Retirement class of 2024 – The riders calling time on their racing careers

Grace Brown and Mark Cavendish are among the big names retiring from racing this season (Image credit: Getty Images)

It doesn't matter if it was Alejandro Valverde in 2022, Annemiek van Vleuten and Peter Sagan in 2023 or now Mark Cavendish in 2024: whenever a retiring rider has had a significant impact on an era of the sport – or in Cavendish's case, perhaps an even greater timespan - the resulting media attention can threaten to eclipse the news that other top names are also handing up their wheels.

The end of 2024 is no different. For the 2025 season, it's worth remembering that apart from the massive loss of Cavendish, we'll also be missing retirees of the calibre of Olympic and World Champion Grace Brown, with the charisma of Colombian 'rock star' racer Rigoberto Urán, the breakaway genius of Thomas De Gendt or the behind-the-scenes dedication of a top team worker like Christine Majerus. And that is to name but a few.

When Norway's Edvald Boasson Hägen claimed his third and last Tour de France stage win from a breakaway in 2017, the Norwegian was described by the Guardian newspaper as "remaining one of the great unfulfilled talents of cycling." But if there can be no doubt that the career of the quietly spoken 'Eddy the Boss', as he was once nicknamed, faded notably results-wise in its second half, a final tally of 81 victories speaks volumes for just how successful Boasson Hagen was in his youth – and how talented he remained.

Ranked third in the UCI world rankings in late August 2009 when he was just 22, Boasson Hagen initially seemed fated to shake cycling's hierarchies to its core. In his second last year as an amateur, his devastating late accelerations and racecraft allowed him to claim three small group sprint stage wins in the 2006 Tour de l'Avenir. Then in 2007, a series of 12 wins through the season, in all manner of terrain barring the high mountains – arguably his biggest Achilles' heel throughout his career – hinted at an even greater ability to triumph across the board.

And so it proved, almost as soon as he turned pro next January. A key component of the staggering winning machine that was Team Colombia and HTC in 2008 and 2009, and where sprinters like Mark Cavendish and Andre Greipel were also flourishing, Boasson Hagen cracked out victories ranging from sprints in the Tour of Britain to the Gent-Wevelgem and stages in the Giro d'Italia. Barely in his twenties, it seemed that he was already going places – and fast.

Snapped up by Sky in 2010, Boasson Hagen saved their Tour de France in 2011 as leader Bradley Wiggins crashed out, with not one but two transition stage wins. But that success was later overshadowed by the rise of Wiggins and Chris Froome in the 2011 Vuelta a España, and then in 2012 as the team increasingly focussed on Grand Tour classifications, Boasson Hagen's no less significant contributions to the team's brilliant campaign were increasingly eclipsed.

Boasson Hagen's move to Qhubeka in 2015, the team where he spent the longest period of his career, helped maintain his leader's status, with nine wins in 2016, the most notable a stage in the Critérium du Dauphiné, showing that early consistency had yet to die out. But the dreams of a big win in the Classics were gradually fading and by the time he reached TotalEnergies in 2021, he'd mostly moved into the role of a highly appreciated team worker. Yet for older, Boasson Hagen's pure winning class in his heyday at Sky, Qhubeka and HTC would linger long in the memory.

Capturing the Australian time trial title in 2019, the first of four, was more than a hefty indicator of the shape of things to come. Brown's immense talent in the speciality saw her then claim gold medals in time trials at Commonwealth Games (2019), Olympic (2024) and World Championship level (2024). So in some ways, it was more than fitting that her final success was the Chrono des Herbiers time trial in France this October.

Other top one-day wins included Brabantse Pijl (2020) and the Classic Brugge-De Panne (2021). But if her French team FDJ-Suez were likely particularly delighted to see her claiming as important a local victory as the Bretagne Ladies Tour in both 2023 and 2024, personally speaking Brown would surely have a soft spot for her standout home soil triumph in Australia's top stage race, the Tour Down Under in 2022.

