Is it pro road racing season already? It seems like only the other day that we were watching Annemiek van Vleuten take the inaugural Tour de France Femmes, or Remco Evenepoel’s joyful World Championships win. Heck, Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel are still racing cyclocross.
But along with English Premier League and NASCAR, the 10-month WorldTour road racing calendar is one of the longest competitive seasons in pro sports. So after a short breather, the 2023 round kicks off January 15 and 17 in Australia with, respectively, the women’s and men’s Tour Down Under.
Here are five questions for the upcoming season, along with our predictions, plus eight riders we think might be breakout stars to watch. Those are, of course, best guesses; prediction is a fool’s game, but endless fun to play. Make your picks in the comments, and check back in November to peep whether our prognostications were prescient or pans.
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Will Mark Cavendish beat Eddy Merckx’s record for all-time Tour de France stage wins?
Answer: Yes*
Cav’s remarkable career resurgence in 2021, marked by four TdF stage wins after a four-year drought, brought him even with the incomparable Merckx for most-ever victories in the world’s biggest race, at 34. Then, last season, he didn’t even get a Tour sniff as his Quick Step team left him off the race roster. Cavendish will be 38 when the 2023 Tour rolls out of Bilbaõ, Spain for its Grand Depart. But if he’s on the start line, bet on him to get win No. 35. The biggest question is whether he has a team at all. Cavendish has been linked to a number of outfits, most recently Astana, but there’s been no official contract announcement yet. A late addition to any team is supremely sub-optimal, as it leaves little time to learn new teammates and sprint drills. But if anyone can surmount that, it’s Cavendish, who can win with or without a leadout train.
Can anyone top van Vleuten?
Answer: Nope nope nope
At 39 last year, van Vleuten enjoyed perhaps her best season ever: World Road Champion, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and dominant victories in the two biggest stage races in the sport: the Giro d’Italia Donne and of course the inaugural TdF Femmes. Van Vleuten plans to retire at the end of this season, and while older riders often decline abruptly, we don’t yet see even the slightest erosion of her abilities. She wants to go out a winner and, while there are many challengers, we don’t (yet) see a convincing threat.
Is this the year Wout van Aert wins a cobble Monument?
Answer: Oh yeah
There’s not much the versatile van Aert can’t do: sprints, breakaways, classics, even big mountain stages are well within his range. But now in his fifth pro season, van Aert’s impressive victories list has a conspicuous hole: a win in either the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix, the two cobbled Monuments that are the pinnacle of any Belgian rider’s hoped-for victories.
This is his best shot, in part because of the remarkable depth of his Jumbo-Visma team, which added 2022 Roubaix winner Dylan van Baarle over the off-season. Only the historically dominant Soudal-Quick Step team has as powerful a classics roster as Jumbo. Flanders and Roubaix are races of attrition; Jumbo’s depth lets van Aert—who will otherwise have every pedal stroke and gear shift closely marked by rivals—play off his team strength and force opponents to chase down moves while he saves his strength for a crucial moment.
Is 2023 the year women’s racing goes mainstream?
Answer: Yes*
You could argue that was 2022, with the fantastic media and fan response to the TdF Femmes. But 2023 could be even better. The Women’s WorldTour is packed with major races and fan interest grows every year. The field is growing competitive depth at a remarkable rate; even when van Vleuten does retire this season, there are promising young stars-in-the-making to lift the sport to another level. The biggest challenge may be managing the growth. The WWT calendar features 30 races and more than 75 race days on three continents. But WWT team roster sizes (and budgets) lag well behind the men’s peloton. That makes it difficult to race a full season of events; just six of the 15 WWT teams will start the Tour Down Under, for instance. Better calendar organization and financial support would go a long way to helping solve those challenges. This year, we need to see sponsors step up with those investments.
Does Ineos Grenadiers rebound from an uncharacteristically down year?
Close, but not quite
One one hand, it’s hard to say Ineos—the richest team in the sport, with four Grand Tour winners on the roster, and winner of 39 races last year including two major classics—had a rough season in 2022. But Ineos has always been about the Grand Tours, and it failed to win at least one of them for just the second time since 2011. With Egan Bernal healing from horrific injuries from a spring training crash, its best stage racers were Geraint Thomas (who turns 37 in May) and Richard Carapaz, who left in the offseason for EF Pro Cycling. 2023 won’t be a complete return to form. Bernal is racing again but likely needs a full season to learn if he can completely return to being a top stage racer. There are a ton of young talents, from Tom Pidcock and the Hayter brothers to transfer Thymen Arensman. But of them, only Arensman has shown the ability to lead in a three-week race and he’ll be getting used to a new team. The question is whether they can climb the learning curve fast enough to prevent owner Jim Ratcliffe from getting bored and frustrated at paying $40 million a year to see the team’s Tour de France dry streak hit a fourth year.
