2025 season review | EF Education-EasyPost: Powless' win over Visma; Healy's historical season and Carapaz' masterful Giro

It’s been a rollercoaster 2025 for EF Education-EasyPost. The American WorldTour squad mixed some of its best-ever rides on the biggest stages with long stretches of quiet results. From surprise success on the cobbles to a Grand Tour podium and a yellow jersey cameo, they found ways to matter when it counted. At the same time, a low win total, a flat Vuelta, and looming transfer questions kept things from feeling like an unqualified triumph. As the season closes, it’s worth unpacking what went right, what didn’t, and where EF stands heading into 2026.

EF Education – EasyPost, founded in 2003 by Jonathan Vaughters, has built its identity on aggressive racing and a willingness to attack from the fringes rather than control from the front. Under Jonathan Vaughters, the team has long thrived on doing more with less, relying on sharp scouting and development rather than huge budgets. The 2025 roster reflected that mix of ambition and pragmatism, much like in 2024.

Richard Carapaz, 2019 Giro d’Italia champion and 2021 Olympic road race gold medallist, arrived as the marquee Grand Tour leader. Ben Healy, just 25, was coming off a breakthrough year and looked ready for another step up. Neilson Powless remained the team’s go-to puncheur for hilly one-days. In the sprints, Marijn van den Berg and Estonian prospect Madis Mihkels gave EF more finishing options than in past seasons. Veterans like Esteban Chaves and new signing Kasper Asgreen, a former Tour of Flanders winner, added experience and firepower across cobbles and mountains.

On paper, it was a squad built for upsets rather than dominance: a core of leaders capable of spectacular days, backed by young riders with room to grow.

In raw numbers, EF’s 2025 output looked modest. They ended the season with 10 wins, a sharp drop from the 24 they collected in 2024. But the nature of those wins mattered more than the volume. Instead of stacking up smaller races, EF made their victories count in bigger events. They finished 12th in the WorldTour team rankings for the second year in a row, roughly holding their ground in a fiercely competitive mid-pack. The points tally dipped slightly, but there was never any real relegation threat. The standout individual was Healy, who finally came of age on the grandest of stages. The headline summary is simple: fewer wins than last season, but far more of them in places that shape reputations.

The spring story started quietly and ended with EF back in the conversation at some of cycling’s most storied races. Milano-Sanremo came and went without much pink on screen; Mikkel Frølich Honoré’s 17th place was solid but hardly transformative. Things changed on the Belgian coast. At Classic Brugge–De Panne, young Madis Mihkels sprinted to a surprise third place against a stacked WorldTour field, giving EF an early marker that their sprint train was evolving.

The watershed moment came a few days later at Dwars door Vlaanderen. There, Neilson Powless produced one of the rides of his career, outsprinting Wout van Aert and beating back a trio of Visma | Lease a Bike riders in a three-against-one finale. Powless called it “the biggest win of my life,” and it was hard to argue. It was EF’s first major cobbled Classic victory since Alberto Bettiol’s Tour of Flanders in 2019 and instantly shifted how rivals viewed the team on the pavé. Undoubtedly, it was one of the biggest upsets of 2025.

The rest of the cobbled campaign brought fewer fireworks. Asgreen, signed partly for these very races, never quite found his best legs in Flanders and couldn’t influence the key moves. At Paris–Roubaix, Mihkels again hinted at a big future, grinding his way to 14th on debut, a serious performance for a neo-pro, but EF never threatened the podium there either. In short, the cobbles delivered one huge headline, a couple of encouraging signs for the future, and a reminder that depth still lags behind the super-teams in the monuments themselves.

The Ardennes and other hilly races told a different story. Healy arrived in April flying. He skipped Amstel, but at La Flèche Wallonne he climbed the Mur de Huy to a fine 5th, staking a claim as one of the peloton’s top punchers. The real breakthrough came at Liège–Bastogne–Liège, where Healy rode with the very best to take third. Only Tadej Pogacar and Giulio Ciccone finished ahead of him. It was EF’s best Monument result in years and confirmation that Healy has stepped into the sport’s top bracket of one-day climbers.

