When Jonas Vingegaard attacked late on stage 9 of the Vuelta a España, it made for one of the race’s most dramatic finales of recent years – but the Visma-Lease a Bike rider’s explosive move and its consequences were far from being the only interesting plot line of the day.
For one thing, the presence of Ireland’s Archie Ryan in the five-rider early break on the stage quietly added another important chapter to how EF Education-EasyPost and some of cycling’s next generation of riders are tackling this year’s Vuelta, even if Ryan finally was not able to imitate his compatriot Sean Kelly in the 1988 race and go all the way to take another win for Ireland at Valdezcaray.
Reeled in at 11 kilometres to go on stage 9, Ryan’s move nonetheless continued a notable trend of this year’s Vuelta – of EF Education-EasyPost’s new wave of young riders being constantly in the breaks and fighting for a chance of success. And as EF sports director Tom Southam at the Vuelta tells Cyclingnews, a much more recent Grand Tour stage victory than Kelly’s – that of Irish racer Ben Healy in the 2025 Tour de France – is helping inspire the next generation of EF teammates to keep punching above their weight.
“Just like in the Tour, we’re looking for opportunities and with no Richard Carapaz” – a late non-starter after the GC big hitter was expected to head the squad – “there’s nothing like a hierarchy here amongst our riders.”
In EF’s 2025 Vuelta team all bar two of their riders – James Shaw and Esteban Chaves – are 25 or under. Markel Beloki, at 20 the youngest rider in the Vuelta, is their best placed overall rider, at 23:53 on leader Torstein Træen (Bahrain Victorious) while other up-and-coming EF talents battling it out in Spain include Lukas Nerurkar, 21, Ryan, 23, and Jardi van der Lee, 24.
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