La Doyenne: EF Pro Cycling is ready to race the hardest monument

Lawyer, cyclist – is there anything Clara can’t do? She had passed the bar exam and was just starting her career as a lawyer when she began to race bikes. This was during the pandemic so she was working remotely which she didn’t enjoy at all. When a continental team based in Canada invited Clara to race with them for the 2022 season, she didn’t hesitate. She turned pro the following year.

But Clara isn’t finished with academia yet. She began a master’s degree in sports law at the same time she started racing. For Clara, both school and cycling offer an outlet from each other and she finds it energizing to have different areas of focus in her life.

Last year, in Clara’s first race as a pro at the Vuelta Extremadura Féminas, she won the queen of the mountains jersey, finished second on the queen stage, and was second on the overall podium. She also raced the Tour de France Femmes and wrapped up the year with a podium at La Périgord Ladies.

The 2024 season will be her second as a professional racer and though she’s still learning the ins and outs of the sport, Clara’s innate climbing talent is undeniable. She has already grown so much in her nascent cycling career, but she is motivated to keep learning and improving.

Veronica Ewers burst onto the American cycling scene in the summer of 2021 when she placed third in the U.S. road race national championship. That result earned her a guest spot racing in Europe that fall which in turn led to her first pro contract. In just two professional seasons, Veronica has won the Navarra Elite Classics as well as a stage at the Festival Elsy Jacobs, and podiumed at the Giro dell’Emilia, Emakumeen Nafarroako, and Tre Valli Varesine Women. In 2022, she had a pair of top ten stage finishes at the Tour de France Femmes where she finished ninth on the general classification. Last season she finished in the top five on stages at the Giro d’Italia Women three times and ultimately came in fourth overall.

About to embark on her third season, Veronica loves the longer mountain climbs. She is proud of how far she has come but is determined to keep pushing herself and sees her development as an on-going process.

Veronica’s competitive streak extends beyond bike racing. She often brings Bananagrams, a fast-paced vocabulary game, to races and camps and will play against any teammate or staff member foolish enough to accept her challenge.

She is an avid cook and enjoys experimenting with new recipes and flavors.

Clara Koppenburg brings strength, experience, and her ever curious, energetic mind to EF Education-Cannondale. The 28-year-old German has been a pro for a decade and still loves to learn about her sport.

In 2014, she was offered her first professional contract just a few months after she had ridden her first races. Her athletic background helped. When she was a kid, Clara rode horses, played tennis and basketball, and skied, both alpine and cross-country. A talented runner, who raced all the distance events on the track, she studied sports science, which she loved, because she could earn half her credits by sailing or rowing or doing other outdoor activities with her friends from class. Although her dad worked for a professional cycling team, Clara never considered riding bikes herself.

Then, she went on a trip with him to a race in Colorado and realized that cycling was a lot more intense than the off-road jaunts to cafés and ice cream shops that she’d done with him. Inspired, she decided to start training and was soon off to the races.

She just loved pushing herself to her limits. She has since won the Setmana Ciclista Valenciana - Vuelta Comunitat and finished second at the Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardèche. In 2023, she was second at the ReVolta.

Clara is a talented climber, who wants to focus on stage racing for the coming seasons. She lives in her beloved Black Forest, just outside of Basel, and enjoys spending time on the wooded climbs that she knows so well, spending evenings swimming down the Rhine with friends all the way to Basel’s city center, and trying out some difficult new recipes in the kitchen. She is already famous for her vegan banana bread, which is one of her favorite pre-ride snacks.

Lizzie Stannard is forever on the move. Lizzie was born in Sydney, Australia, but grew up in New Zealand, where her mom, a civil engineer, and her dad, a professor of human performance, moved to and opened a café when she was a child.

From the start, sports have been a constant in Lizzie’s life. Her parents had met cycling in Australia and always encouraged her and her brothers to go play outdoors. That often meant ripping around on bikes. Lizzie had a hard time choosing just one sport however. In high school, she took up triathlon and was soon racing world cups. Training to be world-class in three sports while studying political science at university got to be too much.

Lizzie decided to focus on cycling, because it was the most fun. She and a friend went on a massive road trip to North America and raced everywhere they could. After that trip, Lizzie was hooked. When she got home, she passed up opportunities to pursue careers in academia and business and moved to Melbourne to race with a small Australian team. She did well there and was soon off to Europe, first to Italy and then to Girona, to try to make it in the big leagues.

