For some in the pro peloton, 2025 marks their last year in professional road cycling. We round up some of the big names who will be giving it one last go before hanging up their cleats at the end of the season, including World Champions and yellow jersey winners.
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Romain Bardet
Frenchman Romain Bardet will retire part way through this season, stepping away from the sport after his home race, the Critérium du Dauphiné. 34-year-old Bardet will race his final Grand Tour at the Giro d’Italia.
It’ll bring the curtain down on a professional career that spans 14 years. He spent the majority with the AG2R squad with whom he won multiple Tour de France stages and two overall podiums, a combativity award in 2015 and the mountains classification in 2019.
One of his most impressive performances at the race came in 2024 though. After staging an impressive breakaway with teammate Frank van den Broek, Bardet pulled on the maillot jaune for the first time in his career. It was also the year in which he placed second at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
He’s certainly capable of going out with a bang.
Chantal van den Broek-Blaak
Chantal van den Broek-Blaak boasts a plethora of titles that includes national championships as well a World Championship in 2017. An impressive Classics rider, she has won Gent-Wevelgem, Amstel Gold Race, the Tour of Flanders and Strade Bianche as well as three editions of Le Samyn.
She initially planned to retire from the sport in 2022 to have a family but delayed that until the end of 2024. She announced her pregnancy in late 2022 and understandably didn’t race the next season through maternity leave, giving birth to a baby girl in May.
The 35-year-old signed a one-year contract with her SD Worx-Protime team that takes her to the end of 2025, which will be her final year of racing.
Lizzie Deignan
Lizzie Deignan will also retire at the end of 2025. She announced the news alongside a one-year contract extension with Lidl-Trek, saying, ‘I just don’t want to say goodbye to [my children] anymore. I have no ego or necessity to retire at the top.’
The 36-year-old, who hails from Otley, West Yorkshire, won the Road Race World Championship in 2015 and has four national road race titles to her name. Quite the one-day racer, she has won multiple big Classics including Strade Bianche, La Course, the Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège plus the inaugural edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes after an unforgettable 80km solo attack.
Deignan also has an Olympics silver medal, finishing second at her home Games in London 2012 to Marianne Vos.
She will finish her career as a true legend of the sport.
Jakob Fuglsang
Froome’s Israel-Premier Tech teammate, 39-year-old Jakob Fuglsang, has also confirmed his retirement. An experienced rider, Fuglsang was frequently helping his team leaders to their own Grand Tour success including Vincenzo Nibali at Astana for the 2014 Tour de France, where he played a huge role on the cobbles of Roubaix. His best result in a three-week race came at the 2020 Giro d’Italia where he finished sixth overall.
Fuglsang was drawn to shorter stage races like the Critérium du Dauphiné, where he was victorious in both 2017 and 2019, and finished in the top five across plenty more such as the Tour de Suisse, Tirreno-Adriatico and Tour de Romandie.
He is a Monument winner too, having raced to success at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2019 and Il Lombardia in 2020. Another of his best results came at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where he won a silver medal behind Greg Van Avermaet.
Likely retirees
Chris Froome
Official confirmation has not been given but this is likely to be Chris Froome’s last season as a professional in a career that spans almost two decades, packed into which is four Tour de France titles, two Vuelta a España victories and one Giro d’Italia.
One of the most successful riders of all time, Froome and his Team Sky squad spent much of the 2010s enforcing their stranglehold on Grand Tours. The 39-year-old also has stage races such as the Dauphiné and Tour de Romandie under his belt.
Froome hasn’t been the same rider since a horror crash in 2019 left him with a fractured right femur, a fractured elbow and fractured ribs. He left Ineos to join Israel-Premier Tech in 2021, but has failed to find any form and his contract is up at the end of 2025. It’s rumoured he’ll be stepping away after the Vuelta, 14 years after he won Britain’s first Grand Tour at the race.
Geraint Thomas
A patron of the peloton, Geraint Thomas has not confirmed his retirement yet, and told BBC Radio 4, ‘Nothing is nailed down yet, but 95% I’ll be finishing at the end [of 2025].’ Unlike most, he has spent his entire road career with the same team, and this will be his 14th year with Ineos Grenadiers.
Welshman Thomas, 38, has had plenty of success across both track and road. Beginning with the velodrome, he held national and World Championship titles and won team pursuit Olympic gold medals in 2008 and 2012.
He has finished on all podium spots at the Tour de France headlined by his victory in 2018 ahead of Tom Dumoulin and teammate Froome. His palmarès also includes smaller stage races in Paris-Nice, the Criterium du Dauphine, Tour de Romandie and Tour de Suisse, and his early career Classics efforts earned him a victory at the E3 Saxo Classic.
In the last two seasons he finished second and third at the Giro d’Italia, proving he’s still one of the world’s best.
