Lukas Nerurkar is another rookie who will make his WorldTour start next season with
EF Education-EasyPost. The 19-year-old British talent has already won stages of the Giro Next Gen and Orlens Nations GrandPrix and finished sixth on GC at Spain's O Gran Camiño against the pros such as Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard.
Racing runs in his genes. Bike racing was never the most straightforward choice for Lukas though. He grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where his dad – Olympic marathon and 10,000-meter runner Richard Nerurkar –moved their family after he had hung up his racing flats. He’d always trained in Africa and loved the atmosphere. Lukas’s mom Gail was a runner too. His sister Almi was soon bounding in their footsteps. She became a runner as well. But as soon as Lukas started riding bikes, he knew that cycling was the sport for him. When he was a kid, he and his dad would escape Addis Ababa’s clogged streets and ride up into the hills above the city.
"Some friends came over from the UK and brought some cycling kit over for me," Lukas says, laughing when he remembers his first rides with his dad. "I was in a jersey and bib shorts that were far too big for me, but just loved wearing them and riding. My sister did running. In Ethiopia, it is unusual to do cycling. Almost everyone takes up running instead, but on the bike, I could just go a bit farther and faster."
"I think I am a punchy climber," Nerurkar describes his strengths. "At the moment, that is the way that I am going. I climb quite well and normally, at the end of hard days, I will still have a good sprint to win from a reduced group."
