2022'S HOTTEST YOUNG RIDERS

Each year brings a crop of young hopefuls to the upper echelons of the sport ready to make a mark. James Shrubsall and Owen Rogers pick out some of the ones to watch this season

- James Shrubsall and Owen Rogers

THE HOME-GROWN HERO

Ben Turner, 20 Ineos Grenadiers

If many more Yorkshire riders join Ineos Grenadiers, the team will need to incorporate a white rose on its jersey design. The latest recruit from God’s Own Country is 22-year-old Ben Turner, whose signing from Trinity Racing was announced in November. He joins British national champion Ben Swift and lifelong friend Tom Pidcock, boosting the Yorkshire contingent to three very potent riders.

Turner has already shown off his new Ineos jersey, racing cyclo-cross World Cups in Belgium and the Netherlands alongside Pidcock, and he is looking forward to riding alongside him on the road in a couple of months.

“Hopefully we can work together – I think we could be a really good partnership,” Turner says. “We’ve been really close for many years now since we were really small. So I think it’d be quite special to do some of the biggest races in the world with one of your best mates.”