International rider of the year
Not to be blinkered by Brit dominance, here’s the best of the rest
10
Kirsten Wild
Now something of a veteran, the Dutchwoman remains a force to be reckoned with on the track and the road. This year she won the Ridelondon Classique, the first stage of the Tour de Yorkshire and took home two points jerseys. On the track she was even better, taking the rainbow bands in the World Championship omnium, points and scratch races.
9
Chloe Dygert Twenty-one-year-old Dygert took to the Apeldoorn track for the individual pursuit final against world number one and time trial world champion Annemiek van Vleuton who was backed by a raucous home crowd. What happened next was the most comprehensive thrashing of 2018. Dygert, who had broken the event’s world record in qualifying, was in a league of her own and went faster again to land the sixth world title of her fledging career.
8
remco evenepoel
The record of this junior is enough to have any Belgian national coach drooling. He slung his leg over a top tube in anger on 26 days this year and he ended 17 of them with his arms aloft. Plus, of the 15 classification jerseys he’s contested, only one has left the race on someone else’s shoulders.
7
elia Viviani Viviani’s 18 wins is the most in a calendar year since Alexander Kristoff won 20 in 2015. Winning races throughout the year from the Tour Down Under onwards — including four stages and the sprinter’s jersey at the Giro d’italia and three more at the Vuelta — if he had lined up at the Tour, he may well have bagged even more. Saying that, the rest of his Quick Step team took care of business…
6
Julian alaphilippe
… and one of the riders who duly did so was Alaphilippe. Two Tour stage wins and a swashbuckling spell in the polka-dot jersey all the way to Paris was impressive in itself. But the way he rode all year with panache and style — as well as substance — with 12 race wins including Flèche Wallone and the Tour of Britain, places the Frenchman as one of the new superstars of the sport.
5
peter Sagan Arguably Sagan should be higher up in this list, and perhaps is being punished for not reaching the high World Championship-winning standard of the last three years. But if a down year still means a Paris-roubaix cobblestone, three Tour de France stage wins and another convincing green jersey tilt in the bag, then life can’t be so bad for the Slovakian road race champion. Realistically Sagan wasn’t going to retain his rainbow jersey in Innsbruck but the smart money would suggest he will take back that jersey in Yorkshire in 2019.