Lotte Kopecky, Demi Vollering, Lorena Wiebes, Kasia Niewiadoma, Marianne Vos, Elisa Longo Borghini – these riders topped the charts of the 2024 season, winning most of the biggest races from the one-day Classics of the Spring to the Grand Tours. But just below the podium, a handful of riders previously unknown or underrated reached new heights this season.
Some riders who truly turned heads in 2024 have been longstanding members of the women’s peloton who hit a new rhythm throughout the year, while others are fresh faces just finding their way in the sport.
Here are just a few riders who impressed this season, with their consistency or even just a few standout performances.
Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal)
One of the breakout stars of the Tour de France Femmes this season, Ghekiere not only took home the Mountains Classification jersey at the Tour, she also won the penultimate stage of the race. On a day when everyone was looking at the battle between Niewiadoma and Vollering, Ghekiere snuck into the early breakaway on the hunt for QOM points but ended up with so much more when the move stuck and she made it to the finish line first.
The Belgian woman wasn’t even meant to be at the Tour and celebrated her first Olympic Games appearance accordingly, but AG Insurance-Soudal had a last-minute change of roster and Ghekiere was top of the list following a successful run at the Giro d’Italia.
The iconic polka dot jersey of the Tour wasn’t her first Grand Tour shirt of the season. Ghekiere had already claimed the Mountains Classification at the Giro d’Italia. She took the lead of the Mountains Classification at the Italian race from Canadian Clara Emond during the queen stage that included one and a half laps of the historic Blockhaus climb.
If the two Grand Tours weren’t enough to put Ghekiere on the map she went on to have one heck of a ride at the World Championships in Zurich, finishing seventh on the day after spending much of the race up the road in support of Kopecky. At one point it even looked as though Ghekiere would be the top Belgian finisher when Kopecky was struggling to maintain contact with the front group.
Ghekiere is relatively new to racing, having only joined the peloton in 2021. She signed for AG Insurance-Soudal in 2023 and will continue to ride for the team through 2026. In the short time she has been part of the peloton she’s risen rapidly through the ranks to be one of the best breakaway artists in the game and a top climber to boot.
Neve Bradbury (Canyon-SRAM)
Bradbury has been part of the peloton since she won Zwift Academy and a contract with Canyon-SRAM in 2021 when she was just 19 years old. Her talent has always been known, especially when it comes to climbing, but she struggled in the first couple of years with the move to Europe from Australia. This season she seemed to really come into her own, starting with Tour Down Under where she finished third overall. She went on to finish second on GC behind Kopecky at the UAE Tour, where she performed well on the queen stage.
Her Classics campaign was a quiet one but she proved at the Tour de Suisse that stage racing is where her strengths lie. During the third stage, Bradbury and her teammate Niewiadoma broke away and rode to the line together, finishing one-two on the day. It was Bradbury’s first WorldTour victory, but not her last of the season.
A month later she won the queen stage at the Giro d’Italia and with it the Youth Classification. Some bad luck at the Tour took her out of the GC, but she was a key member of the team for Niewiadoma to take the overall win in France.
This season Bradbury marked herself as a GC rider to watch for future races, not only with her fitness but also her tactical ability. Her attack to win the seventh stage of the Giro is proof of how much she has grown as a rider and Canyon-SRAM clearly sees a future with Bradbury. The German team has locked her in until 2027, one of the longer contracts on the women’s side of the sport.
Karlijn Swinkels (UAE Team ADQ)
Swinkels has experience beyond her age. Since she joined the peloton in 2017 she’s ridden for teams like Parkhotel-Valkenburg, and Jumbo-Visma and is currently representing UAE Team ADQ. She’s had some decent results in the past, a podium at Gent-Wevelgem in 2023, and third at Simac Ladies Tour in 2022. This season she leaned into a more attacking style of riding that resulted in wins at the Grand Prix de Wallonie and Tour de la Semois. She didn’t win any WorldTour races, but she came close with moves at some of the early season races.
But her inclusion in this list is mostly thanks to her presence in the races. At any given point she was one of the most active riders in the peloton. Seeing her off the front fighting for sprint or mountain points was a regular occurrence. At 26 years old Swinkels is finding her stride, and UAE Team ADQ, who signed her for a further two seasons, can continue to lean on her as the team enters a new era next season with the addition of Elisa Longo Borghini.
Thalita de Jong (Lotto Dstny)
Another longstanding member of the peloton, De Jong first became a professional in 2012 with Rabobank. She stayed with the powerhouse team through 2016 before dropping down to lower-level squads for four years. After returning to the WorldTour for two years with Liv Racing, she dropped down again to Lotto Dstny for 2024. Since 2012 most of De Jong’s victories were in cyclocross or national-level races, with the occasional win at a higher level like the ninth stage of the Giro in 2016. That win was ultimately more highlight than breakout and, until this year, she didn’t make much of an impact on the road. Until this season.
