Too much too young
It has often been said that 40 is the new 30, or that 50 is the new 40, usually by people who would like to believe they’re ten years younger. The reverse trend has been true in cycling in the last couple of seasons. For professional cyclists, 20 is the new 25, and 25 the new 30.
‘Juniors are the new under-23s,’ says Tom Southam, sports director at WorldTour team EF Education-Nippo.
‘It’s getting pretty crazy. The Junior Worlds road race is what the under-23 race used to be. The under-23 race is effectively a pro race now’
Perhaps it started with the 18-year-old Remco Evenepoel, who in 2019 leapfrogged the under-23 category to turn professional with Deceuninck-QuickStep. Jonathan Vaughters, boss of the EF team, was critical of Deceuninck’s recruitment of Evenepoel. Although the Belgian was clearly a phenomenon, Vaughters didn’t believe that it was healthy for juniors to go straight into the WorldTour.
And yet it became difficult to argue that it had been a mistake when Evenepoel won a prestigious Classic, the Clásica San Sebastián, in his first year. He followed that with a silver medal in the time-trial at the World Championships in Harrogate.
That same year, Egan
