Rumours swirl about riders hopping from one team to another long before cycling’s transfer window officially opens at the start of August. Managers and agents have spent the months leading up to this date negotiating salaries and contracts, while riders race hard to gain results and get noticed by teams with the biggest budgets. If a contract is signed and sorted by August 1, riders can count themselves in a good position for the following season: things have been decided early and the rest of their current agreement can be played out with little stress. Others will not be so lucky and it can be a race against the clock to get their signature on paper.
In both the men’s and women’s sides of the sport, we can expect plenty of changes for the 2025 season. Teams like Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have increased budgets for signing big riders thanks to new sponsors, while others like Ineos Grenadiers look to be saying goodbye to some of their bigger stars, focusing on investing in younger talent. On the women’s side, Demi Vollering is rumoured to be leaving SD Worx-Protime (though her destination is yet to be officially announced at the time of writing), as two-time world champion Anna van der Breggen will come out of retirement to race for the Dutch squad again in 2025.
It’s all change again in the world of professional cycling, and here are some of the key moves that have caught our attention so far.
*this page will be updated as more transfers are announced
Jhonatan Narváez – Ineos Grenadiers to UAE Team Emirates
It is not known whether Jhonatan Narváez knew he was outsprinting his future teammate when he beat in Tadej Pogačar to the stage victory on the opening day of the Giro d’Italia in Turin earlier this year, or whether that was what earned him a contract with UAE Team Emirates for the next two seasons. Either way, it’s fair to say that after the season the Ecuadorian rider has had, Ineos Grenadiers’ loss is UAE Team Emirates gain.
Narváez moves to the Emirati team after spending five seasons at Ineos and he’s not the only rider to make this switch in the last couple of years – Adam Yates and Pavel Sivakov also both moved to UAE from the British team. When UAE Team Emirates announced the signing of Narváez, the 27-year-old stated that he was happy to be moving to the “best team in the world” for 2025. This is another signifier of the change in the structure of men’s professional cycling – Ineos…