Looking back at spring as a whole, EF’s campaign was a clear success. They bagged a WorldTour classic win, a Monument podium, multiple top-fives, and a breakthrough ride from a young sprinter. They never cracked the Flanders–Roubaix podiums, but for a team of their resources, the classics haul was impressive.

The Grand Tours defined EF’s narrative in 2025, with the Giro and Tour delivering some of the team’s strongest ever performances at three-week races.

At the Giro d’Italia, they lined up with a clear leader and a clear mission: give Carapaz the platform to fight for the overall. He responded with a vintage campaign. In Week 2, he launched a perfectly timed attack to win Stage 11 in the mountains, stamping his authority on the race.

A few days later, Asgreen salvaged his slow start to the season with a win on Stage 14 from a breakaway sprint, a huge comeback after his struggles in the spring. Two stage victories already made the Giro a success story, but the bigger prize was still in play. Carapaz moved into genuine contention for pink, riding deep into the final week locked in a battle with Simon Yates and rising star Isaac del Toro.

Heading into the final mountain showdown, Carapaz sat third overall and still dared to dream of the maglia rosa. On Stage 20, however, he and del Toro became locked in a game of cat-and-mouse while Yates attacked up the road in a now defining moment of the season. Neither wanted to be the first to chase. Yates escaped, won the stage, and snatched the overall, while Carapaz had to settle for third in Rome. It was EF’s first Grand Tour podium since 2020 and a major achievement by any measure, even if the Ecuadorian admitted he “came for the victory” and felt he had given everything. Combined with Asgreen’s stage win, the Giro became arguably EF’s standout race of the year.

The Tour de France brought a different strategy and another big payoff. With Carapaz forced to DNS due to illness, EF approached July without a big-name GC favorite and instead hunted stages and opportunities. Ben Healy turned those opportunities into something bigger. On Stage 6, he launched a trademark long-range attack on a hilly day and held off all chasers to claim EF’s first Tour stage win of 2025. That alone would have made his race, but he wasn’t done. On Stage 10, the first big mountain showdown and fittingly on Bastille Day, Healy infiltrated a break that gained serious time. When the dust settled, he pulled on the yellow jersey, becoming the first Irishman in the maillot jaune in decades.

Healy’s stay in yellow was brief, Pogacar resumed control soon after, but for several days EF found itself in the centre of Tour storylines, defending the most famous jersey in cycling. More importantly, Healy proved he could survive with the best climbers, and he held his own in the Alps and Pyrenees and rolled into Paris ninth overall, giving the team 210 points. It was EF’s best Tour GC result since Rigoberto Urán’s 8th in 2020 and a huge step forward for a rider who entered the race billed mainly as a stage-hunter.

By contrast, the Vuelta a España was a quieter affair. EF selected a younger squad, used it as a development platform, and paid for the lack of star power in the results. There were breakaways and a few top-10 finishes from Mihkels in the sprints, but no stage wins and no GC threat. Across the three Grand Tours, EF still walked away with three stage wins, a Giro podium, a Tour top-10, and time in yellow. For a team with their budget, that’s a very strong return.

As 2026 approaches, EF’s roster is shifting. On the way out are several experienced names. Rui Costa retires after a long, decorated career. Owain Doull joins Visma| Lease a Bike, and James Shaw finds himself seeking a new contract after not being renewed.

The biggest unresolved issue is Carapaz, and as of writing this article he has not extended his deal. Losing him would leave a major hole in EF’s Grand Tour plans; keeping him would give the squad a proven podium contender to build around.

