Every year there is a list of big-name riders who end their career in professional cycling and the class of 2023 includes a number of key riders that have transformed the sport in the last decade.
The retirement class of 2023 includes Annemiek van Vleuten who did so much to lift the level of professionalisation in women's cycling, and Peter Sagan who combined winning world titles and Classics with a knack for entertaining and shaking up the sport.
Other retirees include Thibaut Pinot, Greg van Avermaet, Rohan Dennis, Marta Bastianelli, Nacer Bouhanni, Daryl Impey and Jack Bauer.
In this special feature we look back at the career of some of the biggest retirees of 2023.
Thibaut Pinot
Leading with emotion, the French rider with a flare for firing up the fans
- Top victories: Il Lombardia, 3 x Tour de France stages, 2 x Vuelta a España stages, Giro d'Italia stage and KOM, Milano Torino, Tour of the Alps, 2 x Tour de l'Ain, 2 x Tour de Suisse stages, 2 x Tour de Romandie stages, Tour des Alpes Maritimes et du Var
- Career win tally: 33
“I haven't won so many races in my career, but I think winning can even be boring," said Pinot as he finished Il Lombardia and ended his professional cycling career.
Boring is a word that could never be used to describe Pinot's career, which began in 2010 with FDJ and finished with the same team this year.
Despite downplaying his winning prowess the 33-year-old is leaving the sport with an impressive victory list, from Il Lombardia to three Tour de France stages, stage wins at the Vuelta a España and Giro d'Italia plus victory at Milano-Torino.
However, it is the wins that Pinot didn't get that provided just as much excitement and anticipation for so many fans over the years.
The rider – who at one stage caused French fans to brim with hope that they would see a home nation rider claim victory at the Grand Tour once again – delivered a fitting farewell to the race for the yellow jersey in his final season.
On the final mountain stage of the Tour de France for 2023, Pinot stoked those flames of excitement once again. He took off on the Petit Ballon, with spectators yelling wildly as accelerated clear of the break and to the head of the race, spurring dreams of an awe inspiring final victory at the race. Pinot fought on to the final ascent of the Platzerwasel but was caught and finished seventh.
The victory may not have been his but he once more he won the crowd and after that is what seemed to matter most.
" I left a mark in the hearts of the people, and that’s almost more beautiful than a victory," he said after the stage.
Annemiek van Vleuten
A perennial race favourite that has pushed the performance boundaries
- Top victories: 4 x Giro D’Italia Donne GC and 16 X Giro d’Italia Donne stages, Olympic gold TT, 2 x World Championships road race, 2 x World Championships time trial, 3 x La Vuelta Femenina GC, 2 x Strade Bianche, 2 x Tour of Flanders, 2 x Liège-Bastogne-Liège, 2 x La Course, Olympic TT gold medal, Tour de France Femmes GC
- Career win tally: 104
Annemiek van Vleuten is a rider that started her career as a Classics contender, sometimes cast in the shadow of a powerful group of teammates, but then developed into one of the best climbers of her generation.
She used her supreme time trialling skills over and over again to carve out winning solo escapes – everyone knew were coming but no one could follow.
Van Vleuten walks away from the sport having set a mark for others to try and rise to, but it could well be a long time before anyone manages to emulate some of her feats.
Her final year was by no means lacking in big results – including overall victory at the Giro d’Italia Donne, Vuelta a Femenina and Tour of Scandinavia – but 2022 was the dream year.
The rider, who settled into the final years at Movistar, managed to claim the most sought after jerseys in cycling after she swept up an astonishing overall victory trio, taking out the La Vuelta Femenina, Giro d’Italia Donne and the very first edition of the Tour de France Femmes. What’s more she then added another World Championships victory to the list in the road race at Wollongong. That meant the Dutch rider got to spend most of her final season in the rainbow jersey.
It is, however, fair to say that pretty much every one of the last seasons would equal a dream season for most riders.
