THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

At the Tour of California, EF Education First manager Jonathan Vaughters waxed lyrical about his new star Sergio Higuita. The Colombian only joined his team at the start of May, after spending the first three months of 2019 riding for the Euskadi ProConti team, and he was dropped straight into the WorldTour team’s squad in California. In his first race for EF, the 21-year-old came a narrow second overall.

Higuita wasn’t the only young rider doing well in America. The overall winner, Tadej Pogačcar, was even younger than Higuita, at 20, and six of the seven stage winners were 24 years old or younger. These successes came on the back of riders like Alberto Bettiol (Higuita’s team-mate) winning the Tour of Flanders at 25, Egan Bernal winning Paris-Nice at age 22, and 24-year-old Mathieu van der Poel winning Amstel Gold Race.

Vaughters told Procycling that team hierarchies had changed over the years. “The young guys now don’t feel like they have to ride for a leader for five years and work their way up,” he said. “They’re not scared of anyone.”

With sports science being so well developed, riders are leaving the U23 level and joining the pro ranks as almost fully formed riders. Remco Evenepoel skipped the U23s altogether and joined Deceuninck aged 18. Tactically, they have more to learn once they join the WorldTour, but as Pogačcar and co have demonstrated, when you’re the strongest and boldest, tactics and hierarchy don’t matter.