The Best Five Riders of 2020
Cycling has a lot of great riders right now. So many, in fact, that narrowing them down proved extremely difficult. With young riders signaling a changing of the guard, discipline specialists, and more, we’ve had to leave off so many riders we’d love to talk about. So. Here are our five best riders of 2020. If you disagree, send us a message. We probably won’t read it though.
Disclaimer: this list is all men. We had a longer statement here, but there’s not much more to do that hold our hands up and apologize for not covering women’s cycling enough this year.
Remco Evenepoele
Remco scraped his way onto our list after a heated debate on WhatsApp, and there’s no denying he’s an exceptional talent. Despite that talent, it would be easy for us to overlook him with so much of the season taking place after he bowed out with injury. That wouldn’t be fair though: for a while he was unbeatable, racking up stage race wins like it was nothing. Some of the Northern European countries are already celebrating him like the second coming of Merckx. And yes, he may actually be that good.
Major wins: Overall & two stages – Volta ao Algarve // Overall & one stage – Tour de Pologne // Overall & one stage – Vuelta a Burgos // Overall & one stage – Vuelta a San Juan
Wout van Aert
Is Wout van Aert the best cyclist in the world? He certainly stands out even on a team that features Roglic, Dumoulin, and rising star Kuss. He seems to be able to win anywhere, and looks at place everywhere in the sport – whether that’s pulling for Roglic in the mountains or contesting a sprint. Or, indeed, racing (and winning) cyclo-cross.
Even his losses are stuff to be envious of: second in Flanders and in both the road race and time-trial at the Worlds. He’s one of the riders that had us declare that we’re living through a golden age of the sport earlier this year. He’s that good.
Major wins: Belgian Time Trial National Championships // Milan–San Remo // Strade Bianche // Two stages – Tour de France // Green jersey & one stage – Critérium du Dauphiné
Julian Alaphilippe
Julian Alaphilippe once again proved his supreme capability at igniting a race. He was never going to repeat last year’s feats in the Tour de France, but he won a stage, made countless attacks, and wore the yellow jersey for three days. He was a more than deserving winner of the UCI World Championships, and took his first win in the rainbow jersey at the Brabantse Pijl.
Embarrassingly, his first race as World Champion could’ve been a monument win at Liège–Bastogne–Liège, but he celebrated early and Primoz Roglic sneaked past to take the victory, and the commissaires later relegated him to fifth place for irregularities in his sprint. He later crashed out of the Tour of Flanders and ended his season. Curse of the rainbow jersey?
Major wins: UCI Road World Championships // Brabantse Pijl // One stage, Combativity award (St 17), three days in yellow – Tour de France
Tadej Pogacar
Tadej Pogacar is better than he has any right to be at his young age. It’s not just his legs, either: perhaps his greatest strength is in his tactical acumen. He can read a race excellently, knows exactly when to launch an attack on a steep finish, and even came out on top against the might of the Jumbo-Visma team.
His Tour win will go down in the annals of history due to the dramatic nature by which the yellow jersey changed hands at the last minute, but he also delivered one of the all-time greatest rides to ensure he was the man on the top step of the podium.
Major wins: Slovenian Time Trial Championships // Overall, Polka Dot, White Jersey, & three stages – Tour de France // Overall & two stages – Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana // Young rider classification & one stage – UAE Tour
Primoz Roglic
It was the confident, controlled ride of a champion at the Tour de France that had him cruising to victory… right until the moment that victory was snatched away. On reflection, his team might have done more to take advantage of their strength, but ultimately it was Roglic himself who came up short in the final time-trial.
Thankfully, he took the Vuelta overall for the second year running, meaning a narrow Tour miss wasn’t to define what was otherwise an excellent season. A second-first Tour-Vuelta combo is remarkable, and even more so in a strange, compacted season. And let’s not forget that Roglic finished the year top of the UCI rankings. Again.
Major wins: Slovenian National Championships // Overall, green jersey, & four stages – Vuelta a España // Liège–Bastogne–Liège // Overall, Points classification, & two stages – Tour de l’Ain // Second overall & one stage – Tour de France // One stage – Critérium du Dauphiné