Van Vleuten’s results tally steadily built with prestigious win from Dutch titles to La Course victories, time trial and road race World Championships, Tour of Flanders and Strade Bianche wins plus a gold medal in the time trial at the Olympics, a history making yellow jersey at the first Tour de France Femmes and multiple Giro d’Italia Donne and La Vuelta Femenina overall wins.
She walks away at the age of 41, having burnt brightly right through to the end of her 16 year career and perhaps even leaving the generation of riders she was leaving behind breathing a sigh of relief.
Greg van Avermaet
Olympic gold and one of the most sought after cobble stones on the planet
- Top victories: Gold Olympic road race gold, Paris Roubaix, Gent-Wevelgem, 2 x Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, 2 x Tour de France stages, 2 x Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, Tirreno-Adriatico GC, Vuelta a España stage, E3 Harelbeke
- Career win tally: 42
Throughout much of his career Greg Van Avermaet has been one of those riders who stood out in the peloton, particularly during the time when he donned that impossible to miss gold helmet that marked one of the biggest victories of his career.
Van Avermaet claimed the gold medal at the Olympic Games road race in 2016 and with the intervention of the COVID-19 pandemic was reigning champion for five years.
"Since that win I've been reminded every day about the win," Van Avermaet told Cyclingnews before he handed over the title in 2021.
"You meet other Olympic champions, and they want a photo. And it connects more than just the cycling world. It's been like that for the last five years and that's quite cool. It's been amazing to achieve that in my career."
That, however, was far from his only huge win as even before Olympic gold the rider had already claimed Tirreno-Adriatico, his first Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the two Tour de France stage victories and worn the yellow jersey for three days, adding another eight to his 2016 tally in 2018.
The first of two Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal victories then quickly ensued before 2017 added another layer of depth to the results tally, with E3 Harelbeke and Gent-Wevelgem wins paving the way to Paris-Roubaix where despite a crash and mechanical problem before the Trouée de Arenberg, Van Avermaet managed to take victory at the Monument by seeing off Zdeněk Štybar – who is also retiring – Sebastian Langeveld, Jasper Stuyven and Gianni Moscon in the sprint.
The flow of victories may have slowed in the latter seasons of a career that took him from Lotto to BMC and CCC to AG2R Citroën. Still Van Avermaet still maintained a presence in the the top ten on many occasions and even took a win early in his final season a the Boucles de l'Aulne victory.
Van Avermaet bowed out at Paris-Tours before a packed farewell event at Dendermonde in Belgium.
Marta Bastianelli
A 2006 career start that quickly roared into overdrive with a rainbow jersey
- Top victories: World Championships road race, Tour of Flanders, Gent-Wevelgem, Ronde van Drenthe, European Championships road race, 3 x Omloop van het Hageland, Postnord Vårgårda WestSweden Road Race, Giro d'Italia Internazionale Femminile stage
- Career win tally: 44
Marta Bastianelli's first win in professional cycling could hardly have been any bigger, when in 2007 the Italian went on the attack and burst across the line in Stuttgart and claimed the rainbow jersey of the World Champion ahead of defending champion Marianne Vos.
It was an enormous high in Bastianelli's cycling career in just her second season though it turned into an equally deep low when Bastianelli in 2008 was suspended for a year after testing positive for an appetite suppressant in July at the European Championships, where she was racing in the U23 women's category.
Returning to competition in 2009, there were some quieter years for the rider who has raced for Safi-Pasta Zara-Manhattan, Team Cmax Dila, Feniks-Petrogrades, Mcipollini, Faren-Let's Go Finland, Aromitalia-Vaiano, Ale Cipollini, and spent one year with Virtu Cycling before returning to Ale BTC Ljubljana which transitioned into UAE Team ADQ.
Still the Italian quickly built back after becoming a mother in 2014, with the results really flowing from 2016. The win tally quickly built, with Gent-Wevelgem and the European Championships among the results, building to a peak of 11 season victories in 2019. What's more there were some spectacular scalps among that season's tally.
Her stellar spring included wins at Ronde van Drenthe and the Tour of Flanders, where she sparked a split on the Oude Kwaremont and then out-sprinted Annemiek van Vleuten and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig.
