Notable riders retiring this season

In the men’s World Tour peloton, the most recent rider to announce his retirement from professional cycling is Basque Dimension Data rider, Igor Anton.

Anton is probably most famous for winning on the Monte Zoncolan in the 2011 Giro d’Italia when riding for the Euskaltel-Euskadi team.

His best grand tour results were 8th and 9th, both at La Vuelta a Espana in 2007 and 2012 when he was mainly working for fellow Basque, Sammy Sanchez.

Anton has only ridden for three teams in his career, Euskaltel-Euskadi (2005/13), Movistar Team (2014/15) and his current team, Team Dimension Data (2016/18).

The slight Spanish climber will retire after the final stage of this year’s La Vuelta in Madrid, today.

Simon Gerrans also recently broke the news that he will be stepping off the bike after a successful 13-year professional career.

The BMC rider announced the news before the recent Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec and Montreal in Canada where he has had three wins in the race’s relatively short history.

He was the only rider to win both classics in the same year before Team Sunweb’s Michael Matthews achieved the same feet this year.

The Milan- San Remo and Liege-Bastogne-Liege winner is now 38 so it’s not surprising that he is taking a step back from the sport.

Trek-Segafredo’s Gregory Rast is another veteran who is ending his career after being a professional for 17 years.

The two-time Swiss national road race champion (2004 and 2006) will stop riding for his current team but will stay with them in an ‘unspecific role’.

Rast’s biggest results are 4th in Paris-Roubaix in 2011, points classification at the Tour of Romandie in 2009, 1st overall in the 2007 Tour de Luxembourg and 6th overall in the Tour de Pologne during the 2008 season.

Bram Tankink of Lotto NL Jumbo will be ending his 19-year career at the end of the season. The 39-year-old’s best results came in 2010 with a 3rd place overall in the Tour of Belgium and in 2011 where he came 2nd in the Dutch national championships road race.

In the women’s peloton we’ve got three big names putting the bike in the garage.

The most recently announced is by Giorgia Bronzini today before her final race, which she won, the final stage of La Madrid Challenge by La Vuelta.

That win caps off a truly spectacular career. Bronzini was a wonderful track rider winning the world title in the points race back in 2009.

She also raced on the road through that time and was winning constantly! She won the World Championships road race two years in a row in 2010 and 2011. She was also 5th at London 2012. Her more recent top performances are two Giro Rosa wins and a Tour of Britain win in 2016 and 3rd at the 2017 Tour de Yorkshire. In 2018 her wins both came from the Tour of Chongming Island where she won stage one and the point standings, along with her win today in Madrid. That’s over 80 career wins.

Katrin Garfoot has already retired. She decided to stop riding professionally in July of this year but that was after she won her third Australian time trial title, gold at the Commenwealth Games time trial and a stage win, points classification and 3rd overall at the Women’s Tour Down Under among other results all in Australia.

Garfoot has had such a superb career, like Bronzini, it would be ridiculous to list all her results. She did miss out on a world title during her six-year career but each season had a long list of wins. Katrin is now focussing on her life back home in Oz.

So, we won’t be seeing these riders on the bike in the pro men’s and women’s peloton in 2019. It is really going to be a very different look next year, what with new teams coming in, merging teams and folding teams.

We still have a lot of races to come this season, including the worlds and Il Lombardia in the men’s side. So plenty more racing to happen this season.