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The biggest moments from men's and women's racing, captured by our photography partners Jered and Ashley Gruber, Kristof Ramon, Cor Vos, and Zac Williams.
by Joe Lindsey26.12.2024Photography by
Gruber Images, Kristof Ramon, Cor Vos, and Zac Williams More from Joe +
It’s hard to believe that the 2025 men’s and women’s WorldTour circuits kick off in just a few weeks. It seems like only yesterday that Kasia Niewiadoma burst into euphoric tears atop Alpe d’Huez after winning the Tour de France Femmes. Or Tadej Pogačar won one of any number of races with a dominating, long-range attack. Or Mathieu van der Poel and Lotte Kopecky did the rainbow jerseys proud at the cobbled Classics.
There were season-altering crashes, that incredible, down-to-the-wire duel at the Giro d’Italia Women. There were Olympic shocks and triumphs. History was made at the men’s Tour de France, while Grace Brown mic-dropped her career in memorable fashion. How do you sum up the arc of a whole season of racing: dozens of events across hundreds of race days, and thousands of individual stories of victory and defeat?
You can’t. This is just one person’s imperfect, incomplete impression of an incredible season. There are many more moments I’ve forgotten or failed to include, but these are some of the ones that stood out to me. What else was there? Let us know in the comments.
The start of two storybook seasons
There are no bigger superstars in the sport than Tadej Pogačar and Lotte Kopecky. The Slovenian signaled the dominance of his 2024 season from his very first race. Strade Bianche, held March 2, marked Kopecky’s third win of the season.
Both riders were historically great. Kopecky won 16 races – one out of every three times she pinned on a number – and podiumed six more times. No, she didn’t win the Olympic road race. But she repeated as World Champion, almost won her first Grand Tour, and finally got that Paris-Roubaix cobble.
Pogačar, of course, was even better if that’s possible. In 58 days of racing across 12 events, he won 25 times, becoming the first male rider to win the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France, and World Road Championships since 1987. He was stunningly dominant, winning seemingly at will and with attacks from distances that would be ridiculous for any other racer.
Solo from 82 km out. Pogačar’s stamp of dominance in Strade Bianche set the tone for his entire season.Meanwhile, Lotte Kopecky’s early Strade Bianche duel with Elisa Longo Borghini (front wheel just visible behind) would foreshadow one of the great rivalries of the 2024 season.For all that Pogačar’s dominance looked effortless, it was not.Different paths to victory, same result, and the start of two fantastic seasons.
Season-changing crashes
One constant of pro cycling seems to be crashes. We hold our breath, hoping everyone is OK even if they get in the team car. Far worse is when the ambulance comes. This season saw at least four season- and life-changing crashes, the worst of them resulting in a tragic death.
Wout van Aert’s season was effectively bookended by terrible crashes. At left, he’s shown just before the high-speed bunch crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen that broke his collarbone. A September fall at the Vuelta a España left him with a serious knee injury; the photo at right is two weeks later. Due to long recovery and now illness, he has not raced since.Crashes also brought scrutiny to hookless rim and tire systems.Another controversial course choice, at Itzulia, saw a mass crash on stage 4 that knocked 12 riders out of the race with serious injury, including Jonas Vingegaard, Primož Roglič, and Remco Evenepoel. Vingegaard was in the hospital for two weeks with multiple fractures and a pneumothorax.Muriel Furrer’s tragic death at the Road World Championships has sparked spirited criticism of safety protocols in road racing.
Cobble crushers
I won’t lie; cobbles are my favorite races. And this year, despite the absence of Van Aert saw memorable racing, especially in the women’s peloton, with the return of Marianne Vos and that exquisite Tour of Flanders. On the men’s side, of course, we had Mathieu van der Poel’s second season of mastery.