Bastianelli continued clocking up the victories through the final years of her career before deciding on a mid season retirement in 2023, with her home race of the Giro d'Italia Donne providing a fitting finale for the UAE Team ADQ rider, who made her way to the final start line of her career through a ceremonial archway formed by the raised bikes of her fellow racers.
Peter Sagan
Enigmatic rider closes enviable road chapter but has another cycling story to write
- Top victories: 3 x World Championships road race, 12 x Tour de France stages, 7 x Tour de France points jersey, 3 x Gent-Wevelgem, Paris-Roubaix, Tour of Flanders, 18 x Tour de Suisse stages, 4 x Vuelta a España stages, 2 x Giro d'Italia stages
- Career win tally: 121
At the peak of his career, Peter Sagan seemed unstoppable and only age has slowed him.
Speed, an ability on the bike that always seemed to make it look like he was handling the most difficult of circumstances with unworried ease and a flair that time and time again delivered him over the line.
His deadpan matter of fact style, somehow filled with personality, made him a start of the sport beyond his stellar results, which already elevated him to extreme heights.
In his most fruitful season Sagan's victory tally reached 22, and while the win list that year contained a long list of impressive victories, from a Tour de France stage and points jersey to his first of three wins at Gent-Wevelgem, at this point the rider who had started out on the WorldTour in 2010 still had plenty more big prizes ahead.
They included a spectacular run in the World Championships road race, with the Slovakian sweeping up the rainbow jersey three years running from 2015 to 2017, the Tour of Flanders in 2016 and Paris Roubaix in 2018. The win tally slowed for the rider after that, and he started to contemplate the end of road career which played out at Liquigas, Cannondale, Tinkoff, Bora Hansgrohe and finally Total Energies.
The Tour de Vendée farewell at the start of October, however isn't goodbye to competitive cycling with Sagan heading back to the discipline where it all began.
“A chapter closes, a new one is opening,” the rider, who seemed unphased by the landmark told Cyclingnews before the race.
Mountain Bike World Cups and hopefully the Olympic games are now where his focus lies, and the popular rider is also sure to drag the focus of a swathe of road cycling fans along for the ride.
Hannah Barnes
A career of phases – contender, domestique and mentor
- Top victories: Giro d'Italia Internazionale Femminile, Setmana Ciclista Valenciana, The Women's Tour stage, British National Championships time trial, British National Championships road race and Gran Prix San Luis Femenino
- Career win tally: 12
The British rider delivered a career that started out in the Netherlands with Team Ibis, veered over to the United States with United Healthcare and then back to Europe with Canyon-SRAM and finally Uno-X, which provided a home and way to pass on her experience for the final two years of her career.
The 30-year-old can look back on significant highs from more than a decade of UCI racing with 2015 one of the big highlights, with the rider delivering four victories in her final year at the American team including a home nation win on stage 5 of the Women's Tour. That, however, was also a year that delivered a significant low, with the rider breaking her ankle in August of that year which not just caused an early end to that season but with a long recovery hampered her 2016 start with Canyon-SRAM.
Shaking that off, she built through the next two years taking out a national road race title in 2016, a Giro d'Italia Internazionale Femminile stage in 2017 and at the end of that season delivering a performance at the World Championships in 2017 that saw Great Britain teammate Lizzie Deignan point to her as a potential future world champion.
That strong end to 2017 carried through to 2018, in a season that that yielded four wins. After that, the momentum stalled and while the rider still had many years as a valued teammate still ahead at Canyon-SRAM and then as a mentor at Uno-X her time on the top step of the podium came to a close.
Blighted by long term injuries that hampered her performance significantly this year, the rider decided that the 2023 season would be her last. She will now become a rider's agent for the SEG agency.
Rohan Dennis
Shaving the seconds to collect a rainbow coloured array of jerseys
- Top victories: 2 x World Championship ITTs, Tour Down Under GC, Tour de France stage, 2 x Vuelta a España stages, Giro d'Italia stage, Commonwealth Games time trial gold and silver medal, Olympic Games time trial bronze
- Career win tally: 32
There are very few Australians that can claim to have worn the maillot jaune at the Tour de France, the maglia rosa at the Giro d'Italia or the maillot rojo of the Vuelta a España and those that have pulled on a men's elite rainbow jersey at the Road World Championships are an even rarer breed.
