As 2024 comes to an end, 20 riders from the WorldTour and 16 from the Women’s WorldTour have yet to be confirmed on a team for 2025 or announce their retirement.
At the top of the men’s list is sprinter Elia Viviani, who has not been renewed with the Ineos Grenadiers. Speculation that Viviani would join Tom Pidcock in moving to the Q36.5 team appears unfounded, as the Swiss outfit announced a complete roster of 25 riders without the Italian.
Cameron Wurf, who raced part-time with Ineos while also competing in triathlons, was also not confirmed with the British team for 2025, while Leo Hayter resigned mid-season due to struggles with depression.
With the fight to remain in the WorldTour heading into full swing at the end of the three-year promotion/relegation cycle, Cofidis let go of the most riders with five men out of work from 26-year-old Axel Mariault to veteran Ben Hermans.
Also recruiting heavily to try to work their way into the top 18 in the three-year rankings, XDS Astana let go of 13 riders and hired 13 new men. Four of the outgoing riders retired, Samuele Battistella moved to EF Education-EasyPost, Gianmarco Garofoli heads to Soudal-Quickstep and Alexey Lutsenko signed with Israel-Premier Tech. Igor Chzan and Yevgeniy Gidich joined the China Glory continental team and Santiago Umba and Daniil Marukhin dropped to the development team, leaving Dmitriy Gruzdev and Vadmin Pronskiy as the only riders without teams for the next season.
Of the list of unsigned riders, Gruzdev scored the most points in 2024 with 234, two more than Mariault, with Viviani third with 212 points.
From Jayco-AlUla, Rudy Porter and Jesus David Peña are still looking while Martijn Tusveld from Team DSM-Firmenich-PostNL is the only unsigned rider from the German team.
The world’s number one team, UAE Team Emirates, let two riders go – sprinter Alvaro Hodeg and Michael Vink.
Three riders from the 2024 WorldTour were suspended or fired: Michel Heßmann was not renewed with Visma-Lease a Bike after being banned for four months for a doping infraction. Franck Bonnamour was caught up in a Biological Passport violation and sacked from Decathlon-AG2R and Andrea Piccolo was fired from EF Education-EasyPost after being arrested on suspicion of transporting human growth hormone.
The women’s peloton has only 16 riders from the WorldTour currently without contracts, with Elena Hartmann (Roland) the most successful this season. The list also includes former Olympic champion Anna Kiesenhofer and four others from the Roland team, which has only confirmed 11 riders to date.
Four riders from Fenix-Deceuninck have yet to be renewed, but the team has only announced 13 riders for 2025 so far.
Unsigned WorldTour men
- Maurice Ballerstedt (Alpecin-Deceuninck)
- Senne Leysen (Alpecin-Deceuninck)
- Lukasz Owsian (Arkea-B&B Hotels)
- Dmitriy Gruzdev (Astana Qazaqstan Team)
- Vadim Pronskiy (Astana Qazaqstan Team)
- Ahmed Madan (Bahrain Victorious)
- Lukasz Wisniowski (Bahrain Victorious)
- Axel Mariault (Cofidis)
- Ben Hermans (Cofidis)
- Alexis Gougeard (Cofidis)
- Kenny Elissonde (Cofidis)
- Christophe Noppe (Cofidis)
- Stefan de Bod (EF Education-EasyPost)
- Elia Viviani (Ineos Grenadiers)
- Leo Hayter (Ineos Grenadiers)
- Cameron Wurf (Ineos Grenadiers)
- Martijn Tusveld (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL)
- Jesus David Peña (Team Jayco-AlUla)
- Rudy Porter (Team Jayco-AlUla)
- Alvaro Hodeg (UAE Team Emirates)
- Michael Vink (UAE Team Emirates)
Unsigned Women’s WorldTour
- Katie Archibald (Ceratizit-WNT Pro Cycling)
- Flora Perkins (Fenix-Deceuninck)
- Evy Kuijpers (Fenix-Deceuninck)
- Inge van der Heijden (Fenix-Deceuninck)
- Sophie Wright (Fenix-Deceuninck)
- Krista Doebel-Hickok (Human Powered Health)
- Lisa Klein (Lidl-Trek)
- Elena Hartmann (Roland)
- Anna Kiesenhofer (Roland)
- Thi That Nguyen (Roland)
- Sofia Collinelli (Roland)
- Nathalie Eklund (Roland)
- Natalie Grinczer (Roland)
- Karolina Kumiega (UAE Team ADQ)
- Anastasia Carbonari (UAE Team ADQ)
- Wilma Olausson (Uno-X Mobility)
