TOO FAST, TOO SOON?

Cycling's rising stars are turning pro at ever younger ages thrilling for the sport, but what about for the riders themselves? Chris Marshall-Bell investigates

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Cormac Nisbet was one of Britain's most promising juniors in 2023. Signing for Soudal Quick-Step's development team in 2024, the pathway to the top had opened up for him. "The team is unbelievable and everything was set up for me to excel at Quick-Step," Nisbet says. But just eight months into his U23 career, the young Londoner realised that the dream he'd chased since the age of nine - to become a professional cyclist - no longer appealed to him. "There were two main reasons: one, the danger of the sport has massively increased.

We're racing alongside people who we know might go on to lose their life in a bike race later in the season," he says, "and two, there's a lack of mental stimulation when you're a pro cyclist." The fire within him had burned out.

Nisbet, who turned 20 two weeks ago, wasn't the only one hanging up his wheels early. His French team-mate and contemporary Gabriel Berg also quit the sport, citing being "trapped in a routine - cycling, cycling, cycling all the time. Outside of cycling, I saw no one. I had no social life." Nisbet echoes this sentiment. "It's a simple life: you ride your bike, travel to a race, race your bike, eat chicken, pasta or rice in average hotels around Europe, and it's quite robotic," he goes on. "And because of the inflexibility of it all - you can get called up to a race 10 days before - you can't get a part-time job or study for a degree on the side, as you don't know where you're going to be in two weeks' time." Though the average age of the peloton hasn't changed very much this century - this season's youngest World Tour team, Bahrain-Victorious, has an average age of 25.8, while the oldest, Lidl-Trek, has an average age of 28.6 - since 2019, riders under the age of 23 are scoring more points than ever before.