2023 was a banner year for American cycling with a Grand Tour victory from Sepp Kuss in the Vuelta a Espana. Notable other results included a fifth place in the Tour of Flanders from Neilson Powless, a stage win the Giro d’Italia from Brandon McNulty, and Matteo Jorgensen winning his first race (and GC title) in Oman and competing strongly in the Classics (including 4th in E3). Those are the only four Americans who are currently ranked in the PCS top 100. The United States finished 10th in the PCS Nations Ranking, which is a very fine result considering where US cycling had been during the dark days in the wake of Lance and Landis.
The most exciting aspect of these results is the ages of the riders in question. Kuss is the oldest of the lot at 29; the others are just entering their prime in their mid-20s. Kuss, of course, is now in his prime and already won a Grand Tour. His career is already a spectacular success even if he totally flames out from here (which is highly unlikely). He will be flying in July and the Tour de France route suits him wonderfully, though he’ll play second fiddle to the two time defending champ, his teammate Jonas Vingegaard *side eye emoji*.
I rate Jorgensen, McNulty, and Powless fairly equally in terms of their potential to win a Monument or Grand Tour eventually. Jorgensen is probably best-positioned to do on Visma-Lease a Bike, with McNulty a close second and Powless seemingly more of a Classics rider, and disadvantaged at EF due to inferior equipment, training, etc. I should note, however, that Powless actually used to ride for Jumbo-Visma and did not perform his best there. So perhaps EF is a better fit for him.
In any case, I am expecting an even better season from Jorgensen now that he is away from Movistar (I am not even sure the Spanish team knows how to use power meter data to train, or race) and training and perfecting everything such as nutrition, recovery, altitude and more with the Dutch superteam.
While I’m laying into Movistar, not taking Oier Lazkano to the Tour de France last year was one of the worst personnel decisions any WorldTour team made the entire season. With one of the Basque Grand Depart stages literally starting in Lazkano’s hometown of Vitoria-Gasteiz and the Spaniard wearing his national champion’s jersey and absolutely flying, Movistar left him home. I’m about to write an essay about how unbelievably good Lazkano is, so stay tuned for that.
Back to Jorgensen, he shared his power file of E3, a race in which Tadej Pogacar, Matthieu van der Poel, and Wout van Aert rode away from the Achtervolgers (see I speak a few words of Dutch… it means chasers by the way) and Jorgensen finished fourth. Via Strava, Jorgensen AVERAGED 322 watts for nearly five hours. That is not normalized power (which eliminates all coasting from the equation and I think is a fairly pointless statistic). 322 watts for five hours with numerous sprints, coasting, an extended 500+watt effort to solo away from his group in the finale, etc. Basically, what I am trying to convey here is that the extremely uneven power distribution of a cobbled classic does not lend itself to an enormous mean output. But Jorgensen pushed 322 watts for 4 hours, 55 minutes. He is not heavy, either: listed at 65 kilograms, the three biggest hitters in front would have pushed even higher power as they are heavier, and in the cyclocross guys’ case, much heavier. That is absolutely terrifying to mere mortals (Jorgensen titled his Strave activity “First of the Mortals”). He smashed just under 5 watts per kilogram, a very impressive climbing effort at Functional Threshold Power (which is about the wattage one could hold for one hour) for a solid category 2 or maybe even category 1 amateur rider in the United States, for five times the duration, and did it with innumerable peaks and troughs.
For some idea of how unfathomably good that is, at age 24, I ran a 4:19 mile at high altitude, which according to the converters would indicate I was due for about 4:12 at sea level. That is pretty good and indicates a strong aerobic engine (VO2 max was implied in the low-to-mid-70s and confirmed in a test), not national or world class, but good. I never did a proper 20-minute power test in my peak cycling condition, but most data was indicating I could have pushed right around 320-330 watts for that duration. I was about 61-63 kilograms at my best, so not much lighter than Jorgensen. And at my absolute peak, I could have hung onto his wheel in a 200-kilometer race for about 20 minutes… and he did not even come close to winning this race… and this was not even a Monument. Suffice it to say, professional athletes are not human.
That tangent was also meant to illustrate Jorgensen’s ability and potential. If he jumps up a level at Visma-LAB, he has a chance to compete for the victory in some cobbled classics, especially if he is sent up the road to shelter Wout behind. I do not think he is ready for a win in Flanders, and I am not sure he should be on the start list for Paris-Roubaix, but E3 seems to suit him really well in particular. Omloop Nieuwsblad and Dwars door Vlaanderen might be on the table as well. With no Pogi, and MVDP questionable for the build-up cobbled races (likely to skip some of them to focus on the Monuments including a tilt at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, which is a bad idea IMO, to be explained later), Visma will eviscerate the competition UNLESS Arnaud De Lie and Oier Lazkano (my two guys) can handle the onslaught of yellow bees attacking them.
