2013 is in the books! Beñat Intxausti won the GC of the final WT race of the year, the Tour of Beijing, by taking a victory on the decisive fourth stage. Joaquim Rodriguez finishes the year as repeat WorldTour champion on the back of his GrandTour successes, a Monument victory, and a truckload of high placings in other big races.

As this site is in the business of prospective analysis, my look back at 2013 will mostly be a look forward. I hope to shed some light on what we learned about the top riders in the sport this year, and which riders to watch in the future. If you’re reading VeloHuman, you don’t need me to tell you that Chris Froome is a rider to keep an eye on next year, or that Vincenzo Nibali is shaping up to be his main rival, or that Fabian Cancellara is still a talented racer. Instead, it’d be more productive for me to focus on the riders who made vast improvements in 2013, who we might say “arrived” this year, and who have set themselves up to do big things next year, so I’ll do just that, and name some names that I think made big strides this season and look to continue to do soon in the near future.

A rather obvious duo headlines my list of the most emphatic arrivals this year. While everyone was busy wondering which Spaniard would present the best case against Chris Froome in the Tour de France, a 23-year old Colombian leg-muscled his way onto the scene, building off of early season success in the Tour of the Basque Country with a fierce display of climbing prowess on some of the Tour’s most difficult stages: Ventoux, Alpe d’Huez, Mont Semnoz. Though the early lead Froome had built up was insurmountable, Quintana’s later stage performances, matching the Sky captain’s every move uphill on his way to 2nd overall, a stage win, the polka-dot KoM jersey and the young rider’s white, he saved Movistar’s Tour after their team leader Alejandro Valverde hit some raw luck with a mechanical that dropped him out of contention. No one will overlook him next year, especially with such a climbing-oriented 2014 edition of the Tour de France on the docket. Alternatively, he could set his sights on the Giro. Quintana’s time trialing might need a bit of work, but he showed this year that he can outclimb most of the sport’s biggest names, and you have to think he can only get better, still a few years shy of his prime.

Countryman Carlos Betancur blazed onto the scene with similar brightness. Top 10s at La Fleche Wallonne, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and the Tour of the Basque Country were followed by a highly successful Giro d’Italia, in which the young Colombian took 5th overall and the young rider classification. Like Quintana, he is sorely lacking in the time trialing department—his remarkable Giro was made all the more remarkable by his appearance in the top 10 after losing almost five minutes to the eventual winner of the race in the first ITT. Like Quintana, he’ll gun for future Grand Tour success in chrono-light parcours while he improves in that discipline, and while he may be a shade shy of Quintana’s level on the longer Tour style climbs, he’s more explosive than the Movistar wunderkind, and will surely be a fixture in the climber’s classics to come.

Zdenek Stybar is my other most emphatic arrival of the year. His situation is unique, in that cycling fans have heard Stybar’s name for years, but in a different discipline. Making the switch from cyclocross appears to have worked out for the Czech rider: even after a collision with a fan robbed him of a potential podium position in Paris-Roubaix, he still finished 6th in that race, and followed it up with a dominant Eneco Tour and a beautiful stage win in the Vuelta where he outsprinted none other than former World Champ Philippe Gilbert. His versatility was dazzling, and he will go into the 2014 classics season as a hot favorite across all kinds of terrain—and isn’t that the perfect expectation for a former cyclocross world champion?