Coming to Girona is one of the best decisions Lizzie has ever made. In the Catalan cycling mecca, she has made great friends. She loves riding with them through the hills and mountains near the city. All that riding has shown in her performances. In 2022, Lizzie won the Euganissima Flandres and finished seventh overall at the Giro Toscana Internazionale Femminile. In 2023, she finished second on a stage at the Vuelta Andalucia Ruta del Sol and tenth overall at the ReVolta, while riding the second most race days of any rider in the women’s peloton. Lizzie is determined to keep getting faster and keep learning.

If she weren’t a racer, she would probably be doing a PhD. For now, she will stick to reading every book she can and being a student of her sport.

Magdeleine was about eight-years-old when she learned to ride a bike without training wheels. That Christmas, she got a new bike and the following summer her dad took her on a nine-day, 1,000 kilometer bikepacking trip. She credits her dad – and that trip – with creating her passion for cycling that has guided her life ever since.

Growing up in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Magdeleine rode with her local club. She raced mountain bikes, cyclocross, and road bikes as a teenager. She also learned how to track stand and to this day cannot resist the urge to track stand when she waits at red lights. As much as she loved racing in Quebec, Magdeleine soon realized that if she wanted to continue to compete and grow as a rider, she needed to go to Europe. She earned a spot with the UCI’s World Cycling Center program where she spent two seasons soaking up every opportunity she encountered.

At just 22-years-old, Magdeleine has already raced big stage races like the Vuelta a España Femenina, the Giro d’Italia Women, and the Tour de France Femmes, and one-day races like Strade Biance and Amstel Gold. She is still learning where her strengths lie but it’s clear that her enthusiasm for cycling will help her go far.

Richard Carapaz races with grit and without fear. The Olympic champion and Giro d’Italia winner hails from the high mountains of Ecuador, where he started racing as a 16-year-old kid for his local club. He returns there each winter to help the next generation of children from his hometown of Playa Alta get started in the sport they dream of conquering like him.

Richard has stood on the podium of all three grand tours and won 19 professional races. When Richie wins, he wins with style. He is never afraid to attack and can sense exactly the right moment to go. When he goes—on Richie's day, the best riders in the world can’t hold his wheel.

That is how he won his Olympic gold medal and his Giro d’Italia. That is how he wants to race for us.

After a difficult 2023 season, Richie is ready to attack 2024. Quiet, determined, he is more motivated than ever.

We can’t wait to watch him race in pink.

Ben Healy is one of the best young bike racers of his generation. Born and raised near Birmingham, the 23-year-old is proud of his Irish roots and honored to wear the Bratach na hÉireann colors as the Irish road race national champion.

The 2023 season was Ben’s breakout year. After winning the GP Industria & Artigianato and a stage at Coppi e Bartali, he finished second at Brabantse Pijl and second at the Amstel Gold Race. And then he went and won a stage at the Giro d'Italia with a 50-km solo.

Results like that are a testament to his tenacity.

Ben blazed his own way to the pro ranks. He was riding at his local track by the time he was five years old. Growing up, he was there every Sunday morning to train and race. But his first love was mountain biking. That meant hucking himself off the established track for a young bike racer in Britain. Ben dropped out of the academy and decided to go it alone.

Racing mountain bikes and road bikes on smaller teams, he soon had stage wins at the Giro Ciclistico d’Italia and the Ronde de l’Isard to his name, as well as Irish road and time trial championship titles. In 2019, Ben became the youngest ever winner of a stage at the Tour de l’Avenir.

And now, he has shown that he can go toe-to-toe with the best bike racers in the world in the sport’s greatest races.

Ben loves getting in breakaways and surprising his rivals with his daring attacks. He is as aero as anyone in the peloton and is always looking for the latest edge.

Last to go will be his flowing black locks. Away from the races, Ben likes big cities and hanging out with his friends from art school.

He is an explosive climber, who wants to find out what he can do over the course of a grand tour. So does the rest of the world. The only thing that’s for certain is that Ben Healy is going to keep racing his own way.

Mikkel Honoré loves to light up races in EF Education-EasyPost pink. The Dane is a very versatile rider. He has the horsepower and skill to shepherd our GC captains through a racing peloton during the hardest grand tour stages. A great climber with a strong finishing kick, who can hold his own on the cobbles, Mikkel has sprinted to stage victories at the Tour of the Basque Country and Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali—two of the hilliest stage races on the calendar. He is consistently at the front of the biggest races and always ready to do his turn for his teammates. We count on Mikkel to be there for us at crucial moments in grand tours and attack the finales of the great one-day races. He’ll go for more victories himself.

Mikkel lives in Switzerland, near the shores of Lake Como. He loves to travel and always has a book with him on the bus. Reading takes him away from the bubble of racing and training. He enjoys philosophy and novels and will always read up on the places where we race to better understand the people who live in the countryside that we pass through.