It's worth remembering that even before he powered to victory number 35 in the 2024 Tour de France, Cavendish already held the record – together with Eddy Merckx – for stage wins in cycling's biggest bike race. Yet to focus just on the Tour with Cavendish is to ignore the staggering range of his victories, from multiple stages two years running in the long-departed Tour of Missouri to the venerable giant of the sport that is and remains the Giro d'Italia, from the streets of Copenhagen in the 2011 World Championships to the cobbles and grit Driedaagse Brugge–De Panne, from Milan-San Remo to the Tour of Oman.

When it comes to establishing Cavendish's status in modern-day cycling, his winning in all three Grand Tours is already the privilege of only a select few of the world's best racers. But to lead Giro, Tour and Vuelta in his career, as Cavendish also did, whittles down the numbers of that elite collective even further. Indeed, although his pro. career lasted – remarkably for a sprinter – for nearly 20 years, there was a period from around 2009 to 2012, when it seemed that Cavendish was the fastman's equivalent of Tadej Pogačar.

"Thomas is Thomas," longstanding Lotto-Dstny sports director Mario Aerts used to like to say when asked about what plans they had for Thomas De Gendt in a particular race. And in the very best sense of the expression, De Gendt was a rider who simply refused to play by the normal rules – and whose resulting breakaway successes made him both an inspiration to other non-conformists and a cult hero in the sport.

De Gendt could easily have taken things in a very different direction, had the Belgian opted to follow up his third place overall in the 2012 Giro d'Italia and triumph on the Stelvio with further cracks at GC. Instead, he opted to go for what was arguably an even harder path, looking for success in the teeth of the iron control of the GC teams in major stage races and where – unless you are in the league of Tadej Pogačar or Remco Evenepoel – regularly triumphing in long-distance moves is increasingly hard to do.

Yet De Gendt triumphed in his chosen field a great deal. In fact, it happened so often that his breakaways became viewed as the ultimate triumph of a cycling underdog. Victories included a double success in the Tour de France – including one on the Mont Ventoux – two in the Giro d'Italia and one in the Vuelta a España, but also in such high calibre stage races as the Tour de Suisse, Tour de Romandie, Paris-Nice and the Criterium du Dauphiné.

When Christine Majerus announced mid-season that she was retiring at the end of 2024, you could almost hear a groan of collective disappointment that the news produced in her team, SD Worx-ProTime. Not because she was a born winner – although a staggering 17 Luxembourg national time trial titles might suggest the opposite – but because she was so instrumental behind the scenes in helping the sport's number one squad succeed so often.

During her career, Majerus became famous for being one of the top domestiques of all time, be it in the Classics or the Grand Tours. In 2020, when she was named one of the top 10 team workers of the season by Cyclingnews, colleague Dani Ostanek wrote that "the undisputed road captain was in the team for four of the their seven trade team wins during the season, including all four of the Women's WorldTour triumphs." They also cited her work for the winning team that year at Le Samyn (where she took second herself), at La Flèche Wallonne, Gent-Wevelgem and the Tour de Flanders.

In 1998 Minnaar was still sponsored by local bike shops in South Africa but he nonetheless managed to claim the National DH title. After moving into the international ranks in 2000 when he rode as a junior for British squad Animal Orange, in 2001 he moved on to Global Racing, where he won the World Cup series for the first time, as well as claiming his first World Cup in Kaprun, Austria.

Minnaar was rightly viewed as one of the leading names in Downhill racing by this stage, but 2008 was arguably the pinnacle of his World Cup success, podiuming in every one of the eight rounds and winning three. It all but went without saying that he took the overall title. However, perhaps the high point of his career came in 2009, with a World Championships victory on home soil in his home town of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

Mørkøv's work with Cavendish, guiding him to within sight of one stage victory after another at QuickStep and again at Astana is probably his best-known facet as a racer. But it's far from his only success story. A Vuelta a España stage win in 2013 came after the bunch caught a breakaway within sight of the line, and there were three Danish road titles as well.

Yet it was on the track – Mørkøv's first love as a cyclist, watching the Copenhagen Six Days in the 1980s and 1990s alongside his father – that he shone the brightest in his own right as a racer, taking the 2020 Madison Olympic Gold with Lasse Norman Hansen. There were also three World Championships titles in the same speciality and one in the Team Pursuit.

