2025 version of New kids on the block

The new guys are here, and they are ready to stay. After 2023, the reflection and summary on the Development teams has been completed once again - 21 teams in total, if I counted correctly, have been finally listed, described and presented here, which is quite a big number. Many of the youngsters had a great season, many of them got World / Pro Tour contracts, deservedly so - but life doesn't stop, talent keeps coming, and I tried to summarize these changes for you in the next 35,000 characters.

Q36.5 Continental Team

First, I think it's worth talking briefly about the team that actually ceased to exist with the signing of Tom Pidcock - Q36.5 continental team wasn't strong in numbers, and their otherwise mediocre prospects weren't necessarily able to produce the excellence they could and should have showed every time - but there were some riders who had a small breakthrough this year, such as 22 year old Nahom Zeray from Eritrea, who started to race well at U23 level in Europe this year and who I think has a lot of climbing potential left in him - but if no one gives him a chance, it will be very difficult for him to show it... (plot twist: JCL Team UKYO finally saw that potential and signed him!!) In contrast, Manuel Oioli, who I am beginning to give up on as a world-class project, has been given a one-year contract, albeit at Continental level. The world is not fair, cycling is not fair... It's a pity for this project, especially because it has been abandoned in this way by Q36.5, who have been destined to promote the development of the sport worldwide...

Lotto Dstny Development Team

Let's continue with a team that is, on the other hand, very successful in managing the U23 project and where there is a chance for internal development in 2025, in addition to the fact that new prospects will very probably be successfully imported into the current structure. 2024 was very bipolar for them - they successfully built up Steffen de Schuyteneer, Robin Orins, Josh Giddings and Lorenz van de Wynkele to the point where they chained them to themselves for the next few years and moreover, created a monster for themselves in Jarno Widar, whom they can't deal with. Widar has made such a leap for 2024 that even the much-seen experts didn't expect of him, transforming him from punchy sprinter to total climber in a transfer that is something crazy to behold... Obviously Widar is a very conscious guy, certainly possessing all the ego, the cash escapade however hasn't come his way - so he's 'stuck' with the team for this year. What does that get him? Good question. Based on his knowledge, he should win the stage races he starts. Will he? We don't know.

But who else should we be looking out for here? Tars Poelvoorde is starting his second season with the team, he was in very good form at the end of 2024, if he can build on that he could be a standout next year. Matys Grisel will also be a sophomore U23, he had a problematic first season, but a junior Paris-Roubaix winner is always one to watch. Victor Vaneeckhoutte, who could be the team's breakaway specialist, and newcomer Aldo Taillieu, one of the best TT riders of his age group, could also be ones to watch. It will be an exciting team in 2025 with a lot of strong riders.

Astana Development Team

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises was the collective success of the Astana Development team, even if it was overshadowed by doping allegations. Ilkhan Dostiyev could have been the team's long-term character and identity builder, but his ban means that the Italian riders will have to take over that role. The trio of Alessandro Romele, Davide Toneatti and Mattia Negrente have carried the whole franchise on their backs, two of them have been promoted to the World Tour lineup and will not be lost there, while British rider Max Walker, who has already delivered many good results at Pro level this year, will be an EF-Easypost rider next year. The team is emptied out, and this void has been solved by reshuffling and by very out of the box signings - in the middle of the big merry-go-round, Santiago Umba was taken here by the team and DS-s - the 22-year-old Colombian caught the attention of many while still riding in Androni colours, and after an excellent 2021, a World Tour transfer was not a very far-fetched idea - but the 3 years after that can in no way be called good, nor one that would have justified his talent from before. Now it seems that he and the team have pushed for a hard reset in the last possible moment, which is definitely a positive compared to the treadmill he has been on, question what it will bring out of him. The other treadmill lad in the squad is Gustav Wang - the former TT specialist has lost his dominant quality in this category, I wonder if he can build that back on the Willier bikes...