Jorgensen will also ride Paris-Nice, where he will be a co-leader at a minimum for Visma-LAB. He frankly should be targeting a podium with Remco Evenepoel and likely Primoz Rogolic the only clearly better GC riders on the start list.
After the Classics season, Jorgensen will again ride the Tour de France, likely in pure domestique mode for Jonas and Sepp. That being said, Visma tends to let its domestiques hop into breakaways and sometimes go for stage wins. I hope Jorgensen gets a shot and converts it; he has been chasing a stage in the Tour de France for a few years now.
McNulty is already flying this year in Mallorca (the five one-day races about which I will write a brief recap of at the weekend) and it was not hard to predict that he would be. He pushes insane watts in training and placed fourth in the WC ITT. He is a 69-kilogram (perfect weight for a TT/diesel climber GC rider) massive engine who already can ride up mountains nearly as well as Tom Dumoulin and Chris Froome ever did. On his day, like stage 17 of the 2022 Tour de France, he’s arguably already better than they were. The the level in the professional peloton is just that much higher now than it was when those two were winning Grand Tours, which is why McNulty is relegated to stage-hunting and domestique duty for now.
He is probably about 5th-to-8th in the UAE-Team Emirates GC/climbing pecking order for now and could even drop if a few young guns step up quickly. But he also could find himself in 3rd-5th if he levels up, which I expect him to. That would be enough to get leadership in the Vuelta or Giro, depending on who else the team sends. The team manager, Matxin, touts McNulty as a massive talent and implies he is capable of winning a Grand Tour down the road. He has the same coach as Pogacar and posts most of his rides on Strava. His numbers are extremely impressive (doing a sessions like 3x1hour at 350 watts average, for example), which is of course what Matxin is basing his analysis off of. As of now, McNulty is fairly thin on results, but I believe this is the year he takes off.
Paris-Nice is his first big target of the season, and while a result will be difficult to come by with the aforementioned two members of the Big Four and numerous other hitters in McNulty’s current “tier”, a top five in the final GC should be the target. The rest of McNulty’s schedule for 2024 has yet to be revealed, but with UAE throwing the kitchen sink at the Tour de France, I assume he will ride the Giro d’Italia as a shdadow GC leader with Pogi. Then he can go to the Olympics, Vuelta or Canadian Classics, and World Championships. He should do Lombardia too; he won the Lombardia-style stage in the Giro last year out of a strong breakaway. He can help Pogi there or attack early to give the Slovenian a seat behind.
As for Powless, I do not see obvious space for much *phsyical* improvement in 2024, and results-wise it will be hard to top, with the exception of July. He already placed fifth in De Ronde. He was strong in Paris-Nice, placing 6th in the final GC, and in Milano-Sanremo, finishing 7th. But his Tour de France was a bust, chasing the KOM jersey and just not having the legs to hang on in breakaways for the points, let alone a stage win. Part of that was due to a tactical miscalculation (chasing the KOM jersey and wasting energy and opportunities for a stage win) and part of that was due to peaking too early in the season, from my perspective. He started his season flying early, winning a small French one-day race and a GC title in late January/early February. Powless at his peak should have been able to hang on in those medium mountain stages and poach one from a break. He did not bring his Flanders legs to the Tour last year, which is a great shame. Hopefully he can rectify that this season.
Currently, he has no races on his program. I know from his Strava that he was training in the U.S. for a while, and is currently in London. But I would expect him, as a marquee American rider on an American team, to target the Tour de France again. The question is whether he puts his spring emphasis on MSR and the cobbles or the Ardennes. He kind of tried both last year and was awful in the Ardennes and then bad in the Tour de Suisse and subpar in France. If I were EF’s management, I would do a later start for Powless, perhaps a small Spanish one-day race or two, Strade Bianchi, MSR, then do a few cobbled races, then the Ardennes (I do think cobbles and Ardennes are both possible if his season starts later and he is not flying for months in the winter/early spring), then shut it down before ramping back up for the Dauphine and the Tour. He can definitely win a TdF stage. I hope he finally does.
Finally, for Sepp Kuss, there were dreams that he would target the Giro d’Italia in 2024 to potentially win two Grand Tours in a row, complete his Grand Tour Stage trilogy, and cement his legacy as one of the greatest American cyclists of all time. Alas, he will ride the Tour and Vuelta with Jonas. He will start his season with a few small Spanish one-day races before doing the Volta a Algarve em Bicicleta in Portugal, and the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya in Spain. The rest of his Tour preparation is unknown at the moment, but he will square off against some of the biggest hitters in Algarve and Catalunya. A podium result would be excellent in either, but Sepp is not known to be super strong in one-week races at World Tour level; he likes to carefully build his form for Grand Tours. I would not expect much out of him before June and maybe even July. He’ll be looking to come into form as late as possible for the Tour so he can ride into the Vuelta strongly and try to defend his title. Sepp should be just as strong as he was last year, and if things break his way, he might just wear red again. My hot take for Sepp’s 2024 is that he might even podium the Tour de France from a breakaway because the route suits him so well, and there is a good chance at least one or two of the Big Four either crash, get sick, or have a bad day. Especially if that one happens to be Jonas, Sepp would be his team’s back-up GC option.