Mikkel is a great basketball fan. He and his wife will go watch a game together whenever they get the chance.

Archie Ryan is one of the most exciting young climbers in the pro peloton. The 22-year-old Irishman has already beaten WorldTour competition uphill, when he won a mountain stage at the Tour of Slovakia. Last season, Archie won the Coppa Citta' Di San Daniele and a stage of the Tour de l’Avenir and earned second places at the U23 version of Il Lombardia and the Eurode Omloop.

An explosive finisher, Archie loves to put on a show. In his rookie year, he is going to try to learn all that he can, but never count him out if a race finishes uphill. Every time the peloton hits a climb, Archie Ryan wants to be the life of the party.

At the moment, he lives in Girona, where enjoys the sunny Catalan weather, smooth roads, and a great group of training buddies. But, for Archie, Ireland will always be home. His favorite roads run through hills around Wicklow, on the windblown coast by the Irish sea. That’s where he first learned to ride and still returns to ride whenever he can and where the whole cycling community will toast Archie Ryan when he wins.

James loves the places that his bike has taken him, the people he has met because of cycling, and the life lessons he’s learned through the sport. But what does he love most about cycling? Racing.

While James has achieved strong results as a GC rider, especially in 2021 at the Tour of Slovenia and the Tour of Norway, his favorite races are the Ardennes Classics. He is also a keen student of cycling history and finds pride and motivation in thinking about the riders who have come before him. James finished his first grand tour at the 2022 Vuelta and is excited for more.

Through the year, he lives in England’s Peak District. When he is home, James resets by taking his dogs for long walks on the moors and riding with old clubmates. His racing and training schedule is very busy, but whenever he has time, James hitches a trailer to his bike and goes bike packing.

Harry Sweeny is excited to broaden his horizons with EF Education-EasyPost. The 25-year-old Australian joins our team in 2024. It will be his fourth season as a pro. Harry is still discovering his limits as a racer. As a U23, he won Il Piccolo Lombardia and has since ridden the Tour de France, where, as a rookie, he finished third on a stage and rode onto the Champs-Élysées in the break, as jets trailed red, white, and blue streaks into the sky overhead. He has raced Paris-Roubaix in the wet and Liège-Bastogne-Liège alongside his friend, the former winner and local legend, Philippe Gilbert. This year, he finished fourth on GC at the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon. Harry believes that his best is yet to come.

He came to cycling late. As a kid growing up in Brisbane, where his family moved when he was a child, he played soccer and rugby and did gymnastics and swam. He took up triathlon as a schoolboy, but focused on cycling when he was a junior and was recovering from a running injury. He started out racing local crits. His athleticism soon shone and he was picked to race the world championships in Richmond, Virginia for the Australian national team.

He moved to Europe to race, first for a small junior team in Belgium, and then for two years with the Australian Institute of Sport squad, which was then based in Italy, before moving back to Belgium for his final year as an U23. Those years opened up new worlds for Harry.

EF Education-EasyPost’s open-minded international character is a big draw for him. On the teams he has raced for in the past, he has often been one of the few foreigners. Our team is made up of riders and staff from dozens of nationalities. Most of them know what it is like to build a life far from home and can help with all of the little difficulties that come with that. Our multicultural make up helps us to expand our outlook and think beyond traditional ways of doing things too.

Harry is a lot more than a bike racer. He is a keen cook and he loves to go camping and hiking with his girlfriend, an environmental scientist, near their adopted home in Andorra. In the winters, he loves to ski. And he is a YouTuber.

Watch out for Harry on RaceTV. He is going to bring an exciting perspective to our team this year.

There is now a Colombian TV show about Rigoberto Urán’s life. It is about more than Olympic medals and grand tour podiums, fashion shoots, and appearances in the celebrity pages of newspapers.

Rigoberto’s dad was killed by a paramilitary group three months after he introduced Rigo to cycling. Rigo was 14. All of a sudden, he had to work to support his mom and his sister. He took over his dad’s job, selling lottery tickets to support his family, while going to school and trying to race. He still won a lot.

At 16, it was too much. Rigo told his cycling team that he would either have to turn pro or quit and go back to selling lottery tickets. Technically, he was too young to become a professional. To get around that fact, the team offered his mother the contract. Three years later, Rigo traveled to Europe for the first time to race for a small Italian team.

He has never looked back. An Olympic silver medal and podium finishes at the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France are highlights from his illustrious career. Rigo is still a contender. In 2022, he won stage 17 of the Vuelta, completing his trifecta of stage wins in each of the grand tours, and was a force in the autumn classics.

Rigo continues to inspire his teammates and a whole generation of cyclists with his laid-back, fun-loving approach to the sport.