EF Education-EasyPost named their 2024 WorldTour team, announcing nine new riders and one of the youngest teams in the top tier at an average age of 26.
“We’ve got a good mix of riders. Some are arriving at their peak, we’ve got some riders who are at their peak, and then we’ve got this new wave of riders coming in,” head sports director Charly Wegelius said.
Of the nine incoming riders, seven are making their WorldTour debut, including Archie Ryan from the Jumbo-Visma development team, Lukas Nerurkar from Trinity Racing, Markel Beloki, the son of Spaniard Joseba Beloki, Ireland’s Darren Rafferty, who won the Giro Valle d’Aosta-Mont Blanc and was second at the Giro Next Gen with Hagens Berman Axeon this year, Britain’s Jack Rootkin-Gray, from the team’s development squad, Japanese rider Yuhi Todome and Jardi van der Lee who raced with the team as a trainee at the Tour de Langkawi.
The transfers of Rui Costa from Intermarché-Circus-Wanty and Harry Sweeny from Lotto Dstny were already announced.
“It’s a long time since we’ve had such a young roster,” Wegelius said. “There’s a lot of optimism because we believe in them. We’re prepared to give them the space to find out how they need to grow, and we’ll also give them the space to work through that. As a team, we do well at adapting to what we find once we start to work with the riders, so I’d say we’re feeling a lot of optimism without the burden of any particular expectations.”
The team tasked former rider Sebastian Langeveld with scouting young talent for the first time and he was pleased with the group of riders signed.
“What we did really well was to be in contact with these young riders, to show the team in a positive way, but also in an honest and realistic way,” Langeveld said. “I didn’t chase them down or fly to their homes. It’s not a super fancy story of how we signed them, but I think the way we went last year as a team, with a lot of victories early on, and how we approached the riders, helped make us a super attractive team. That’s why young guys want to sign for us.
“I’m super excited to see what they’re capable of in the upcoming year, but it’s really a process to see them develop over two or more years. I’m quite confident we’ll see some nice growth in our roster.”
The team also reflected on the success of riders like Ben Healy and Neilson Powless and plans to continue to race aggressively next year.
“We need to keep doing what we’ve done well,” Wegelius said. “Playing on our strengths. We’ve made…
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