Cyclist
Is winning the Tour de l’Avenir actually indicative of future success?
Isaac del Toro may have been a name unfamiliar to most at the start of this season, but by lighting up racing at the Tour Down Under he’s unlikely to be one fans and rivals alike will forget.
Just a casual two race days into his WorldTour career, the 20-year-old stunned the peloton – who were prepared for a sprint finish in Lobethal – by attacking just a kilometre out from the finish line of Stage 2, crossing ahead of Corbin Strong, Caleb Ewan, Biniam Girmay and the rest of the bunch.
It’s hardly a shabby start to a professional career, and puts Del Toro in elite company. Mathieu van der Poel also won his first WorldTour race after just one previous day of racing at that level – at the Dwars Door Vlaanderen in 2019 – and has since gone on to one of the most successful careers of our era. Big shoes to fill, then.
While this was Del Toro’s first pro win, his first major result was at last year’s Tour de l’Avenir, where he won Stage 6 on the Col de la Loze and held on for overall victory. The result saw him marked as one to watch for the future, topped off a promising season and got him a job at UAE Team Emirates – but just how indicative is Tour de l’Avenir success of future results?
What is the Tour de l’Avenir?
Literally called the ‘Tour of the Future,’ the race is essentially a mini Tour de France for the next generation. It started off in 1961 as a race for riders from the Soviet Union and other Communist countries, who had no pros eligible for the Tour de France.
Since then it has changed dramatically in demographic, if not in format. Held every year in August (this year’s edition starts 13th August), the race is typically held over eight to ten stages and visits many of the same places seen in the Tour de France. Del Toro’s triumph in what is pretty much the junior version of the Tour happened at the same heights as Tadej Pogačar’s yellow jersey campaign collapsed just a month prior.
Riders compete for their national team, so it often shows which countries are set to take over cycling’s biggest stage in the coming seasons.
In its early years the race was restricted to amateurs but in 1981 it opened to professionals, before transitioning to a race specifically for younger riders. From 1992 it was open to all riders under 25, and from 2007 just those aged 18-22.
With its demographic so restricted and the parcours so easily comparable to the Tour de France, it raised its profile as a prestigious race for cyclists starting out in the pro peloton. And equally for expectant viewers and media, as a hunting ground for rising stars of the future.
Recent race winners
Especially in recent years the Tour de l’Avenir podium places have been a star-studded roll call of big names. Belgian up-and-comer Cian Uijtdebroeks claimed the 2022 title, and went on to impress throughout the 2023 season – almost beating his own team leader Alexander Vlasov in the Vuelta overall standings last year (and causing much drama in the process).
Norwegian talent Tobias Halland Johanssen won the 2021 edition, which saw future Tour de France top five finisher Carlos Rodríguez salvage second both overall and on the final stage, after team leader (future Vuelta podium finisher) Juan Ayuso crashed out. Another potential Grand Tour contender, young Frenchman Lenny Martinez, finished in the top 10 in 2022.
Going a bit further back in time, Miguel Ángel Lopez took overall victory a decade ago. (That edition also saw Aussie sprinter Caleb Ewan and Belgian climber Dylan Teuns win stages.)
Lopez’s win culminated with Pierre Latour, Emanuel Buchmann, and 2020 Giro d’Italia winner Tao Geoghegan Hart all in the top ten – with the Brit enjoying the best career since then.
Different routes to success
Several riders who’ve enjoyed Tour de l’Avenir success are now cutting their teeth as domestiques in the peloton, like Ilan van Wilder for Soudal Quick-Step, who finished on the bottom step of the podium in 2019.
But he demonstrated his potential for much more in 2023, announcing himself on the world stage with his first WorldTour victory at Tre Valli Varesine. He beat none other than a cast of Primož Roglič, Pogačar, Rodríguez, Vlasov, Richard Carapaz, and Ben O’Connor – definitely worth the wait for pro success, and a reminder that for many riders it doesn’t come instantly.
For others it’s pretty much instantaneous. The two most successful winners of the Tour de l’Avenir in recent years have been Pogačar – winner in 2018 – and Egan Bernal (2017), who have four Grand Tours between them, all won before the age of 25.
Del Toro’s meteoric rise to WorldTour success has seen several comparisons made to the young Slovenian, who by all metrics is a once-in-a-generation talent. Both riders made their pro stage race debuts at the Tour Down Under, both aged 20, both having won the Tour de l’Avenir the year prior. Pogačar came 13th overall at the Australian season opener but won the Volta ao Algarve the following month – and the rest is history.
Del Toro even has a similar look to Pogačar, who has become easy to spot in the peloton for the spiky tufts of hair poking out through his helmet, and seems to have his new teammate’s same love for racing.
Historic winners
Beyond Bernal and Pogačar, we have to go further back in time to see a more concrete picture of the correlation between l’Avenir success and future results.
The important question is, does winning the Tour de l’Avenir mean you’ll win the Tour de France?
Statistically, no. But the odds aren’t bad.
Over 59 editions of the race, seven riders have gone on to win the Tour. Between them, Felice Gimondi (Tour de l’Avenir winner in 1964), Joop Zoetemelk (1969), Greg LeMond (1982), Miguel Induraín (1986), Laurent Fignon (1988), Egan Bernal (2017), and Pogačar (2018) have 15 Tour de France victories and another ten podium places.
Beyond just the Tour, l’Avenir winners (largely all these same riders) have gone on to win a rather impressive 26 Grand Tours in total. Although in the minority of l’Avenir champions, these riders have progressed to long-term success and Hall of Fame status. Induraín, as an example, won seven Grand Tours altogether and is one of four riders to win the Tour de France five times.