Vos had an uncharacteristically quiet 2023 and that August we found out why: iliac arterial endofibrosis, a painful condition common to pro cyclists that can rob the legs of their ability to produce power.Omloop Het Nieuwsblad isn’t the Ronde, but it still has the Kapelmuur.Vos won “only” two races in 2023, but started 2024 with a vintage victory over two of the strongest racers in the peloton at the cobbles season-opening Omloop.It’s hard to believe, but 2024 marked Vos’ first-ever start in Het Nieuwsblad. Check that one off too, apparently.On to Flanders. Which way does the wind blow?Abysmal conditions, exquisite racing as Kasia Niewiadoma and Elisa Longo Borghini slugged it out on the Paterberg.Always in the hunt: stalwart Lotte Kopecky and upstart Puck Pieterse.But there was no denying Longo Borghini.Slightly less apocalyptic conditions for the men.But still the finish was foretold.Bike ad sorted for the season, Canyon.Here we go!Kopecky, Vos, Balsamo (and not shown: Pfeiffer Georgi): at a race like Paris-Roubaix, the best always emerge at the front.That women’s Roubaix runs on a separate day is, to me, one of the best things in cobble racing.Zoe Bäckstedt shows the fruits of her day’s labor.It’s hell out there.Just a taste of what’s to come.Careful with that shirt, buddy!In almost any other sport, there’s a timeout to clean that up.
Grace Brown’s mic drop
Grace Brown didn’t start racing professionally until well into her 20s. And at 32, she doubtless had miles left in the legs. But as she told Matt De Neef, “I’m definitely finishing not wanting for more.” After her storybook 2024 season, who could blame her. Brown has long been one of the best time triallists in the sport, a talent she’s used to win stages and one-day races too. But before this year, she had twice been runner-up at World Championships, and twice second at Liege-Bastogne-Liege. This year, she got them both, and an Olympic gold medal to boot. She’s not done with the sport yet, as she’s incoming president of The Cyclists’ Alliance, the union for women racers. But it’s hard to imagine a better way to go out on top.
Brown outsprinted an elite group at Liège that included multiple Grand Tour winners.Brown overcame horrendous conditions in the Paris time trial to beat some of the other best riders in the sport.Aboard the gold bike that commemorates her Olympic TT win, Brown vanquished three years of almosts.She’ll also be Escape Collective honorary Member #1 for 2025.
An Italian duel
What do Brown and Kopecky have in common? Elisa Longo Borghini – she was one of the few riders in the peloton to beat each at their specialty. Longo Borghini’s fantastic season culminated with her down-to-the-wire duel at the Giro d’Italia women.
The Italian national champ took the first pink jersey of the race, winning the opening time trial by just .87 seconds over Brown, and then waged a gutsy, wire-to-wire GC win, holding off Kopecky on all manner of terrain including the queen stage finish atop Blockhaus.
Longo Borghini’s narrow win in the opening-stage TT set the tone for the week to come.Kopecky set to work trying to wear down her rival.Despite the backing of a strong Lidl-Trek team, the pressure of defending grew intense.Kopecky used time bonuses to gradually chip away at Longo Borghini’s lead, and her stage 5 win, with the Italian well back in 18th, brought the Belgian just four seconds away from the pink jersey.But in a final showdown with a double ascent of Blockhaus, Longo Borghini was not to be denied.And when Longo Borghini dropped Kopecky on the hilly eighth stage, her biggest GC victory ever was finally secure.
History at the Tour de France
It’s cliché to say history is made at the Tour de France, but it certainly seemed that way. From the very start, with Romain Bardet taking his first-ever yellow jersey after announcing it would be his last-ever Tour (he retires next June) to the end in Nice when Tadej Pogačar sealed the first Giro-Tour double in over a quarter century, it was a remarkable race of firsts, records, and superlative achievements.