She came into the 2024 season as more of a mentor than a star but quickly became Lotto Dstny’s top performer. Even before she won two stages and the overall at Tour Feminin l’Ardeche in September she was consistently finishing in the top 15 of WorldTour races. She started the spring with a fifth at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, was eighth at Gent-Wevelgem, 15th at Tour of Flanders, and then a few months later finished in the top 10 of all three stages of Itzulia Women, with a second on the final stage.
In the early season, she took a stage win at the Tour de Normandie, won the Points and Mountains Classifications at the Bretagne Ladies Tour, finished third overall at the Baloise Ladies Tour and then 10th overall at the Tour de France Femmes.
Her end-of-season escapades were the highlight with Tour Feminin l’Ardeche plus a stage win at Tour de la Semois. The season landed her back in the WorldTour on a two-year deal with Human Powered Health.
After 12 years in the peloton De Jong turned heads this year by constantly being in and amongst it, and with all her experience it’s likely she will net even more wins in 2025.
Kim Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal)
One of the newest signings for AG Insurance-Soudal, Le Court joined the team after seven years of riding mountain bikes. She raced briefly on the road in 2015 and 2016 for lower-level teams but left the road behind at the end of 2016. In 2023 her only road races were the African Continental Championships and the World Championships. She was in Glasgow not for the road race but the MTB Marathon race, where she was 10th. With the changing landscape of women’s cycling, she decided she wanted another stab at road racing. Her contract with AG Insurance-Soudal came super late in the season but proved to be a good one for the team.
In her first WorldTour one-day, the Deakin University road race, she was ninth. Her results kept improving from there. Once in Europe, she netted a ninth at Brugge-De Panne followed a few weeks later by an amazing 10th in Paris-Roubaix Femmes. In June she won both Mauritius road and time trial national titles, then went to the Giro d’Italia where she won the final stage. An injury cut her season early before she could compete at the World Championships in Zurich, but with little to no expectations on how her first year in the WorldTour would go, it’s safe to say her decision to return to the road was a good one.
Cédrine Kerbaol (Ceratizit-WNT)
Kerbaol was already turning heads in 2023 when she won the Youth Classification at the Tour, along with a stage and the overall of Tour de Normandie and the French ITT National Championships. But 2023 was only a warm-up. Already in February, she captured a win at the Vuelta CV Feminas. Her spring campaign was quieter, but once the Spanish racing block started she hit a patch of solid results. She won Durango-Durango in a torrential downpour, finished sixth in all three stages and the overall of Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, and second in the time trial at French Nationals.
All of this built into the best result of her career so far: a stage win at the Tour de France. The first Frenchwoman to win a stage of the newly restarted age-race. She finished her year by winning Tre Valli Varesine, again in a torrential downpour.
Kerbaol made headlines in the first week of November when she cut her contract with Ceratizit-WNT short by one year to join EF-Oatly-Cannondale on a one-year deal.
At 23 years old Kerbaol is an exciting talent for the future of the sport, and as she continues to develop her successes in 2024 will be just the start of hopefully a successful career.
Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck)
For those who have never paid much attention to mountain biking or cyclocross, watching a 22-year-old rider come into the peloton and immediately start making waves at the front of WorldTour races is pretty wild. People who exclusively watch road races (yes they do exist) would have been curious when already at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad there was a Fenix-Deceuninck rider with a racing style like Mathieu van der Poel. Her cross and MTB background and her general personality meant when Pieterse made the move to race more road this spring she did so with characteristic confidence, without any “testing out the waters.” From the beginning, she was a rider to watch.
Throughout the spring she finished in the top 10 of almost every race she did including two third places at Ronde van Drenthe and Trofeo Alfredo Binda. Through her first eight one-days, Strade Bianche (13th) was her worst finish. Then she seemingly disappeared (to race four rounds of the Mountain Bike World Cup) only to come back for the Tour de France Femmes her first-ever multi-day race, and win a stage against two of the best riders in the peloton in Vollering and Niewiadoma, as well as take the Youth Classification after spending a couple of days also leading the Mountains competition.
With all her accolades in cyclocross and MTB (where she’s the current World Champion), perhaps Pieterse doesn’t deserve to be on a “breakout” riders list, but we’re talking about road cycling and before this season she had only raced Omloop van het Hageland, Strade Bianche and a local Dutch race in 2023 and Junior Dutch nationals in 2019. This season was only the beginning of her foray into road cycling, and she’s already going into 2025 as a top contender in most events she starts.
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