ANALYSIS | 5 riders who need to bounce back in 2026

In this article, we’re going to take a close look at 5 riders in need of a strong year on the bike in 2026. 2025 wasn’t a disaster year for all of these riders, but it did leave a few uncomfortable question marks. Some were derailed by illness, others by crashes, pressure, or simply failing to turn talent into the kind of results their careers demand. The point isn’t that they’re finished, it’s that 2026 feels like a fork in the road. Here are five riders who can’t afford another “nearly” season. They need to perform at their best.

Ayuso’s 2025 season looked busy on paper, but it never quite settled into a clear, convincing story. He did grab a landmark Giro d’Italia stage win, and you could hear what it meant in the moment, “It's my fourth Grand Tour, and especially in the two Vueltas a Espana I raced I was sometimes very close, but I never managed to pull it off,” Ayuso said. “So to finally do it today in my first Giro d'Italia is something super special that I will always remember,” he said.

But that victory didn’t catapult him to the Maglia rosa as it was supposed to, instead he was usurped by Isaac del Toro has UAE’s number 2 behind the world champion Tadej Pogacar.

2025 was defined by turbulence, especially the public rupture with UAE Team Emirates-XRG late in the year. The quote that cut through everything was blunt: “It's like a dictatorship,” Ayuso said as the split became front-page new. He also insisted, “We'd made an agreement that it would come out after the Vuelta was over,” as the team confirmed his departure to Lidl-Trek whilst he was still racing in Spain.

In a new team, with big names already present, the Spaniard needs to show his best form, without anyone noise off of the bike. Ayuso needs a year where the racing does the talking: a stable leadership role, a clean GC run, and fewer headlines that have nothing to do with watts.

Roglič’s 2025 is the strange kind of underwhelming that only happens to a rider with his palmarès. He still proved he can win at the top level, including taking overall victory at Volta a Catalunya, but the season’s defining memories tilted toward frustration and vulnerability, not control. Once again, crashes derailed Roglic.

The Giro d’Italia, in particular, felt like a slow unravelling. On stage 15, when the race started slipping away, he reduced it to survival: “I’m just happy that I finished.” Two days later he abandoned the race after another crash, as his hopes of a second Giro win went up in smoke.

Then came the Tour de France build-up, where Roglic’s own words became a talking point. “If I'm honest, I don't care now, really,” he said, trying to defuse the obsession with a first Tour GC win. He followed it with a line that sounded like pride and a shield at once: “I won some races, I'm f****** proud of it, we just try to enjoy it.”

Roglic doesn’t need to prove he’s great, he needs to prove he can still build a full season around a big target without it collapsing under crashes, inconsistency, or ambiguity. In 2026, “enjoy it” can’t be the plan. The plan has to be finishing, contending, and making one of the Grand Tours his again.

But, there is a chance that Roglic is now the number 3 at BORA. With Remco Evenepoel arriving, and Florian Lipowitz on the rise, can Roglic stamp his authority on the team this late in his career?

Laporte’s “underwhelming” 2025 comes with an asterisk, because it wasn’t about form, it was about not having a season at all. Cytomegalovirus wiped out his spring, and with it the part of the calendar where he’s most valuable: cobbled Classics, hard one-day races, and the Tour support role where he’s become elite. “Right before I was supposed to go on an altitude training camp at the end of January, I started feeling unwell,” Laporte said. “Tests showed that I have the cytomegalovirus. Since then, I've been recovering, and you have to take things day by day.”

Team Visma | Lease a Bike were forced into indefinite updates, and even the public messaging carried a sense of uncertainty. Grischa Niermann summed it up: “We hope he'll get back in shape and be able to train as quickly as possible. But, for the moment, he's not 100% yet.”

That’s why 2026 is enormous for Laporte. He doesn’t just need a win or two, he needs continuity. He’s the kind of rider whose value compounds across a season: the legs that show up every week, the positioning, the reliability in chaotic finales. After a lost year, he needs to re-establish himself as the version of Laporte teams plan Classics campaigns around, not the rider everyone keeps waiting to see again.

After winning the Tour de France points classification in 2024, Girmay went into 2025 carrying the kind of expectation that changes how people judge your season. If you’re the green jersey guy, “solid” isn’t the standard anymore. But, now a year and a half on from his history making Tour de France, Girmay has not won a race since.

The Tour itself looked like it took a real toll, mentally and physically. One quote from Paris captured exhaustion more than satisfaction: “I’m totally f**ked, to be honest. I just want to sleep two days in a row, full gas.”

Now he’s stepping into a new project for 2026, and his tone is clearly about reset and hunger. “I’m really happy to be here, especially with a new atmosphere and a new beginning, for me and for the team,” Girmay said after joining NSN Cycling. He also laid down the mindset that makes 2026 feel urgent: “To be honest, I never look back at what I achieved. I always look to the future,” he said.

A rider with his profile can’t go two seasons without a proper statement win. In 2026, he needs to turn that “new beginning” into results, not just podiums, but a big Classic or major sprint victory that reminds everyone 2024 wasn’t a one-off peak.

Van Gils is a perfect example of how quickly cycling can move. One year you’re the fresh threat, the next, you’re trying to get your trajectory back on track. The numbers underline the drop, he has lost over 160 points in the UCI rankings. And early in the season he was caught up in the Étoile de Bessèges chaos, abandoning after the now-infamous incident involving a car on the course, the kind of disruption that can derail momentum before spring even properly starts.

What makes 2026 interesting is that Van Gils sounds like someone who’s processed 2025 as a lesson, not an excuse. “If the spring goes well, the plan is to ride the Tour.”

“In 2025 I didn't ride a Grand Tour and I specifically asked the team to do one now. They agreed immediately. If I am in good form, I think I can be an added value for the team.”

Van Gils doesn’t need to become a GC rider. He needs Ardennes-level sharpness, consistency across the spring, and at least one signature result that tells the sport his ceiling is still what people thought it was. But, like Roglic, will he struggle to rediscover his best in a Red Bull – BORA – Hansgrohe team packed full of stars?