Not a dry eye in the house after Bardet took that iconic jersey.“Let me open the door,” said Biniam Girmay after becoming the first Black rider to win a Tour stage.Same day: Richard Carapaz becomes the first Ecuadoran to wear the yellow jersey.When Mark Cavendish finally broke through with stage win No. 35, his competitors couldn’t even wait to stop before they began congratulating him on setting a new record. All of the above, by the way, happened in the first week of the race.From there, the Tour became the Tadej Pogačar show; once he regained yellow on stage 4, he never gave it back.Plateau de Beille: the fastest there ever was.Even when surrounded by fans, Pogačar remained a man apart.Are you not entertained?Not Paris.And another first.
Double surprise at the Olympic road race
Four years ago, women didn’t have the Tour de France Femmes. But that didn’t make the 2024 Paris Games any less of an iconic moment. The wet, bumpy time trial was an inauspicious start to the road events, but the road race, with its landmark-heavy circuit, the climb past Sacre Couer, and the technical, demanding descents, produced such edge-of-the-seat excitement that “Can we do this every year?” was immediately on the lips of fans.
The steep final set of steps to the Basiilca de Sacre Couer made a natural grandstand and one of the most memorable shots of the Games.Remco Evenepoel already had Olympic gold in the time trial, but not even a late flat tire and a slow bike change could deny him victory in the road race.Framing a shot with the massive Eiffel Tower in the background is not easy, but Zac Williams somehow managed to get it in, and Remco, from one of the highly sub-optimal photo corral locations for credentialed shooters.Meanwhile, this Cor Vos shot of Kristen Faulkner’s stunning road race victory looked like something out of Zwift.The three-rider sprint for silver was as close as they get.Faulkner told Geraint Thomas for his podcast recently that USA Cycling discouraged her from riding the road race, saying that their modeling predicted a 6% chance of victory.
Tour de France Femmes – The best yet
Thanks to the Olympics, the 2024 Tour de France Femmes was kind of the Tour of Benelux-and-France. But it built to arguably the most memorable of the three editions so far, with fans packing roads in Rotterdam, and action-packed racing that culminated in a thrilling duel on the iconic Alpe d’Huez. We can only hope 2025 comes close.
Like the t-shirt says: Everyone watches women’s sports.Kool v. Wiebes. Kool 2, Wiebes 0. (For 2024 at least; the sprint matchup series history is much more in Wiebes’ favor)Vollering got her yellow in the time trial and looked like a strong bet to hold it, with aggressive riding on stage 4.A photo-finish sprint saw Puck Pieterse win a stage in her first-ever stage race.But on stage 5, that controversial crash, a team that didn’t wait, and a yellow jersey lost to her arch-competitor, Niewiadoma.For years, the Tour de France was a dream that women racers never dared dream, until they made it real.Speaking of dreams, Cedrine Kerbaol’s came true on stage 6.And Justine Ghekhiere’s polka-dot reverie included even more: a stage win. Which left one final day …Vollering’s fierce onslaught left all behind but Pauliena Rooijakkers.Behind, Niewiadoma raced the desperate time trial of her life.Two riders, separated on the road, but joined forever in the lore of the Tour.There is always next year, and we can’t wait.
Worthy winners at Worlds
Road World Championships in Zurich provided capstones to Kopecky’s and Pogačar’s seasons, but the usual celebratory mood was clouded after the death of Muriel Furrer. As with many of their victories on the season, Kopecky’s and Pogačar’s unfolded in different ways, showcasing their strengths and styles.
The women’s race unfolded in wet, cold conditions that did little to dampen the spark of racing for Demi Vollering and Liane Lippert.But over a long day (four hours of racing), they took their toll. Puck Pieterse was happy to be done.For Kopecky, the six-rider sprint was familiar, even comfortable territory, and while it was a different scenario than last year’s solo in Glasgow, the outcome was the same.Two in a row for the Belgian women’s team, thanks to one of the country’s best of all time.Muriel Furrer was never far from thought.The men’s race unfolded with the same plotline of Strade Bianche and other one-day Classics: Pogačar solo from far out.Despite having one of the strongest teams in the race, Belgium was powerless to control affairs.Elation, exhaustion.