UAE Team Emirates Gen Z

The first season of the UAE development team was really about one man - and contrary to expectations, that man was not Gal Glivar. While Glivar brought his own game and the level he brought was enough for an Alpecin contract, where he will thrive in a very serious way - it was still a season entirely about Pablo Torres. The young Spaniard has been incredibly well scouted by the UAE, along with Jan Polanc and Matxin Fernandez - the performance he put in at Finestre could set the stage for a very serious career. That aside, I still feel the promotion is premature, although I had the same feeling about Isaac del Toro, and del Toro has certainly been taught to time trial pretty decently by UAE, although Pablo Torres may be starting from a deeper position than the Mexican in that respect. Not much is known about the team's plans for next year, with Adria Pericas the only transfer announced for the 2025 season, although that transfer could turn out Pablo Torres-like - however, we won't know until the very end of 2024, early 2025, who the team's key figures for that season could be.

Ps: as I write this, the 2025 squad has arrived, and there are plenty of positives and negatives here - they were able to get Ugo Fabries from the ashes of Trinity Racing, who started as a big talent early last year, but the season itself didn't go as planned, it will be interesting to see how he can be fitted into such a structure. Enea Sambinello is already a more likeable transfer, with a puncheur/one-day potential in him, question whether they develop that skill higher with him or go in a more climby direction with him. And Marcos Freire is the third element to highlight - the Spaniard who performed well on the Spanish course is racing under a little pressure because of his name, but so far that hasn't been a barrier, now that he's entering the big boys' league he'll be getting a lot of attention. Looking at the team, I think we can expect what we've seen this year: 2-3 standouts, and a lot of drab, dismal performances alongside them.

Soudal Quick-Step Devo Team

It wasn't as strong a season for them as 2023, neither in terms of results nor impact, as they only managed to sign one guy, Andrea Raccagni Noviero, to their World Tour team, and Leander van Hautegem will continue at Pro Conti level - on top of that, the guys who otherwise did well (I'm thinking specifically of Federico Savino) didn't all get contracts for 2025. From this, I guess you can guess that the team has done a soft reset of sorts, and in addition to keeping a few interesting prospects from this year (Van den Heede, Soenens), they have filled the squad with first-year U23s from all over the world. And although the team itself will be very young, there are some very exciting projects here. Henrique Bravo from Brazil, who approaches the sport from a mountain bike perspective, who fits into the new Fore-type of project that would try to rebuild the classics squad with multidisciplinary riders, and who has done quite well in the Spanish junior scene this year. Jasper Schoofs, who was one of the top 5 juniors in the world this year, can be used for almost anything and can add something extra everywhere. Tadej Valjavec's son, Erazem, could also be very much in his element in the U23 category in a similar way, and Matijs van Strijthem, runner-up at this year's junior Harelbeke, will be here too - although I'm actually expecting a bigger jump from him in 2026. There's potential here, Soudal has laid the foundations for a new generation of great riders, it's just a question of who will step through the biggest door of all.

Tudor Pro Cycling Team U23

A relatively weak 2024 with huge potential for the future - that's the Tudor U23 team in a nutshell. This year has been all about building the team's 3 main men, the climber triumvirate, as much as possible and as well as possible. In the case of Mathys Rondel and Fabian Weiss, this has been done brilliantly - they will be part of the Tudor PT squad for 2025, while in the case of Robin Donze, this can be seen as a transition year, with the hope that in 2025, as the number one relatively senior U23 climber, he will make a big difference to the team's average performance. Outside of Sierra and Mikutis, who have produced top 5-top 10 results (Sierra was surprisingly underrated in this regard, he had an exceptionally ok season, the communication about him was worse from my side), the team hasn't really come together as a cohesive whole. At the same time, the cash coming in to the Pro Conti team showed in the development line, and by 2025 they had put together a lineup with some pretty good and sexy names. The 3 main elements of this are Krystof Kral, the Czech sprinter who has been the best sprinter of his age group at certain periods, if his development remains unbroken he will be an unmissable member of the future Czech national team along with Pavel Bittner. The second element is Oliver Mätik from Estonia, who won the junior Gent - Wevelgem this year and will be a good classics man for the team (which Tudor, as an organisation, lacks) in 2-3 years when the team will be clearly at World Tour level. And the third element is Arno Wallenborn, who will be leading the climbing section with Donze, and who I think will play a bigger role in the Pro races in the second half of the season. I like the way this team is being run, the progress will be unquestionable in my opinion.