Taken as a whole, EF Education – EasyPost’s 2025 season deserves a solid 7.5 out of 10. The win total was low, but the quality was very high. A Grand Tour podium for Carapaz, three Grand Tour stage wins, Healy’s Tour stage and yellow jersey stint, a top-10 in Paris, and Powless’s landmark cobbled Classic victory made this one of the most memorable seasons in team history. The flip side is familiar: no Monument win, a quiet Vuelta, and a lack of depth compared with the very best teams. There’s still room to tighten the consistency and raise the baseline.

Looking back on EF Education–EasyPost’s 2025 season, I came away impressed by how often the team managed to punch above its weight. The win total was low, but the moments that did land felt huge, a Giro podium, three Grand Tour stage wins, Powless’ cobbled shocker, and Healy’s incredible stretch of a Tour stage, yellow jersey, and top-10 in Paris. With Irish heritage myself, Healy's Tour de France performance was one of my highlights of 2025.

At the same time, the quiet Vuelta and the lack of depth were reminders of the gaps still to close. For me, it was a fun, chaotic, very EF kind of season, flawed, but full of life

One thing we can count with EF is that they'll always hunt for the biggest and most shocking victories. In 2025, they half-succeeded. Neilson Powless created an iconic moment at the Dwars door Vlaanderen when he did "a Stannard" against Visma trio. Besides that, EF was agonizingly close to winning the Giro with Carapaz, but that one didn't work out. Still they won two stages at that Giro (one with Carapaz, the other with Asgreen). Add to that a stage for Healy at Tour including a stint in Yellow jersey, and it was a fairly decent year for the team of Jonathan Vaughters.Healy also podiumed the World Championships, but that wasn't in EF jersey...If I were to be nitpicking, the team hasn't won a race since early July, surely they'll be hungry to end the fasting already in Australia next season.In my opinion, EF could've used its resources better throughout the year to succeed on even more fronts, but it was nevertheless a season worth 8/10 in my eyes.

EF is a mixed bag. It's a team that's not very homogenous and is very dependant on two riders. But this year they did perform, so their season was saved and it's been a solid to nice year. There's negatives and positives...

In the negatives is their sheer amount of sprinters they have but none of them is anywhere near the top - or like Picnic PostNL, having those men form a leadout so at least one of them can be more successful Second is there isn't one rider who can perform in the time trials and the team feels left behind completely in this discipline - look at Carapaz and Healy's Giro and Tour time trials, even at the peak of their form...

Third is unrelated to performance but more so its image. The team's lack of information (such as the not sharing the contract duration of many of their riders and leaving fans in the dark) and the purposeful delay in Grand Tour reveals fails to strike me as amusing but rather as a stale and annoying marketing tactic by Jonathan Vaughters who is just an all-round odd figure, not in the good way. This actually does not have anything to do with the (this one is actually amusing) fact that he's had me blocked on Twitter for years for 'liking' a post that was vaguely related to him!

Back to the team itself, 12th in the UCI rankings is not bad at all, but only 10 wins to their name this year. But in all fairness, more than half were World Tour level, and several were memorable. Kasper Asgreen saved his entire transfer with the win in the Giro, but there were 3 riders that did the team's season. To a minor degree Neilson Powless is number 1, his win at Dwars door Vlaanderen was fully Visma's responsibilty and failure, but the American still won and the image was EF's highlight of the year.

Richard Carapaz did a brilliant Giro and did surprise me. EF completely lacks supporting firepower to support their leaders almost always and this was heavily felt here honestly, but the Ecuadorian was on top form and his podium place (plus stage win) was a brilliant sight to see.

And lastly Ben Healy was simply the best performer of the year for the team and the correct bet for them. One of the few puncheurs who continue to thrive in the modern peloton, he's finished on the podium of the World Championships and Liège, fourth at Strade Bianche but his performance at the Tour de France is what EF can pride itself of. A team built of a few sprinters and nothing but attackers and breakaway hopefuls, Healy enbodies this perfectly. He won a stage, gained the yellow jersey through another breakaway, held the race lead for a couple days and then finished on the Top10 through a quality climbing performance throughout the rest of the race. To him I tip my hat off again and again, he is a pleasure of a rider to see.