Many other riders who were already well within the sights of cycling fans took leaps onto the highest level. Outside of Quintana, the most emphatic arrivals among riders who finished the year in the WorldTour top 10 were made by Dan Martin and Rui Costa. Dan Martin was already a name on the minds of observers at the start of the season, with a Grand Tour stage win in 2011 and the overall victory at the Tour de Pologne in 2010, but he took a Monument Classic, a Tour de France stage win, and the overall at the Volta a Catalunya this year, successes that vaulted him to 6th place in the final WorldTour rankings of 2013 (putting him ahead of Spartacus himself). And Rui Costa came into the year as a well-known talent as a winner of a Canadian GP, the Tour de Suisse, and a stage in the Tour de France, but his two Tour de France wins and World Championship (to go with another dominant Tour de Suisse) put him at cycling’s center stage. He goes to Lampre in 2014 as the team leader, a Tour de France GC hopeful. Another star of the Tour, Bauke Mollema was already a well-known name for many fans of the sport, having finished 4th overall and 1st in the points classification in the 2011 Vuelta, but he came into his own this year with strong performances all over the calendar, in the Ardennes Classics, the Tour de Suisse, Tour de France, Vuelta (where he won a stage to redeem a disappointing GC effort), and Clasica de San Sebastian. His emergence comes at just the right time, with teammate Robert Gesink having another disappointing year in terms of Grand Tour GC contention; however, Gesink showed strong late season form in shorter races, winning the Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec and placing highly in other events, suggesting a possible change of focus to shorter races going forward. And the timing was ripe for Marcel Kittel to make an explosive entrance: after injury in 2012 robbed him of an opportunity to make his mark on that year’s tour, his 2013 outing, which earned him a quartet of stage wins, suddenly sees him in the best-of-the-best conversation with Mark Cavendish and Andre Greipel.

In case you missed it, his teammate Luka Mezgec was one of a number of young up-and-coming sprinters who showed promise this year. Mezgec spent the whole year nipping at the heels of other sprinters, racking up countless top 5s without a win until he finally picked up his first of the year and his first WT level win ever on the very last day of the WorldTour calendar in Beijing. Nacer Bouhanni took a pair of wins in that race to go with the points jersey, as well as a number of other wins this year, a boon for FDJ. His squadmate Arnaud Demare took stages in the Eneco Tour and the Tour de Suisse, an armful of honors in the Four Days of Dunkirk he won, and high placings in a number of one-day races. Yet another French, Europcar’s Bryan Coquard, a former track cycling star, transitioned quite nicely onto the road, collecting honors left and right on the Continental circuit. The 21 year old will be a major force on the fast finishes in 2014 now that Europcar looks to be joining the top division of teams. Michael Matthews came into the Vuelta flying high after Continental Tour success and proceeded to establish himself as the best sprinter in that race, with a special talent for nabbing victories after tough days in the saddle. His skills nabbed him a pair of stage wins, including the victory on the final day’s sprinter battle royale.

Speaking of quick hardmen, Alexander Kristoff gets a paragraph of his own: he built on a strong 2012 (in which he took an Olympic Bronze Medal) with top 10s in three Monument Classics and his first WorldTour level win in the Tour de Suisse (besting Peter Sagan on a tough day that ended in a sprint). He has established himself as a serious contender for hardman sprinter’s races going forward.

The Vuelta gave us an opportunity to see a number of coming out parties for GC contenders. Leopold Konig landed in the top 10 and picked up a stage win at the head of a Pro Continental team, quite a feat for the 25 year old. He’ll stay with NetApp for another year and will hope his performance garners further invitations to big events, where he’s sure to continue his success. Meanwhile, Saxo-Tinkoff’s Nicolas Roche achieved some long awaited success with a top 5 finish and a stage win. His constant presence at the front of the pack on mountaintop finishes in Spain suggests that he may finally have taken the step up to the next level, a good sign for 2014.

Poland showed off a pair of riders with top level ability this year. Nico Roche’s teammate Rafal Majka didn’t win any races, but he was 7th overall in the Giro d’Italia and 2nd to Betancur for the young rider classification in that race, and he followed up with a 4th overall in his home tour to go along with his 1st place in the points classification of that race. The honors kept piling up as the year went on, when he narrowly missed out on a victory in Milano-Torino against another rising star (pictured above) and then stood on the podium in the final Monument of the year in Lombardy. By the same token (eerily), Michal Kwiatkowski may still have yet to win a pro race, but he burst onto the scene this year with a boatload of strong performances. 4th in both Tirreno-Adriatico and Amstel Gold, 5th in La Fleche Wallonne, and a heartbreaking 11th in the Tour de France after fellow up-and-comer Andrew Talansky grabbed the final top 10 spot on the last day of climbing, Majka looks to be a likely candidate for continued climbing success, and Kwiatkowski showed an incredible array of skills and looks poised to stake a claim to best all-rounder in the very near future.