Who will be the 2023 season’s breakout stars?
Every year sees new faces on the top step of the podium, and 2023 will be no different. While there’s always attention on neo-pros (especially given the recent run of immense talents like Evenepoel and Pidcock who started winning in their rookie seasons), it often takes some time for riders to adjust to the length and intensity of a WorldTour season. Here are eight established pros (and one bonus American) we expect to take a big step up this year:
Women
Shirin van Anrooij (Trek-Segafredo) - Just 20, van Anrooij is already in her third WorldTour season. She’s a talented climber and stage racer who’s already gotten attention for strong performances in hilly one-day races. But her recent tear in cyclocross, where she’s won three of her last four starts, suggests that she’s primed for a breakout on the road, too.
Silvia Persico (UAE-ADQ) – You probably noticed Persico at the TdF Femmes, where she was regularly one of the most aggressive riders in the field. But she took her biggest win last fall at the Ceratizit Challenge (the five-day women’s Vuelta Espana) on Stage 4, outsprinting a select group including the best women racers in the peloton today. Expect more of the same in 2023 on her new UAE-ADQ team.
Maike van der Duin (Canyon-SRAM) – All the sprinting attention in 2022 was (rightly) on the peerless Lorena Wiebes, but keep an eye on van der Duin. With two top-five stage finishes at the TdF Femmes, the 21-year-old Dutch speedster showed she’s got the legs to keep up with anyone. She joins Canyon-SRAM for 2023, where she’ll benefit from more stability than her last team.
Veronica Ewers (EF Education-Tibco) – Ewers is 28 years old but will be entering just her second full WorldTour season. A recent convert to bike racing (she was a collegiate soccer player), she’s a tenacious climber with world-class power. Ewers is quickly learning tactics and pack skills and has already shown her abilities with a stage win at the Festival Elsy Jacobs and a 9th overall at the TdF Femmes. With expert guidance from manager Linda Jackson, 2023 could be the year she goes big.
Men
Fred Wright (Bahrain-Victorious) – Last season, it seemed like every time you looked, Wright was in the breakaway. The 23-year-old Brit will start his fourth season this year and showed a massive year-over-year jump in quality results in 2022, with six top-five finishes in Grand Tour stages. What he didn’t get was a win. Wright clearly has the legs; what he needs is to learn how to use that strength more effectively. Says here he starts to unlock that this season.
Andrea Piccolo (EF Pro Cycling) – Piccolo is just 21 but he’s been, uh, well-traveled in his short career: in 2022 alone he raced for three teams. Despite that instability, he managed six top-five finishes, and ended up being a small but important part of EF’s late-season campaign to escape relegation. He’s already showing excellent promise in hilly one-day races, and with a two-year contract on a stable team with good support, 2023 could be the year he can finally focus on racing.
Olav Kooij (Jumbo-Visma) – 2022 was an auspicious year for young sprinters, so it’s hard to pick just one here. And at first glance, Kooij doesn’t seem primed for a breakout, since Jumbo has Wout van Aert and Christophe Laporte on hand. But that’s a perfect situation for the 21-year-old in his second WorldTour season. Laporte can be streaky, and Wout can’t race everything. That leaves at least one Grand Tour for Kooij to have a free hand with a team that’s experienced at leadouts. He already has 15 pro wins, mostly in races just below the WorldTour level. This year is when he starts adding some major Ws to the list.
Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar) – Like Wright, Jorgenson was an aggressive attacker last year, but came up just short in three efforts at the Tour. This will be the 23-year-old’s fourth season with Movistar and, with the retirement of stalwart Alejandro Valverde, the team will be looking for production from all corners. Jorgenson, a talented all-arounder, will make good use of the opportunities.
Bonus American: Magnus Sheffield (Ineos Grenadiers) – A surprise winner of Brabantse Pijl last year, Sheffield could arguably be said to have already broken out. But we’re still fascinated to watch his development on Ineos. He’s still only 21 come April, and his challenge will be standing out and getting opportunity amid the other young talents on the team. But if the 2022 season is any guide, Sheffield won’t hesitate to seize the opportunity.
