Michat Kwiat kowski as the best young rider for 10 days, an even more impressive feat considering his Quick Step team was built around star sprinter Mark Cavendish and packed with lead-out support and not climbers. A year later he became the youngest winn
Few riders had the eyes of the world watching their progression as a junior as much as Michał Kwiatkowski did. A double European champion as a junior on the road and in the time trial, a junior world champion against the clock, winner of the junior Peace Race, podium finisher at the Tour de l’Avenir, Kwiatkowski was the figurehead of Generation 1990.
The Pole’s biggest strength has always been his versatility. Aged just 23 he backed up his promise as an amateur by finishing 11th in the Tour de France on his debut, wearing the race’s white jersey
There is a sense that for all Kwiatkowsi’s versatility, it has arguably been his biggest hindrance, as his role and targets have chopped and changed. He’s drifted in and out of Quick Step and Ineos’s classics team, concentrating now on the Ardennes after flirting with the Flandrian races. At Ineos he’s assumed leadership roles, but at second-tier stage races. He’s excelled at the Tour but as a super domestique - he was part of their winning team in 2017, 2018 and 2019, and in 2017 he was Chris Froome’s MVP.
Kwiatkowski says he still has ambitions to challenge for the yellow jersey himself, but at Ineos it’s hard to see how. Many of the team’s super domestiques have gone elsewhere to lead, but have come up short (see: Richie Porte, Mikel Landa, Wout Poels).
His 11th place in the Tour in 2013 is still not to be dismissed. Kwiatkowski can clearly climb and he can time trial with the best (of the Tour’s five time trials he’s contested, he’s finished in the top 10 four times). As the years tick by, whether he’ll ever get to test that for himself on the biggest stage though, is the question.