While the cycling season is packed with big wins and stirring performances by the established superstars of the peloton – think Demi Vollering, Mathieu van der Poel, Lotte Kopecky, Tadej Pogačar and so on – they all had to start somewhere.
Once upon a time, in some cases not too long ago, these big names were finding their way in the cycling world, showing their promise here and there and scoring key wins that signposted their potential.
Every year we see a new crop of such riders doing the same across the calendar – less familiar names bursting onto the scene for the first time. Breakthrough performances like these give us an idea of these rider's potential and signpost who we should watch out for in future years.
We've looked back over the 2023 season to pick out those riders who have made a leap this year. They might have scored a big win somewhere along the way, maybe their first in a Grand Tour or at the top level, or they might have just taken that next step up in level. In either case, they've broken through.
Here are our 10 breakthrough riders of 2023.
Charlotte Kool (DSM-Firmenich)
Women’s sprinting has been somewhat of a foregone conclusion for the past few seasons with Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx) the dominant force when it came to any flat finish. That status quo was challenged in 2023 as Wiebes’ former teammate and leadout rider, Charlotte Kool, stepped up and showed that she was far from unbeatable.
If we head back to February, Kool made an immediate impact at the UAE Tour, beating Wiebes in the first showdown of the season on stage 1 and ending the Emirati race with two wins to Wiebes’ one. This was the first of 13 wins in 2023 for the 24-year-old whose career is still in relative infancy with many more sprint battles to come.
Kool was prolific at the RideLondon Classique and Baloise Ladies Tour, with other highlight wins coming at La Vuelta Femenina and the Simac Ladies Tour. Kool joins the exclusive club, alongside Elisa Balsamo and Marianne Vos of riders able to compete with Wiebes in a bunch finish, and at only 24 she still has room to develop that top-end speed.
Alongside Pfeiffer Georgi, Franziska Koch and Megan Jastrab, who are key parts of Kool’s lead-out, DSM-Firmenich have a great core of young riders all signed on until at least 2025, who have stepped up in 2023 and should only continue to improve as a train. They will, however, be desperate for a Tour de France Femmes stage win in 2024 which eluded them last season despite their continued efforts to chase down breaks. (JM)
Felix Gall (AG2R Citroën)
The 25-year-old's breakthrough season, his fourth in the pro peloton, stands head and shoulders above his previous campaigns. The Austrian was solid all spring, recording top 10s at Itzulia Basque Country, the GP Indurain, and Tour of the Alps, but it was summer where he shone the brightest.
Gall, who hadn't finished in the top 10 of a WorldTour race before this season, rounded out his spring chasing Richard Carapaz through the Alps to take second place at the Mercan'Tour Classic. His next race, the Tour de Suisse, would bring the first big win – his first win of any description, in fact – as he soared to a solo breakaway win in the mountains at Leukerbad.
He finished eighth there, but still more was to come at July's Tour de France. Third from the break in the mid-mountains at Laruns came ahead of a quiet second week before the big one – a 13km solo ride from the breakaway at Courchevel.
He was already top 10 overall by then and finished eighth in Paris after taking second behind Tadej Pogačar on Le Markstein a day earlier. This time last year, few would've expected Gall to emerge as such a climbing force. Now, he'll be on everyone's watchlist in 2024. (DO)
Mischa Bredewold (SD Worx)
It could be difficult to make your impact felt at the super team that is SD Worx, given the number of races captured by star riders Demi Vollering, Lotte Kopecky, Marlen Reusser and Lorena Wiebes.
Despite that, Mischa Bredewold has managed to shine through and establish herself as one of the top riders in that team at just 23. Knowing full well that she would mainly be working in support of the likes of Kopecky and Vollering, she still took three wins in 2023. And big ones at that with the European Championships road race and Classic Lorient Agglomération in Plouay as the highlights.
She’ll go into 2024, as most SD Worx riders do, in a different jersey - the European Champion’s, with a similar supportive goal for most races. However, her strong sprint and ability to break away from the peloton will allow her to play the perfect attacking role with the leaders waiting in the wings, so expect the wins to keep on coming for Bredewold heading forward. (JM)
Josh Tarling (Ineos Grenadiers)
Including neo-pros on a list of riders having a breakthrough season is always something of a contentious choice, but Tarling was impossible to ignore in 2023, emerging as a fully formed top-level time trialist.
The 19-year-old was already junior world champion in the discipline and won the junior Chrono des Nations last year, too. A step up straight to the pros hasn't phased Tarling at all though – he has been on the podium of all seven individual time trials he's contested this season.
Among them were wins at the Chrono des Nations, the British National Championships, a stage at the Renewi Tour, and the UEC European Championships. He's had the beating of far more experienced competitors, including Remco Evenepoel, Wout van Aert, and Stefan Bissegger, and also picked up bronze at the Glasgow Worlds for good measure.
