Alex MacQuoid
When the 2025 season ends, it won’t just be another year of racing that concludes. Forty riders are hanging up their wheels, marking the end of a generation that defined modern cycling. From Geraint Thomas to Romain Bardet, these athletes spanned two decades, hundreds of victories, and countless hours of untelevised work for others.
This isn’t just a retirement list—it’s the collective goodbye of a generation that carried the sport from marginal gains to data-driven spectacle without losing its humanity.
The Headline Names
Geraint Thomas
The everyman who conquered the Tour. His 2018 Tour de France victory was the culmination of years spent in the service of others. He leaves as the last living bridge between the Sky machine and the modern INEOS ethos.
Romain Bardet
The romantic climber who carried France’s hope. His descents were artistry, his interviews poetry. His retirement in 2025 feels like closure—the end of the most soulful chapter in modern French cycling.
Caleb Ewan
Speed, chaos, and sudden silence. At his peak, he was unstoppable, winning stages across all Grand Tours before a crash derailed his momentum. His retirement at 30 left many in disbelief.
Louis Meintjes
Africa’s quiet metronome. Consistency defined his career, finishing in the Tour’s top ten five times without theatrics or controversy.
Alexander Kristoff
The last of the old-school hardmen. A sprinter who could survive Flanders, a classics specialist who could still win bunch sprints. His retirement marks the end of an era for Europe’s cobbled gladiators.
Michael Woods
The runner who became a poet on two wheels. His vulnerability and honesty in defeat earned him admiration. He leaves as the most human storyteller the peloton ever produced.
Rafal Majka
The perfect mountain lieutenant. His partnership with Tadej Pogacar turned him into a legend of self-sacrifice, the silent shadow pacing the world’s best up Alpine climbs.
Arnaud Demare
France’s sprinting benchmark. He won Milano–Sanremo 2016, dominated the Giro’s points classification twice, and racked up almost a hundred professional victories.
Elia Viviani
The track star who beat the sprinters at their own game. His precision and clinical road performances defined Italian speed for a generation.
Alessandro De Marchi
The romantic of the road. Fans adored him for his persistence and courage, chasing the impossible without calculation.
The Loyal Lieutenants and Unheralded Heroes
Beyond the headline acts, 2025 also closes the careers of those who built their reputations in service. **INEOS** loses the quiet heart of its machine: alvatore Puccio, Jonathan Castroviejo, and Omar Fraile. Tim Declercq, “the Tractor”, leaves Lidl–Trek after a decade of selfless grinding. Pieter Serry retires as Quick-Step’s ultimate glue guy—zero personal wins, infinite respect.
France waves goodbye to its tireless attackers: Anthony Perez, Anthony Delaplace, and Geoffrey Bouchard. Adrien Petit, scarred by a near-career-ending Roubaix crash, bows out as the embodiment of northern grit.
In Italy, Gianluca Brambilla and Simone Petilli sign off as two of the peloton’s great survivors, both coming back from devastating injuries simply to keep racing.
The Nearly-Men and Early Goodbyes
A different kind of story runs through the next group—one of potential interrupted. Pierre Latour, once a white-jersey winner at the Tour, never overcame the fear of descending that followed a series of crashes. Ide Schelling, the ever-smiling Dutch attacker who lit up the 2021 Tour, vanished from the peloton after battling mental-health struggles. Unai Zubeldia, just 22, retired with long-COVID complications, while Lars van den Berg’s career ended at 26 due to iliac-artery surgery.
Elsewhere, Ryan Gibbons departs as South Africa’s most tactically versatile pro; Jonas Koch and Loic Vliegen bow out as dependable classics lieutenants; Martijn Budding leaves as a cult hero of the YouTube-born Unibet Rockets; and Eddy Fine, once France’s U23 champion, calls it quits at 27, citing burnout.
And rounding out the class of 2025 are a handful of familiar figures whose departures might not make headlines but still mark the end of long, industrious careers. Daniel McLay, Giacomo Nizzolo, Nans Peters, and Tosh van der Sande bow out alongside seasoned pros Kristian Sbaragli, Jimmy Janssens, and Victor de la Parte, completing the forty names whose retirements quietly reshape the professional peloton.
The Bigger Picture
Add them all up and the class of 2025 accounts for over 500 professional wins, spanning Monuments, Grand Tours, and national titles. More importantly, they trace cycling’s evolution from analogue to algorithmic. What unites them isn’t their palmarès but their humanity—riders shaped as much by crashes and comebacks as by podiums.
The peloton will look very different next spring: faster, younger, more scientific. But as these forty veterans step off the stage, they leave behind something less measurable—the craft, camaraderie, and quiet resilience that made road racing what it is.
The class of 2025 won’t just be remembered for how much they won, but for how they made the sport feel.