Visma - LAB Devo Team

Did the project reach its peak last year or not? Perhaps that's the main question - after all, most of the Visma World Tour squad will be under 26 next year, and 6 of the 29-strong squad are home-grown from this development team - from this 6, four have left this year. Admittedly, this was somewhat to be expected for some, Jorgen Nordhagen has really shone this season, one of the biggest what if questions of the season was what if the Norwegian federation had not withdrawn from the Tour de L'Avenir for financial reasons and Nordhagen had still been able to race... we'll never know, I guess. So Nordhagen has put his name down here, in all seriousness, with Matthew Brennan alongside him (what a season he had at 18, holy guacamole, I loved every bit of it!) Menno Huising and Tijmen Graat make the World Tour - in Graat's case it will be particularly interesting to see how much of his seemingly fleeting superior climbing returns here - if not, it could prove to be a very bad decision. Van Bekkum promotes to Astana, and that leaves us with a bit of a depleted squad, as the best remaining member from last year is Dario Igor Belletta, who had a worse season than in 2023... But who's coming in? The arrival of Cedric Keppens, who was one of the best riders on the Belgian circuit last year, putting himself in a sprinter/puncheur super position will certainly be a top transfer. Ian Kings has arrived, a very good TT rider who I can easily see an Edo Affini type career in the longer term. Will Smith (no, not the one from Men in Black) from Trinity Racing is coming in to bolster the climbing section, I think he's a huge signing - and alongside him will be people who can create at a high level in several areas. No stopping on the Visma train, but the pace may slow down a bit next year.

Wanty-Reuz-Technord

I have a problem with them - I like the concept of the team itself, they follow the Wanty philosophy to the full, basically a Belgian team with an international flavour, mixing several disciplines... And somehow it doesn't add up to a well-rounded whole - they have very good results, lots of top 10s from lots of people, which is especially important for a development team - but they need those 2-3 franchise people to pull it and make it a real impactful project. Huub Artz was definitely one of them, the 21-year-old Dutchman became the first European champion in Wanty history this September in a very hectic race - and he also won a Giro U23 stage and the U23 Gent-Wevelgem, so it was a really brutally well-organized season, and this should have been followed up by some other riders, but only Simone Gualdi managed to follow it up, who, somewhat shockingly for me, is staying with the development team next year - a clear indication that he is being counted on as a franchise man in 2025 - top 10 results in Belgian classic races indicate that he is perfectly on the borderline of punchy/sprinty/possibly climby ridership, which could make him very valuable in the sport in the long run.

Who else could be valuable here next year? Felix Orn-Kristoff, the 18-year-old Norwegian who not only made it big in Hungary, but also at the World Championships in Glasgow as a first-year junior when he made the podium - or even in Hasselt this year when he became European champion, a brutal powerhouse for Wanty, in the long haul as he will spend 2026-2027 on the World Tour. There were two steals in the team's life during this transfer season, they signed Halvor Dolven from Uno-X, who was the gravel, sprint, puncheur specialist for the Norwegian team, I think he has a lot in him, as does Maxence Place - the Belgian climber could be the number one man in the mountain section. If the local guys continue to bring in top 10 results as they have been, and the new guys settle in, this could be a very good squad all around the world.

CTF Victorious

We're still in the middle of the Bahrain-Victorious rejuvenation project (a bit like the Bloodline story that almost never ends, this one will be too, watch out for that), but this year has seen a major improvement in this segment that can't be ignored. Daniel Skerl, the beast from Trieste, for example, has been quite dominant in sprints at times, with 2 UCI wins under his belt going into the World Tour, and while he may not necessarily fit in with the current generation of all-around sprinters at the moment, he's still going to be a very legit number two sprinter option behind Bauhaus on his team. The same is somewhat the situation with Max van der Meulen, here too the promotion is totally justified, as we are talking about one of the best climbers of his class - who finished in the GC top 20 at pro level in Abruzzo for example - and who will fit into the climbing structure currently taking shape as a young, breakout element, I really hope he doesn't get stuck in a barodeur rule. And then there's Zak Erzen and Oliver Stockwell, who have also done the promotion, but it feels premature at the moment. For Erzen, as you might have guessed, the Italian/Slovenian racing calendar wasn't quite right for his best skills to shine, as soon as we moved out of that environment he was almost completely lost, he should have had at least a year more in this structure - as for Stockwell, he was pretty good, but he would have been better off with a ProConti team to flash in, so it's feared he'll get lost in the dense structure of Bahrain as an old rookie. As for the new arrivals, we don't know much about them, with Finland's Kasper Borremans and Slovenia's Jakob Omrzel currently on this page - Kasu is a very exciting project, he knows a lot about the sport in general, and he could be good in a lot of places: more for spectacle than impact.

