Visma | Lease a Bike Seeks Successor for Cian Uijtdebroeks: Here Are the Options

The same applies to a potential transfer of Jarno Widar. The almost 20-year-old Belgian is considered one of the greatest climbing talents in the world. Last weekend he became European champion in Southern France on a true climbing course. He also won this year the grueling Giro della Valle d’Aosta U23 and the Ronde de l’Isard U23. He finished second in the Tour de l’Avenir, while last year, he won the Giro d’Italia U23. Widar is normally set to make his pro debut next year with the merged team but flirted heavily with Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe last year. He also criticized Lotto’s team management at the time, but those tensions seem smoothed over this year. Widar is much younger than Uijtdebroeks and would also enter Jørgen Nordhagen’s waters.

The overview above looks at talented stage racers under 25 years old. We chose to exclude leaders from other teams as much as possible, because it’s not realistic that Visma | Lease a Bike would acquire such riders to replace Uijtdebroeks. After all, he didn’t have that position himself.

Also, riders who have just signed with a new team were not considered. For these reasons, riders like Remco Evenepoel, Juan Ayuso, Isaac Del Toro, Florian Lipowitz, Oscar Onley, Thymen Arensman, Carlos Rodríguez, Kévin Vauquelin, Mattias Skjelmose, Ilan Van Wilder, Lenny Martinez, and Antonio Tiberi are not included in this article.