Young riders to watch in 2023 continental teams - Part 1 of 3

Welcome to my top 15 young riders to watch in continental teams during 2023! Before the new season, I have decided to bring up some names younger then 24 years, who might be worth of your focus. Because I wanted to include some cyclists, who are partially under the radar, I have opted not to include riders from dev/U23 squads of World Tour teams. Obviously there will be also some very well known lads. I have also avoided riders who does not have confirmed contract for 2023.

15. Hubert Grygowski 

Overall winner of One belt one road Juniors race will join already promising line-up of Team U Nantes-Atlantique. Very decent time trialist who also shined during some hilly stages should profit from teams exclusive calendar. There is not much better choice, if you want to combine harder .Pro races for gaining experience and local events where you can gain victories.

14. Daniel Mráz

I have already covered Elkovs rebuilding in earlier article. One of their most interesting riders in upcoming years should be definitely Daniel Mráz. Mráz showed some proofs in his junior years, that he does not mind higher tempo on hilly parcours. With couple of decent sprint results backing him, he might convert some of his performances into UCI points soon. Czech youngster might benefit from having his former teammate around him, since Tomáš Přidal is making transfer same way from Mapei Merida Kaňkovský.

13. Tomáš Sivok

Another hope for Slovaks, who are in desperate need of finding someone to replace their beloved star Peter Sagan in upcoming years. After spending his development years abroad, he continues the trend and will race with Cycling team Friuli. He has great experience with Italian style of parcours, so he is expected to capitalise on this when it comes to bit rougher terrain. Current Slovakian junior champion also proved that he can spread his energy well over stage race during Giro and might attempt to focus on some of those.

12. Davide de Pretto

Italian 20 years old (so far oldest on the list) puncher already spent end of 2022 as trainee on World tour level, however for 2023 he is coming back from BikeExchange to continental team Zalf Euromobil Fior. He was pretty succesful in U23 races and now we can expect him to focus something more prestigious. Lets see, if this time spent in higher level of racing will help his development and if he can step up in following season.

11. Pavel Novák

Team Collpack Ballan always used to be destination of young riders and Pavel Novák is no exception. Czech junior time trial champion showed himself with 10th place at World championships road race. He should improve his skills against the clock further, however it won't be that easy as continental races often lack long time trials. Apart from that, he can be counted on as decent climber  and puncher, so we can look forward to see if he can focus on some races general classification as well. 

 

Those are first five riders from my list. Now i will take some break, before publishing 2nd and 3rd part. I hope you will enjoy this initiative and maybe it will even help someone do discover any rider he did not heard of. As always, I appreciate any form of yours feedback. See you next time!