Nairo Quintana (winner in 2010) has missed out on the yellow jersey but won the 2014 Giro d’Italia and 2016 Vuelta a España. Denis Menchov (winner in 2001) also won the Giro and Vuelta – though had his best Tour results struck off for unsurprising reasons.
Other winners in recent years have enjoyed excellent careers but never quite made it to the top echelons of modern cycling, so it’s by no means a guarantee of cycling greatness.
Bauke Mollema, who won in 2007, is still going strong and claimed the biggest win of his career at Il Lombardia in 2017, he’s won Tour and Vuelta stages. Esteban Chaves (2011) was on the podium at both the Giro and Vuelta in 2016. Warren Barguil (2012) has a pair of victories at the Tour and Vuelta. Miguel Ángel Lopez (2014) was tipped for a great career and has had success – including a Col de la Loze victory of his own – but was suspended for potential doping last year and booted out of Astana Qazaqstan, so it hasn’t quite gone to plan.
A few more winners still have the potential to crack those elusive top ranks. 2016 champ David Gaudu has taken over the reins from Thibaut Pinot as France’s Grand Tour hopeful, and Bernal was on course to win more stage races before the crash that he was lucky to survive in 2022 – and might still reach those heights again.
Cautionary tales
There are also a fair few cautionary tales from this list – riders who won the Tour de l’Avenir but have since disappeared off the cycling map.
First off is the 2000 edition, which was won by Iker Flores. Flores won one stage on his way to winning the Tour de l’Avenir but never had a professional victory. His biggest claim to fame was the dubious honour of the Lanterne Rouge at the Tour de France in 2005. He followed in the footsteps of brother Igor, who was equally (un)successful at the Tour in 2002. Not quite the Yates brothers, then.
Like any other race it hasn’t been left unscathed by cycling’s chequered history. Johan Bruyneel won it in 1990, but is probably better known for his role as directeur sportif at US Postal Service during the Lance Armstrong years. He received a lifetime ban from the sport by Wada in 2018 for his complicity in the doping scandal.
Several riders fell foul of doping controls over the years. Russian rider Evgeni Petrov won in 2002 but was booted out of the Tour de France in 2005 for unacceptably high haematocrit levels by race officials. He came back to win Stage 11 of the 2010 Giro d’Italia but retired in 2016.
Moisés Dueñas won in 2006 and again never won a major race or stage, but tested positive for the banned substance erythropoietin mid-Tour de France in 2008. He returned to competition in 2012 but again found results hard to come by and retired in 2015.
2004 winner Sylvain Calzati won a Tour de France stage in 2006 but has since swapped one glamorous career for another, now working as an industrial street cleaner.
Romain Sicard became the first man to win the Tour de l’Avenir and Under-23 World Championships Road Race, but failed to live up to the lofty expectations of the French cycling media. After the diagnosis of a cardiac anomaly in 2021 he announced his retirement.
2013 winner Ruben Fernandez races as part of French team Cofidis so still has time to make a name for himself, and has placed in the top ten at several WorldTour races including the Tour Down Under, Tour de Pologne, Giro dell’Emilia and Volta ao Algarve.
Unanswered questions
A couple of recent winners are perhaps too early in their careers to tell if they’re destined for long-term greatness or not, like Norwegian duo Tobias Foss and Tobias Halland Johanessen, 2019 and 2021 champions.
They’ve certainly made waves so far though and have put Scandi cycling on the map (beyond just Denmark, at least). Foss took a shock win in the time-trial at the 2022 World Championships, beating favourites Remco Evenepoel, Stefan Küng, and Filippo Ganna, and was snapped up by Ineos in the recent transfer window, so he must be good. Halland Johanessen came close several times at the Tour in 2023, including third on Stage 6 behind Pogačar and Vingegaard.
Speaking of Evenepoel, he didn’t win the Tour de l’Avenir – and nor did recent GC giants Jonas Vingegaard, Geraint Thomas and Roglič. So it’s by no means essential for future success, but it’s as good an indicator as any that a rider has what it takes to win big. A few other riders, including Tom Pidcock, Juan Ayuso and Aleksandr Vlasov, have victories in the Giro d’Italia’s own U23 race, previously known as the Baby Giro, now Giro d’Italia Next Gen.
Last year also saw the first ever women’s edition of the Tour de l’Avenir, won by Netherland’s Shirin van Anrooij ahead of Brit Anna Shackley and Italian Gaia Realini, who ride for Lidl-Trek, SD Worx and Lidl-Trek respectively, and already looked to be on their way to pro stardom before the race.
There’s an argument to be made that we should avoid building up too much hype around talented young riders, which has been a recipe for disaster in plenty of sports, cycling included.
While avoiding putting too much pressure on the newer members of the peloton – who, with the current rise in long-term contracts, seem to be getting younger and younger – it’s hard not to get excited about their future prospects when they burst onto the scene. But L’Equipe may be getting slightly ahead of themselves already calling Del Toro Pogačar’s ‘successor’.
There are still, obviously, plenty of question marks around Del Toro – especially given he’s literally just started at the top level of men’s cycling. We still don’t know much about his time-trialling ability, which he’ll need in spades in order to challenge at the very top. But based on his obvious talent and sheer fearlessness, he’s definitely one to keep a close eye on. And who knows, in a couple of years time we might be saying ‘I told you so’ as he claims his maiden Grand Tour…
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