EDWARD PICKERING

There’s nothing quite like realising that the current Tour de France champion is 22 to make you feel old. In case that’s not enough, a rider aged 20 recently came third in the Vuelta (and 22 seconds away from second, though the interesting caveat to that is that the runner-up, Alejandro Valverde, is 39). There are two riders born in 2000 both currently ranked in the top 100 cyclists in the world on Cqranking and Procyclingstats – Remco Evenepoel on the men’s side and Franziska Koch on the women’s.

Something is afoot in our sport. Cycling wisdom used to dictate that riders had to serve apprenticeships and spend their early 20s developing the strength and endurance to be able to win big races. Of course, there have always been a few exceptions – our retro feature this month, for example, looks back at a 22-year-old Laurent Fignon winning the Tour de France in 1983. But I can’t remember a year like this one for having such young winners across the board. Egan Bernal’s Tour win at 22 was the headline achievement, but Tadej Pogacar’s third place in the Vuelta at 20 and win in the Tour of California are equally as impressive. Remco Evenepoel winning Clásica San Sebastián – a hard, hard race – at 19 is off the scale. And in any other year, Pavel Sivakov winning the Tour of Poland and Tour of the Alps and coming ninth in the Giro at 21-22 would be hailed as the heralding of a new star.

We’ve celebrated the emergence of 2019’s generation of young talent by interviewing these four riders, with a cover inspired by sleeve art from The Who’s The Kids Are

Alright album. Needless to say, when we asked Pogacar during our photoshoot if he’d heard of The Who, the answer was negative. The cultural education of the young stars of our sport is an ongoing project, but in terms of their results, in cycling at the moment the kids are most definitely alright.