Uno-X Mobility Development Team

A small digression to a sad team and project that will be discontinued next year - Uno-X Mobility has decided to put all its resources into World Tour promotion, and this unfortunately means that its development team will be discontinued - a sad development for a team that deserves support (and secondly, bucks current trends that show that Development teams are needed in the sport). Still, there are positive segments, not everyone is without a team: the aforementioned Dolven has signed for Wanty, team’s climber Simon Dalby and last year's European U23 champion Henrik Pedersen have moved to Uno-X's PT line, Daniel Arnes to Van Rysel-Roubaix, Mikal Grimstad Uglehus to Visma Devo... so there was a lot of potential here overall, even to bring in new people, as there are a lot of great Danish and Norwegian prospects in the junior age group (top 8 in U18 for both nations) - somehow they failed to exploit this... Sad story with a sad ending, I feel they will regret it soon.

Alpecin-Deceuninck Development Team

The concept is there: put together a bunch of world class cyclocross riders with some great Belgian road talent and you've basically got a team. Simple as 2 + 2, right? (Although the saying goes that sometimes it's 5, and there are some points to Alpecin's admission of that.) The clear best of the bunch this year was Simon Dehairs - the result of a pretty amazing story, who finally finished in his fourth U23 season, proving that giving people time can sometimes bloody well pay off. The Belgian sprinter had an excellent season, fighting for points half for the WT and half for Devo, and racking up 407 of them - you simply can't fault that. Another season worthy of promotion was Tibor del Grosso - who, although he has no Hungarian ancestry, is a great cyclocross rider and, alongside him, has added real value to the team everywhere from New York, Austria to Belgium this year, and will need to do so next year as the void left by Kragh Andersen and Laurance needs to be filled.

There are two people whose lack of promotion I don't understand. I really don't - and my feeling is that Alpecin are wasting them, they don't strike any of the hot iron they have spawned and produced. Back in May Sente Sentjens seemed to be going straight up to World Tour after one season, after which he started so god-awfully throwing out great 1.1 results, and then to my utter dismay Alpecin posted his 2025 squad without his name. I still don't know the reasons, and this personally annoys me, so if anyone knows more about this, let me know! The other such person is Aaron Dockx - anyone who beats Nordhagen, Pellizzari and Pablo Torres in a mountain top finish should immediately have a place in a team with hardly any climber... in vain, the Roodhoft brothers' stubbornness and inoculation against climber remains very hard to understand.

Who else could be good next year? I would name two here: Senna Remijn who, like Sentjens, will add a brutal impact to the team in his first U23 season, as a puncheur, sprinter and maybe even climber, and Stefano Viezzi, the Italian former junior cyclocross world champion, it will be interesting to see how he will adapt to road cycling. It's hard to put Alpecin anywhere at the moment, there will be standout performances here I'm sure.

Lidl-Trek Future Racing

It's very strange to say that a project is among the best in the world in its first year, but in the case of Lidl-Trek Future Racing, that's a more than true statement. I think it took some brilliant scouting, which is not something teams are given in their first year by default, most teams are happy to get one pillar for their first year and then pull the rest - the fact that Lidl-Trek currently has 4 pillars on the roster and has had 4 this season is a mind-blowing feat. Starting with Tim Torn Teutenberg, who burst through the door of the pro races at the start of the season with podiums, top 5s, and there was even talk of an in-season promotion happening - then reality somewhat confronted him, but that didn't stop the promotion itself. Teutenberg's biggest strength will be the classics and sprints, further deepening an already almost too deep section. Niklas Behrens came to Lidl-Trek as an unknown, but he leaves as U23 world champion to Visma - the development, the work the team put in with him in half a year, teaching him to be a force, to build tactically... exemplary and wonderful, somehow this should be the goal of total team development. Mats Wenzel was definitely underrated, he was especially great at national level, but his development is undeniable, signing with Kern Pharma was a flawless decision because he still needs the ProConti level to be able to fulfill his potential - we have seen that Kern Pharma can become an excellent stepping stone for an extra performance. Among those staying are Swedish TT star Jakob Söderqvist, Nils Aebersold, who could be good on the punchy/climby line, and Cam Rogers, who won his first ever .1 pro race in team history in Austria this year.