The ultimate question, of course, is whether any of these riders can ever win the Tour de France. I think not (odds are less 10 percent in my view). There really is a distinct hierarchy of GC riders at the moment; I have utterly and completely bought into the “Big Four” narrative. I know Roglic will age out soon, but he has another good year or two left. Remco might just get better and better. He’s already won a Grand Tour and his numbers are absolutely terrifying. He turned 24 yesterday. Pogi, 25, is still on the upswing and still might come away with the record for most victories (more than five). Jonas reigns supreme at the top of the heap and is not relinquishing his grasp on France anytime in the foreseeable future. It would take a massive increase in ability for any of these American riders to even podium the Tour, let alone win it.
However, I have not yet even mentioned the next generation of American riders who are not currently in top 100.
The most obvious prospect of these is Magnus Sheffield of INEOS Grenadiers, who has been competitive at .Pro level for a few years already, and even ridden strongly in a few WorldTour races. He has yet to turn 22 years old. Hailing from Pittsford, New York, not terribly far from where I grew up, Sheffield is a 74 kilogram UNIT who can climb. He won two races at age 19, including De Brabanste Pijl, a very difficult race in which he beat Remco, among others. That remains the biggest result of his career (luckily the drinking age in Belgium is not 21 as in America, as that podium beer must have tasted quite sweet after a hilly 200-kilometer smash). His 2023 season was not the step-up it promised to be, but if I recall correctly, he had a bad crash.
Lanterne Rouge pegged him as the 2025 Tour de France winner, and while I think that was said in jest, he has some potential for GC. He is a bit heavier than the average GC contender, especially these days, so I think Grand Tours are not going to be his forte. He has yet to even ride one, though is linked to the Giro d’Italia this year. I think that is a wise plan; he can go into breakaways and stage hunt all he wants. I think he can snag a stage at the Giro.
The ultimate question of whether he will the Tour de France is his career is probably the wrong question. I think he is a Classics rider and stage hunter who can also TT. INEOS used to be the team that trimmed these types down and turned them into Tour winners, but now I think they have fallen far behind Visma and UAE. INEOS may be the correct team for him at this point as a Classics/Ardennes/one-week GC rider, but if he wants to win a Grand Tour he needs to follow Jorgensen to Visma, and figure out how to lose 3-5 kilograms. That may be possible, just from eyeballing him. But of course, that needs to be done over the course of a few seasons, not by running a 1,000-calorie-deficit for a month. I will not rule out a 21-year-old’s (who won a Belgian Classic as a teenager) potential, but things need to change massively in order for him to become a GC contender, let alone Tour winner. That being said, the current Big Four will be at the end of their rope by the time he even ages into that realm, and the next generation might not be as good, so maybe Magnus has a shot.
I need to mention Quinn Simmons here as well, who is still just 22 years old and already entering his fifth season with Lidl-Trek. Simmons is the 2019 World Junior Road Race Champion and has insane watts. His results as a pro remain quite sparse for a rider with his obvious talent. But he could break through at any time and do something like win a cobbled classic or a Grand Tour stage. He is apparently all in for Strade Bianchi in the early part of 2024, a race that he has performed well at in the past and suits him quite well. It would be a shock if he can beat Pogi there, but a podium might be possible with the rest of the heaviest hitters skipping it. Hopefully he’ll make some noise in the Tour de France too. But Simmons needs to get his act together on the bike and put his abilities to use, and soon.
2024 should be an even better year for American cycling total points-wise. We may not win another Grand Tour, but perhaps a Cobbled Classic and a one-weeker if Jorgensen does the Tour de Romandie or somthing. If MSR is not raced flat-out up the Poggio and the descent is finessed, it is always possible that Powless could sneak away and win like Matej Mohoric did 2022. De Ronde, Paris-Roubaix, and Liege are just too hard and competitive right now for an outsider to win. McNulty could top-ten the Giro d’Italia, perhaps even top five with Pogacar the massive favorite to take the Maglia Rosa. The United States could snag multiple stage wins from three different riders in the Tour de France (perhaps four if INEOS ends up sending Magnus) and Sepp could sneak onto the final podium if Visma plays that card. Kuss could win the Vuelta again, though Jonas will give him no gifts this time. I think a podium is a better shout. There are also other youngsters coming up, like AJ August of INEOS and Luke Lamperti of Quick-Step. Let’s see if we can get that yellow jersey by 2035?!
The future is definitely bright for American cycling.
I’ve committed to a Lazkano essay, and also a van der Poel 2024 schedule/prediction piece.
Back soon.
Jamie
Puncheur 
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