Rohan Dennis has done all four. It was the rider from Adelaide's time trialling prowess that fuelled this enviable list of achievements, with Dennis claiming the world title in the discipline for two years running and parlaying early Grand Tour time trial victories into stints in the leader's jersey. He also delivered a Commonwealth Games gold and silver medal plus an Olympic Games bronze in the discipline.
The time trial wasn't the only place where Dennis could hit the top of podium. That ability to ride away alone as well as climb and bury himself on the front helped add a healthy dose of road race victories to his results tally and the tally of his teammates as well.
It's hard to forget his standout domestique effort at the 2020 Giro d'Italia where Tao Geoghegan Hart rode to Giro d'Italia victory, after Dennis blew apart the race with his incessant pace-making in the final two crucial days in the mountains.
Dennis started out in the WorldTour in 2013 with Garmin Sharp after working his way through the mainly Australian development squads. It wasn't long before the first victories rolled, with his home state race, the Tour Down Under, proving a fertile hunting ground in those early seasons. Dennis then made a rare mid-season move to BMC in 2014 and stayed with the squad through to 2019. After that he raced with Bahrain Merida for less than a season, leaving the squad after abandoning the Tour de France but delivering a second world time trial title despite the turmoil. He made the shift to Ineos Grenadiers in 2020 and then saw out the last two years of his career at Jumbo-Visma.
The years he spent with BMC were where he accumulated more than two-thirds of his career victories but in the 33 year old's time on the WorldTour there is only one season that has passed without a win – that was the COVID-19 hit year of 2020 where he played a pivotal role as a super domestique at the Giro d'Italia.
More notable retirements
The list of riders taking a final bow in 2023 runs well below those outlined above and while it would take too long to mention them all there are a few more that we must mention.
For a start, Nathan Van Hooydonck, made a forced shock exit from the men's WorldTour peloton after the Tour of Britain when he suffered a heart attack doctors discovered that the Belgian Jumbo-Visma rider had a heart muscle anomaly. While the 28 year old will be missed from the peloton, it's a story that could have had a far worse ending as the heart issue was discovered after it caused him to lose control of his car.
Then there is Zdeněk Štybar who made a seamless transition from cyclocross, where he won multiple world titles, to Classics success but has faced a tough run through recent seasons which included double iliac artery surgery this year.
South African rider Daryl Impey also ended his 16-year career in Canada in September, walking away with 30 wins, including a Tour de France stage and two Tour Down Under GC wins.
French rider Tony Gallopin also decided it was time for him to move on after 16 years in the professional peloton, while compatriot Nacer Bouhanni is walking away after a tough return from injury which the rider said left him "a shadow of myself".
Shane Archbold also retired from professional racing after the Tour of Guangxi, but that doesn't mean the 34-year-old from New Zealand is leaving Bora-Hansgrohe. he will be staying at the team as a directeur sportif.
The Women's WorldTour will be losing New Zealand rider Georgia Williams, who battled with a number of injuries but still won five elite national time trial titles and two in the road race and also spent many of her years in the peloton as a valuable teammate, particularly on the climbs, at the Australian GreenEdge squad.
The 30-year-old switched to EF Education-EasyPost for her final season, stepping out on a high as she hit the stage podium twice at the Women's Tour Down Under and came third overall before going on to take her fifth New Zealand time trial title.
One time teammate Jessica Allen is also calling time on her career. The 30-year-old rider from Perth who so often could be seen turning herself inside out early in a race to deliver her teammates to the end in the best possible position ended her long run with Jayco-AlUla at the Tour of Guangxi last month.
Tayler Wiles, another who so often spent her energy helping her teammates, also walked away mid-season with the 34-year-old Lidl-Trek rider facing an uphill battle after being hit by iliac artery endofibrosis.