A significant number of teams saw young climbing talents rising up the ladder this year. Many are Italian. 2011 Giro stage winner Diego Ulissi took a big step forward with successes on both ends of the season, nabbing a top 10 at Paris-Nice early and then a stage win in the Tour de Pologne and a string of semi-classic victories in Italy. So far, most of his quantifiable successes have been on smaller stages, but he performed at a high level in some big races this year (he was lurking in a number of stages in the Vuelta even if he didn’t come away with a win), inspiring a lot of confidence going forward. He’ll be part of an explosive one-two combination with Rui Costa at Lampre in 2014. Astana teammates Fabio Aru and Simone Ponzi look like prime candidates for success next year. Another Italian, Moreno Moser, had several standout performances this year for Cannondale; he disappeared at times when he was expected to bring his success to a bigger stage, but he showed in Strade Bianche and other races in 2013 that he certainly has the ability to turn promise into achievement in 2014.

Spaniard Jon Izagirre won’t be sweating the dissolution of his former team Euskaltel too much now that he has a new squad in Movistar, and it’s easy to see why they signed him. He nabbed the runner-up honors in the Tour de Pologne with a surprising time trial performance on the last day, and notched top 10s in the Tour Down Under and the one day Grand Prix Cycliste de Montreal as well.

24 year old Arthur Vichot looks to be one of yet another up-and-comer for FDJ with strong climbing legs and a fast finish, abilities that netted him the French national championship, the runner-up honors in Quebec, and the victory in the Tour du Haut Var-matin. AG2R’s Romain Bardet, winner of the Tour de l’Ain and a high finisher in the Tour of Beijing, appears to have a bright future, and he joins teammate Carlos Betancur as part of a crop of young uphill chargers on that team.

Wilco Kelderman, a natural time trial talent, came into his own as a climber with a number of high-level successes in 2013. He picked up top 10s in Romandie, the Eneco Tour, and the Tour Down Under, and dominated the Tour of Denmark, where he won a stage, the points classification, and the overall. He’s another exciting up-and-comer for Belkin.

Argos-Shimano teammates Warren Barguil and Tom Dumoulin got themselves onto the map this year, the former nabbing a pair of breakaway victories in the Vuelta, and the latter claiming runner up honors with an impressive Eneco Tour performance. Alongside Marcel Kittel, Luka Mezgec, and John Degenkolb, the duo makes a potent quartet of Argos riders 25 and under.

Riccardo Zoidl nabbed the GC win at the Tour of Austria, and climbed at a high level in a number of other events. Darwin Atapuma moves up from Team Colombia to BMC after nabbing his first WorldTour win this year in Poland—that team desperately needs new blood, and Atapuma will be happy to oblige.

To match all these young climbers coming into their own, a few time trialists are on the rise: Adriano Malori looks to be a threat in that department, putting in a top 10 at the World Championship ITT and taking second place behind Tony Martin on a few time trial stages in WorldTour races to go along with his ITT victory and the overall in Bayern-Rundfahrt. Rohan Dennis out-time-trialed Chris Froome in the Criterium du Dauphine on his way to a top 10 there and then showed his versatility when he won a stage and the overall in the Tour of Alberta. The 23 year old has established himself as a promising member of Garmin’s youth movement.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and obviously much depends on how you define breakout success, but hopefully I’ve rattled off the names of many of tomorrow’s biggest names. And thanks to the Tour Down Under and its January start date, we won’t have too long to wait for the opening of the 2014 calendar–in just 11 weeks, the pro peloton heads to Nuriootpa, Australia to kick off the new season!

-Dane Cash

Photos by Flowizm, brassynn, and Georges Ménager.