2024 Season in Review Part 3: Which Stars Need to Bounce Back in 2025

Looking at five star riders who will be looking to reclaim their spots at the top of the sport in 2025

After breaking down 2024’s top individual performers last week, I am ranking an elite selection of riders who came into the season with high expectations (aka star riders), but who, for one reason or another, fell short of meeting them. 

To qualify for this list, riders either needed to win the overall title at a Grand Tour, a one-day Monument, or finish in the top five of the UCI Points rankings at least once in the last three seasons. Failing one of those achievements, they need to be one of the sport’s most well-compensated riders.

Below is a select list of riders who were recently high-performing and now need a comeback season in 2025:

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1) Sepp Kuss:
2023-2024 UCI Points Rankings Differential: -152
2023-2024 WorldTour Win Differential: -2
2023-2024 Podium Differential: -1
The 30-year-old American became just one of eight total riders to win a Grand Tour since 2020 when he won the 2023 Vuelta a España and appeared poised to complete his transition from reliable domestique to full-time team leader in 2024.

• Unfortunately, after a 2024 season where he looked off the pace at every WorldTour stage race he contested, including an extremely disappointing title defense at the Vuelta, where he ceded over 20 minutes to eventual winner, and former teammate, Primož Roglič, the path to outright leadership doesn’t look so clear.

  • One major thing in Kuss’ favor is that his Visma-Lease a Bike team, which used to have an embarrassment of GC riches, now has a Grand Tour GC contender list that is beginning to look slightly threadbare outside of the Tour de France, which they will likely continue to want Jonas Vingegaard and Matteo Jorgenson to give their full focus, and the Dutch team may have to continue to race Kuss as an outright leader in Grand Tours in 2025.

    • This means Kuss will likely be under significant pressure to post another strong ride at either the Giro d’Italia or Vuelta a España in the coming season.

2) Jai Hindley:
2023-2024 UCI Points Rankings Differential: -68
2023-2024 WorldTour Win Differential: -1
2023-2024 Podium Differential: +1
The 28-year-old Australian may be on an exclusive list of riders to win a Grand Tour in the “Pogačar Era” (2020-onward), but after a 2024 season where he failed to grab a single win and posted a 78-place drop in the UCI points rankings, he is likely feeling pressure on an ever-strengthening RedBull-Bora-Hansgrohe team.

• After all, if Hindley can’t consistently post high placings in Grand Tour, he could find himself facing domestique duty in his own team, especially with riders like Roglič, Aleksandr Vlasov, Dani Martínez, and Florian Lipowitz all currently looking like far more solid options.

  • Hindley UCI Rankings by Years
    2024: 105th
    2023: 27th
    2022: 23rd

  • Hindley WorldTour Wins by Year
    2024: 0 (3 total podiums)
    2023: 1 (2 total podiums)
    2022: 2 (4 total podiums)

    • Making a 2025 turnaround difficult for Hindley is that due to his fairly limited ability to score results in top one-day races, he has been left with ever-shrinking options to rack up personal GC results due to the recent trend of only the sport’s ultra-elite riders winning Grand Tours.

3) Matej Mohorič:
2023-2024 UCI Points Rankings Differential: -53
2023-2024 WorldTour Win Differential: -4
2023-2024 Podium Differential: -9
In addition to being a consistent stage hunter, the 30-year-old Slovenian is one of just three riders not named Van der Poel, Pogačar, or Evenepoel to win a Monument in the last three seasons.

• However, 2024 saw him post his worst season since 2020, finishing 73rd in the UCI points rankings and walk away without a single WorldTour win.

  • This is quite the step down for a rider who finished in between Remco Evenepoel and Richard Carapaz in the 2021 UCI rankings and looked primed to emerge as one of the only riders capable of challenging the sport’s upper-class after winning Sanremo in 2022.

    • If Mohorič wants to get back on track and reclaim his ‘top challenger’ title, finding a way to elevate his performance in 2025 is essential, even if it may require him to set his gravel ambitions aside for the time being.

4) Wout van Aert:
2023-2024 UCI Points Rankings Differential: -5
2023-2024 WorldTour Win Differential: +2
2023-2024 Podium Differential: -5
It may be slightly absurd to suggest that a rider who won Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, podiumed at two other spring Classics, and won three Grand Tour stages had a down year, but with expectations and the bar set so high in the world of cycling’s modern superstar Galácticos, 2024 marked yet another season where Van Aert failed to match the output we have become accustomed to from both him and his Big Six contemporaries (Evenepoel, Vingegaard, Roglič, Van der Poel & Pogačar).