And who else is coming in... Hector Alvarez, one of the best of the 2006 class, who can really do anything you ask him to, a truly modern rider whose strengths we're only now really beginning to see. Seb Grindley, the runner-up at this year's World Championships, who is already among the top prospects in terms of stamina, pure skill needs to be developed in him and he will be world class, and Patrick Frydkjaer, who has already spent a year here but was so dominant in his junior season in 2023 on several levels, and I don't want to believe he will have another poorer U23 year. For him, this will be a bounceback year. Incredibly strong squad again, I trust them to be the best.

Red Bull - Bora Hansgrohe Rookies

Welcome to the Development Groove, dear Red Bull-Bora! I can honestly say that the team has been in desperate need of a structural change, and with the arrival of Red Bull it became clear that they would also be investing time in youth development, and I have a feeling that the club has taken inspiration from AG2R for 2025, as they have both brilliant first-yearers and very good complementary older U23 riders to form a relatively tight squad that can work together brilliantly. To say the least, the team includes Lorenzo Finn, who won in Zurich this year with something of an earth-shattering performance, the Italians together have long been waiting for a world star like Finn, who can really go uphill/hill and has a great racecraft, and this can be carried through to U23 level. The 2006 age group is bolstered by junior teammate Theodor Clemmensen of Denmark, who can handle everything from sprints to cobbled races to hills and short efforts with extra class, and could be the one to perhaps push the team's cart forward in most races. Like Clemmensen, the German champion Paul Fietzke is a true master craftsman, perhaps even better than the Dane at everything, including ITT, and it was evident that this squad was put together to meet the demands of the modern sport. Of the older U23's I can mention the Trinity Racing duo, Callum Thornley and Luke Tuckwell both showed some very promising days with the British team, in a World Tour environment those days could increase exponentially, I think they also look like an interesting project at first glance. This is a team to keep an eye on, I'm excited for their debut.

Development Team DSM-Firmenich PostNL

It's been a terrible season for the Devo team - as much as they've been very good at integrating youngsters into the big team, they've been so bad at managing their development team, and it's been bloody painful to watch. Johan Dorussen was probably the only one to produce a worthwhile result, winning a 1.2 race in the Netherlands, but he's not a project that can be trusted to build a team in the long term at the moment. The others? Nada, niente. And there were some good names here, Vlad van Mechelen signed for the Bahrain World Tour team next year (still early in my opinion, even though he looked like a gigantic talent), Vlot, van der Werff, Barhoumi, Ragilo, Bodet... all these are good names overall, but somehow it all didn't add up.

But next year, can it come together as one big mass? DSM will be on this, it was nice to see that energy was put into the project. They have also rejuvenated themselves and got two very elite riders. Jurgen Zomermaand was perhaps the first swallow of the Strava generation in 2023 when he was 17 and rode top 10 times up the Col de Rates, and showed some of that in real life last year - if he really is as good a climber as his reputation is, DSM could be a very serious force with Jurgen in 2-3 years. The other rider, Pavel Sumpik, an extremely versatile Czech guy with lots of great results in sprints, 3km on 8% hills, ITT, the sky's the limit for him - he could carry the whole DSM project on his back, reviving this from the ashes.

Hagens Berman Jayco

Abstract team, a bit too abstract for my perception. I like the fact that the project is very international, that they actually give a lot of people and nationalities the opportunity to breakout, but unfortunately not many people took advantage of that last year. Alastair Mackellar and Artem Shmidt were the two most prominent figures on the team who actually managed to sell themselves to World Tour level, to INEOS and EF-Easypost, but Kasper Andersen for example, who had a top 15 1.1 result, will only get a club team next year, which is still unknown to me, which is not necessarily fair in my opinion anyways... However, next year the team will be much stronger and they should be counted on for top positions. We have the Will duo, Eaves, who was very good in the Far East races in 2023, the move to Europe hasn't gone smoothly so far, but he can now go full focus on this part of his career; and Holmes, who has a contract with Jayco until 2028 - I feel this was a bit premature, but I'm convinced he can be ready for the World Tour in a year. Jesse Kramer has arrived from Visma, anyone who comes from there will be quality - as well as Carl Emil Just Pedersen, the most awesomely named Dane I've ever dealt with - he can bring ITT skills to the team, and then I haven't even mentioned the Tavares-Wiggins-Adam Rafferty trio, who I think will definitely bring internal development. They won't be the best, but I expect positive trends from them in 2025.