"I really enjoy working with all of them,” Mørkøv told Cyclingnews in an interview in 2022. “I’m often asked what are the differences between them and they certainly have different personalities. But at the end of the day, they all have to be delivered 250 metres before the line in the best possible position.” And to do that, whenever he was leading them out, Mørkøv was almost always exactly where he and his sprinter needed him to be.

To get a full impression of how compelling a racer and public figure Rigoberto Urán could be, three different off-the-bike incidents immediately come to mind. The first was an interview I did with him in the mid-2000s for Cycle Sport magazine, where in calm but extremely powerful language, he discussed the accidental killing of his father, a lottery ticket salesman, in a paramilitary shoot-out and how as a young child he then had to take over as family breadwinner, doing everything from washing cars to working in bars.

This is a roundabout way of saying that thanks to Urán's resourcefulness and resilience, his good-natured sense of humour and his refusal to take himself (or his sport) too seriously, Urán struck numerous chords with both the public and the media. It goes without saying, too, that Urán could walk the walk as well as talk the talk, with stage wins in all three Grand Tours, podium finishes in the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France, and an Olympic silver medal in the 2012 road race in London to boot.

But his importance as a racer didn't end there. After some difficult years for Colombian cycling to make breakthroughs in the sport, Urán's pioneer role in the later noughties, taking younger riders under his wing and helping them get started in Europe can't be forgotten, either. Nor should the top businessman facet of Urán be ignored either. Over the years, he has built up his own line of clothing, cafeteria chain and bike brands back in Colombia, which according to Forbes magazine were globally worth over 42 million dollars in 2022.

But rather than financial success or his extremely classy racing style, what arguably strikes home the most about Urán was his larger-than-life personality and charisma – and where that has taken him. Who else but Urán could manage to have a Grammy-nominated (and by all accounts very popular) soap opera made about his life, for example? Or opt (as he says he now will do) to go for a career in football – playing, not managing?

A retirement special can't go past without mentioning Anna Shackley, one of Britain's most talented young cyclists, who had to retire aged 22 because of heart issues. A former U23 road champion, and bronze medallist in the equivalent category on home soil Glasgow's World Championships in 2023, Shackley ultimately had to take what she called "a devastating decision," and stop racing.

Also bowing out at the end of this season are Human Powered Health duo, Audrey Cordon-Ragot, the hugely talented allrounder with seven French TT National titles and two on the road to her name, and Alice Wood. Wood, 29, is a former double British National Champion on the road and against the clock in 2019, and one of the few riders able to say she once beat Marianne Vos in a two-up duel, in her case in the opening stage of the 2017 BeNe Ladies Tour.

Others also playing their part in with too often underrated behind-the-scenes teamwork and ending their careers include Italian climber Dario Cataldo (Lidl-Trek) and Texan TT specialist Lawson Craddock (Jayco-AIUIa). Lithuanian Ignatas Konovalovas (Groupama-FDJ), who once beat Bradley Wiggins in a TT stage of the Giro d'Italia, 2017 Tour de France Alpine stage winner Lilian Calmejane (Intermarché-Wanty) and one of Italy's top leadout specialists, Jacopo Guarnieri (Lotto-Dstny) are also saying goodbye to professional racing this year.

New Zealander Patrick Bevin (DSM-Firmenich-Post NL) and Domenico Pozzovivo (VG Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizanè) were famous both for their commitment and consistency as well as their articulate insights into the inner workings of the peloton. Tour Down Under winner Bevin bounced back twice after cardiac arrhythmia in 2020 and then resurfaced in 2024 and Pozzovivo etched out an even longer career despite multiple crashes and major injuries. Both, though, have now opted to call times on their careers – Bevin at 33, Pozzovivo at 41.

Part of top WorldTour teams like BMC in his prime, former US national champion Joey Rosskopf (Q36.5) is another notable retiree, so too is breakaway specialist and environmental campaigner Luis Angel Maté (Euskaltel-Euskadi). The same goes for Simon Geschke (Cofidis). The number of bearded winners of mountain stages of the Tour de France there have been will likely remain a pub quiz question for many years, but Geschke is amongst them.

Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.