• Van Aert WorldTour Wins & Total Podiums By Year
  2024: 3 (16 total podiums)
  2023: 1 (21 total podiums)
  2022: 9 (25 total podiums)
  2021: 12 (22 total podiums)
  2020: 5 (12 total podiums)

• Van Aert UCI Rankings by Year
  2024: 10th
  2023: 5th
  2022: 2nd
  2021: 2nd

  • While Van Aert’s greatness is undeniable, due to a combination of injury, bad luck, and an apparent inability to deliver in major one-day races at the same level as his peers, he has fallen well behind Pogačar and Van der Poel, who have racked up 15 one-day Monument and World Championships victories since Van Aert won his last (and first) Monument at the 2020 edition of Milano-Sanremo.

    • With the now 30-year-old Van Aert quickly getting into the back half of his prime, there will be a tremendous amount of pressure on the Belgian to begin pulling back the Monument gap, in particular the major Spring Classics, on Van der Poel and Pogačar, in 2025.

5) Tom Pidcock:
2023-2024 UCI Points Rankings Differential: -1
2023-2024 WorldTour Win Differential: 0
2023-2024 Podium Differential: 0
The 25-year-old British rider on Ineos is admittedly an odd inclusion in this list since he technically didn’t experience a performance dip in 2024. Outside of winning his second Olympic Gold Medal in the Mountain Bike and finishing at roughly the same position in the UCI points rankings as years past, his win rate (1) held with his career-long annual average (1.25 victories per season).

• However, the fact that he was able to track his career-best performances with such a low win tally is a major problem, especially when we factor in his extremely high level of compensation (rumored to be £5/€6/$6.5 million per season).

  • This poor results-to-compensation ratio has become such an issue that his Ineos team was attempting to shop Pidcock around this off-season in an effort to get a rival team to take him off their hands, even if they would need to continue to fund a portion of his salary, likely £1-£2 million of it.

    • However, while Pidcock has had incredible success in mountain bike racing in recent years, his road results have been so thin that they couldn’t find a buyer, even at a discounted rate, since £4.5/€5.4/$5.8 million is still far too high a price for a rider without a single career Monument victory, an inability to challenge for Grand Tour GC wins and no real track record of working for teammates.

      • This high financial load means that if Pidcock wants a path off Ineos before his current deal expires in 2027, he must flip a major switch in 2025 and prove he can be a consistent contender in the biggest one-day races and Grand Tour stages.

Checking In on Last Year’s Watchlist

In last year’s 2023 Rider Rankings recap, I identified four superstars who were in need of a performance step-up in 2024 to retain their status as the peloton’s top performers.

• These three riders were Wout van Aert, Richard Carapaz, Enric Mas, and Jai Hindley.

  • Due to being repeated offenders and being back on the list, it is immediately clear that Van Aert and Hindley didn’t successfully bounce back.

  • However, the other two, Richard Carapaz and Enric Mas, stormed back with solid 2024 seasons.

    • Enric Mas: Finished on the overall podium at the Vuelta a España and moved from 50th to 11th in the UCI rankings, clearly got things back on track in 2024.

    • Richard Carapaz: Won a stage, wore the leader’s jersey at the Tour de France, took the overall KOM jersey with impressive and aggressive riding in the third week, and moved from 81st to 20th in the UCI points rankings, perhaps had the most demonstrative return to form, especially with his 4th place overall at the Vuelta showing that he is still capable of being a Grand Tour GC contender.

• Interestingly, Julian Alaphilippe, who appeared on the 2022 Star Watch List and failed to deliver the following season, continuing his multi-year slide, had a mini-renaissance in 2024, scoring three wins and moving up 51 spots in the UCI points rankings to 37th.

  • This is a far cry from the heady days of 2018 and 2019, when he won 24 races and finished in the top five of the UCI points rankings, or 2020-2021, when he won back-to-back worth championships, but it was still an impressive recovery by a rider who could have completed the well-practiced, and lucrative, slide into a well-paying contract on a French team without delivering commensurate results.

    • Alaphilippe Year-Over-Year Performance
      2024: 3 wins (10 podiums)
      2023: 2 wins (4 podiums)
      2022: 2 wins (7 podiums)

      2021: 4 wins (14 podiums)

      2020: 3 wins (7 podiums)

      2019: 12 wins (19 podium)

      2018: 12 wins (19 podiums)

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