FDJ Development Team

On the basis of names, this would be an excellent squad, and there are achievements and people who have delivered these expected performances - but still the overall impact of the team has fallen short of the golden generation, and I'm not sure that this generation can be called the silver generation. There are some very good sprinters in the team who could have been dominant at lower levels - Noah Hobbs I for some reason fully thought was already part of the FDJ elite line, but this year he has helped a lot in the sprints on the development team - he has fast legs, but unfortunately not a modern type which could put him at a disadvantage later in his career, and for that reason the team didn't keep him. Lewis Bower is a step behind at the moment in this process, but similar things can be said of him - he could be a big asset to the team next year. Amongst the climbers, Brieuc Rolland was by far the best - he's got himself a promotion next year - after Il Lombardia's U23 win, that was obvious - a great, excellent puncheur/climber combination will be for the team. In Josh Golliker, FDJ could have had the perfect Thomas de Gendt replacement, but he's just not at the level to use that in the World Tour, he's also leaving the team - Max Bock could be the perfect archetype for the climber department, and he could use that next year.

Oscar Nilsson-Julien can be listed among the new arrivals, the British-French guy finally arrives at the foot of the World Tour level after a very good 2024, one step away from total success for the multidisciplinary guy, and next to him the French talent quartet of Boulet, Cushway, Daumas and Baptiste Gregoire can be highlighted - a squad short on numbers but long on ambitions.

Arkea Development Team

A team whose World Tour team is in huge trouble, and whose development team will have a lot of riders graduating to the World Tour ranks to try and sell themselves there for 2026 and beyond. Not the most comfortable situation in the world. Neither for the team management, nor for the riders. However, as the World Tour team has improved, so has the development team shown signs of life - although only Florian Dauphin, a relatively old rookie, has managed to win a race, a GC for Kreiz Breizh Elites. The team was particularly strong on the hillier terrain, with Embret Svestad-Bardseng having the best season of his career, finally back to the level we last saw from him perhaps 2 or 3 years ago, he could be a defining element in the Arkea World Tour ranks. Louis Rouland is also in this category, though his development has been more gradual over time - regardless, his top 5/10s in GCs have been strong. Giosue Epis is also a 2025 graduate, we can expect more from him in sprints perhaps, but I would still feel the promotion was premature for him overall.

As for the newcomers, Edoardo Zamperini is the biggest name of them all, the 21-year-old Italian is a real one-day race specialist, he has won in Kranj, he has had some very good Italian results - the question is what he can achieve in an international, dominantly French environment, how much strength he can have here. As for the French signings - Axel Bouquet could be good, we've seen some nice things from him as a junior, but obviously translating that to an U23 level will be difficult. The other French arrivals? A bit like Arkea itself right now, grey, sour, very apparently not much point in their arrival... I wonder how they'll make this whole squad as a unity.

Decathlon AG2R Development Team

Are they the best? I don't know. We've waited a very long time for the moment AG2R entered the U23 category, and once they did, they kicked down every door in existence with the momentum they had. It was a brilliant season, full of excellent performances, with almost the entire team making promotion to World Tour or even ProConti level. For a development team to give a top 10 nation an elite champion... that was a very unexpected turn of events, yet Rasmus Pedersen achieved it. The Bisiaux-Isidore duo have also developed at a more than adequate pace, both have shown why they can be counted on already on the World Tour - it will be another question in what role they do this, which will be the area where they can use their best skills and abilities. Tom Donnenwirth I think they have got more than the maximum out of him, so even for him I think it was a good decision not to keep him in AG2R for the longer term...