Already one of the top time trialists in the world, it'll be interesting to see where Tarling goes from here as he grows as a rider and adds more strings to his bow. Will the cobbles (he made his debut at Paris-Roubaix this spring) come calling? (DO)
Antonia Niedermaier & Ricarda Bauernfeind (Canyon-Sram)
The next spot on this list is a two-for-one deal with German and Canyon-SRAM duo Ricarda Bauernfeind and Antonia Niedermeier, who both stepped up from the German team’s development squad and immediately made an impact at WorldTour level.
The pair took maiden Grand Tour victories in dramatic fashion with Niedermeier attacking away before navigating a technical descent to arrive solo ahead of a charging Van Vleuten behind on stage 5 of the Giro.
Bauernfeind would back this up at the biggest race of all, the Tour de France Femmes, where she became the youngest stage winner at just 23. She slipped away for a bonus sprint more than 30km from the finish line on stage 3 and kept building her gap, able to hold it all the way to the line despite a late effort from Marlen Reusser (SD Worx) and Liane Lippert (Movistar).
Canyon-SRAM have two great investments for the future with home riders in Niedermeier and Bauernfeind, and we can only expect them to get better with experience. Both can climb well and Niedermeier’s time trial ability is certainly something to watch out for as the U23 World Champion. (JM)
Jonathan Milan (Bahrain Victorious)
With the likes of Mads Pedersen, Mark Cavendish, Fernando Gaviria, and Pascal Ackermann on the start list, how many onlookers would have picked out Milan to ease to the ciclamino points jersey at May's Giro d'Italia?
That's exactly what the Friulian did, though, blasting to a stage win on day two – his first at WorldTour level – and picking up four second places on the road to Rome.
2022 saw Milan pick up a handful of podiums at the Tour de Pologne and two wins at the CRO Race, so his leap in performance for 2023 has been a revelation. The 23-year-old track star – he's part of Italy's gold medal-winning team pursuit squad – is still raw in the sprints.
He has the power and the pace in the burst to the line but more positioning experience and a stronger lead-out could've seen him convert some of those second places into more wins.
Those will come with time, though, and a move to Lidl-Trek for 2024, where the likes of Tim Declercq, Ryan Gibbons, and Simone Consonni will form part of a new-look sprint train, won't hurt either. (DO)
Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek)
It’s been nine months since Gaia Realini hit the ground running as soon as her time at Lidl-Trek began, combining with her icon and teammate Elisa Longo Borghini at the UAE Tour to capture the queen stage atop Jebel Hafeet and with it a 1-2 on GC. She would prove this was no fluke during the Ardennes Classics, where a third-place finish at Flèche Wallone and seventh at Liège-Bastogne-Liège started to really turn heads as a special rider was coming through.
Since then she’s only kicked on to new heights, affirming her former promise shown through top ten results at La Flèche Wallone and Liège-Bastogne-Liège with a podium finish at both the La Vuelta Femenina and the Giro. The Vuelta specifically was the highlight of her season as she took her maiden WorldTour victory in a two-up sprint against none other than Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) before finishing third overall.
Realini established herself as a top-tier climber able to compete with the likes of Van Vleuten and Tour de France Femmes winner Demi Vollering (SD Worx), even able to drop Van Vleuten on the climb to Lagos de Covadonga despite suffering a mechanical issue halfway up the climb.
Expect the 22-year-old to only get better in 2024 with the steepest, most difficult climbs perfectly suited to her abilities. A double-header of summit finishes at the 2024 Tour de France Femmes must have taken her fancy and she’s got no one better to aid her development than Italian cycling icon Longo Borghini. (JM)
Cian Uijtdebroeks (Bora-Hansgrohe)
'The next Remco Evenepoel' title hasn't yet had quite as many names attached to it as 'The next Eddy Merckx', but Uijtdebroeks was the first man to get bestowed with it after a series of similarly dominant performances in the junior ranks.
As he stepped up to the pro ranks last season, the 20-year-old didn't quite have the immediate impact of his countryman, though promising rides included a win at the Tour de l'Avenir, third at the Sibiu Tour, and eighth at the Tour of Norway.
This year, Uijtdebroeks has taken a big step forward, recording top 10s at the Volta a Catalunya, Tour de Romandie, and Tour de Suisse. His biggest ride of the year came later on, though, with his Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta a España.
Uijtdebroeks finished his first three-week adventure in eighth overall and second in the youth classification only to Juan Ayuso. He's pencilled in for the Giro d'Italia next spring where a top five or even a podium could be the aim. 'The next Remco Evenepoel' is coming along nicely. (DO)
Christina Schweinberger (Fenix-Deceuninck)
Not everyone rises to prominence as soon as they hit the World Tour, but eventually, that breakthrough can come and suddenly they start popping up at the top of the biggest races. Christina Schweinberger fits that mould, coming into her career-best form in 2023 with an incredibly consistent season in the Classics and in any race against the clock.
