025 team: Laura Stigger. The Austrian mountain bike star is hoping to gain a bit more road experience with the team, in addition to racing for Specialized Factory on the MTB circuit. Stigger won the junior road race at the 2018 World Championships in Innsbruck but has only raced a handful of road races, most of them at the Youth Olympics in 2018. Her only other race on the road was the U23 European road race in 2021 where she finished fourth.
“It was super special to immediately take the world title in my own region at my first real introduction to the road. I am now curious to see what I am worth in the elite category on the road,” Stigger said in the team press release. “It’s nice that I can discover that while I can still continue my mountain bike career with the Specialized Factory Racing Team.”
This isn’t the first time the Dutch team has signed a mountain biker to their road squad. In 2019 Annika Langvad rode for the team for one year. In that time she only raced a few WorldTour events, namely Strade Bianche, Amstel Gold Race, La Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and La Course by the Tour de France. She finished second in Strade behind Annemiek van Vleuten, fourth in Amstel, third in Flèche and 14th in LBL. Not bad at all.
Secondly, a shoutout to friend of the podcast and all around great person Sarah Gigante, who underwent iliac artery surgery last week. Gigante will unfortunately not be defending her Tour Down Under title for AG Insurance-Soudal but will hopefully be coming into the European season with a new set of legs thanks to the treatment.
Best wishes from Wheel Talk, Sarah!
By my count, we only have one, maybe two, more of these newsletters in 2024. Buckle up! It’s almost 2025!
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