But what's even more exciting is the incoming side - and this has to be seen in the context of Paul Seixas coming straight into World Tour formation, having been promoted of the junior category straight away. And even so, this line is brutally strong. Luis-Joe Lührs, for example, is leaving the structure of the Red Bull - Bora World Tour for Decathlon, the German sprinter has had a very messy last 3 years, he had to make one, or rather two, steps to rebuild. The Danish line is represented this year by Pelle Koster Mikkelsen, who finished second in this year's muddy U23 Paris - Tours, if AG2R can make him a very valid classics man it will be a brutal scouting result and a sign that it's worth thinking outside the box for everyone. And then there's the junior age group quartet of Boussemaere, Chaleil, Sparfel, Innhaug Dahl, all multifaceted, multidisciplinary and damn talented... I'd be scared of Decathlon if I were in the place of most teams, because they're coming in 2025 with a serious roster, and a frighteningly expanded one of that.

Israel Premier-Tech Academy

But who has a truly extended squad? Israel. Perhaps too expanded, and perhaps worst of all, not necessarily sure that the development squad is being used for what it needs to be - in return we got a half-season of Blackmore, a full season of Cote dominance, and Pau Marti, who was super for two weeks, as long as he could keep up with the Torres-Widar duo at Aosta (a very big thing in itself), but other than that he's been off and on in the peloton, if he wants to make something of himself at Israel's future World Tour team he'll have to eliminate that until 1 January 2026. On top of that? Not much. Moritz Kretschy was sadly gone, his progress was hampered by injuries, and the Garcia-Moore-Maris trio failed to make the expected impact - mainly because they were tasked with serving the lead-outs in full. That's understandable - still, some could have risen to the occasion.

As for the future, there are three key riders coming in who could shape the team's 2025: Jens Verbrugghe, who in his third U23 year might prove that he is more than just an ITT rider; Patrick Casey, who has shown a lot of promise this year in the junior age group, he will definitely be a model of aggressive riding to watch and Finlay Tarling - the younger of the Tarling brothers, I don't think he needs much introduction. The main goal of the team is to develop Marti as complex as possible, with him the team could gain gigantically in the long run.

Team Lotto Kern-Haus

Finally, the moment has come: INEOS Grenadiers have founded a development team - to be precise, they have taken over the role from the German team Lotto Kern-Haus. A very odd decision, and a fundamentally sad one for British cycling, as the team could have chosen to give it to one of the local teams, such as Trinity Racing or Saint Piran - but it seems that the sport has become so diverse and multi-ethnic that simply giving up one's national identity has become a valid option. It's a damn sad trend, I can't tell you anything else. As for Lotto Kern-Haus: the German-Luxembourg team has lost all its decent assets for next year - Mathieu Kockelmann has chosen Lotto Development, Joshua Huppertz hasn't signed yet but will surely have a place in next year's cycling rotation, Romet Pajur is signing for Red Bull - Bora, Martin Barta for ATT Investments... and on the incoming side, there's no huge quality yet. Noe Ury has a relatively ok puncheur potential, which has only come out in the local championships so far, a lot can be expected from him as a relatively experienced rider in the team. The neo-U23 Joe Cosgrove could be good at classics, but it will be at least 2 years before any of that shows. It remains to be seen what the full squad of the team will be, but it's very much a project in its infancy, a bit as tangled as the current INEOS squad.

EF-Eavolo

Last minute news that EF is reviving its previously dying development program and giving it a new lease of life, beefing up the Aevolo team with more international prospects. This is interesting mainly because EF has been doing a remarkable job of Robin Hood-ing young talent in recent years, but the current trends have not escaped them. At the same time, this Robin Hood approach of steal from the rich and give to the poor has been perfectly applied to the first build-up of their development team, because the riders they have acquired are perfectly suited for this. They've got Noah Hobbs and Josh Golliker from FDJ, two guys whose pros and cons I've described in the FDJ section, but they can still help the team a lot in their first year, especially. Strengthening the US line is Colby Simmons, who has shown good things in all the main areas this year, if he can focus that in one direction he could become an excellent (especially at one-day level) rider. Youth is represented on the current team by Jenthe Verstraete (puncheur-climber combo) and Magnus Carstensen (Danish rouleur, I think) - I wish them all the best, as well as everyone else on this very long list.

The development roundup is over, next week we'll have the last big preview, the men's 2025 pre-Power Rankings. If you wanna hear about any other riders, let me know in comments.