The Austrian finished in the top ten of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the Classic Brugge-De Panne and Gent-Wevelgem while also being able to stay with the group of favourites at Paris-Roubaix that wasn't able to catch the breakaway.
Her Classics season was just the start of her breakthrough year, as she maintained form into the Tour de France Femmes and finished fifth on the punchy stage 2 behind only Liane Lippert, Lotte Kopecky, Ashleigh Moolman Pasio and Silvia Persico. Schweinberger would back this up with another incredible fifth-place finish at the World Championships road race in Glasgow behind only the best riders in the world.
Her best results came in her speciality, the time trial, taking the bronze medal at the World and European Championships. Her teammates Marthe Truyen, Julie de Wilde and Yara Kastelijn also had great seasons as part of Fenix-Deceuninck making a breakthrough mark on the Women’s WorldTour after stepping up to the top-tier, with the latter taking their first Tour de France Femmes stage win. (JM)
Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost)
You'd be hard-pressed to find a rise in the pro peloton as meteoric as Healy's this year. At the end of his rookie 2022 campaign, he lay 386th in the UCI rankings with the Irish time trial title and sixth at the European Championships time trial his stand-out results.
His 2023 season concluded with him hitting the heady heights of 22nd. He's picked up wins at the Tour of Luxembourg, Settimana Coppi e Bartali, and the GP Industria e Artigianato. Those results would eclipse his 2022, though, of course, there was much more besides.
Healy, who turned 23 two months ago, was a revelation of the spring, finishing second at both De Brabantse Pijl and Amstel Gold Race, the latter having been in a big-name break move with 90km to go. He capped off April with an equally impressive fourth place at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
He kept on rolling through May and his Grand Tour debut at the Giro d'Italia, triumphing from the break with a mammoth 50km solo break on the hilly stage 8 to Fossombrone. He was metres away from doubling up eight days later in Bergamo, too.
Heading into 2024, Healy can now be considered one of the top puncheurs in the peloton and a star on his EF Education-EasyPost team. He is perhaps the breakthrough rider of the 2023 season. (DO)
Honourable mentions
Israel-Premier Tech featured a handful of riders who could make the list with neo-pros Marco Frigo, Derek Gee, and third-year pro Sebastian Berwick battling away in breakaway after breakaway at the Giro and racking up nine top fives throughout the race.
Arnaud De Lie's (Lotto Dstny) rise has been no surprise given the nine wins he racked up in his neo-pro 2022 campaign. Highlights of his sophomore year included second at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and a first WorldTour victory at the GP Quebec.
Cédrine Kerbaol (Ceratizit-WNT) took an obvious marker of breaking through with the white jersey at the Tour de France Femmes, as the best young rider. She also took a huge win at the French National Championships in the time trial, where she dethroned six-time winner Audrey Cordon-Ragot.
Oier Lazkano's (Movistar) second year at Movistar saw him achieve the best results of his promising career, including an unexpected second place at Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Boucles de la Mayenne, and the Spanish road title.
Shirin van Anrooij (Lidl-Trek) was Kerbaol's predecessor to win the white jersey at the inaugural Tour de France Femmes and easily could be on the main section of this list, however, her status as a second-year rider puts her into honourable mentions. She took her maiden WorldTour win at Trofeo Alfredo Binda and won the Tour de l'Avenir in what was a big progression from 2022.
In a sport dominated by Belgian and Dutch riders, 23-year-old Cameron Mason (Cyclocross Reds) is a rare British rider carving a path at the top. This year has seen him regularly grab top 10s at the biggest races on the calendar, while silver at the European Championships is the big highlight.
Daria Pikulik (Human Powered Health) was a relatively unknown rider on the road until 2023, already enjoying success on the track for Poland. She reached new heights in 2023 with seven wins and two at WorldTour, bookending the season with the first and last top-level wins at the Tour Down Under and Tour of Guangxi.
Victor Lafay (Cofidis) may already have a Giro d'Italia breakaway stage win on his palmarès, but his 2023 campaign – headlined by a daring late attack to win stage 2 of the Tour de France in San Sebastián – has seen him step up another level.
Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) feels slightly wrong to have on a 'breakthrough' list as one of the finest riders in the world, but her triumph at the Gravel World Championships cannot be ignored as it ended a four-year drought without a win for the Polish rider. She'll look to kick onto more victories in 2024 and another visit to the Tour de France Femmes podium.
Matej Mohorič (Bahrain Victorious) is a well-established star of the sport with wins at all three Grand Tours and Milan-San Remo to his name. However, October saw him make an impact in a new discipline as he became the gravel world champion. There'll be more to come from him on the rough roads next year, too.
Yara Kastelijn (Fenix-Deceuninck) was already mentioned above with Schweinberger, but her win at the Tour de France Femmes was a true breakthrough. It was her first win as a pro and an emotional day on the longest stage of the Tour no less. Look out for her flying into more breaks next season, as the women's peloton certainly will be.
