Last year, EF Education-Aevolo graduate Noah Hobbs won a stage and the points jersey while competing in the race for the Great Britain national team. It capped a wonderful year for the young rider before he signed a WorldTour contract with EF Education-EasyPost.

Twelve months on from that performance, Noah is making waves in the WorldTour, and EF Education-Aevolo head into the Tour de l'Avenir for the first time, with ambitions to win a stage and compete at every turn.

With a team stacked with breakaway opportunists, sprinters and a new climber, Head Sports Director Mike Creed is excited to see what the team can achieve on their Tour de l'Avenir debut, with Magnus Carstensen, Alfredo Bueno, Tomos Pattinson, Miguel Ángel Marín, Nathan Cusack and recent recruit Gavin Sherry making up the team.

“I’m really confident that we can leave our mark on the race and that the riders we’ve selected will be showing off the EF Education-Aevolo jersey from stage 1 through to 7. We don’t have a GC dimension to our line-up, but what we do have are riders that can ensure we’re in the mix every single day of the race,” he added.

Alfredo, who has recently spent time motor pacing and training in the US, and Nathan will have the chance to mix it with the sprinters on stages 1, 2, and 4, while Magnus, Tomos, and Miguel will aim to come into their own on the intermediate stages. Gavin, who only joined the team last month, is a candidate for the 16km individual time trial on stage 5 but could certainly be a factor in other stages too.

“We’ve some really good stage hunters in our team; that’s our biggest strength, so if it comes down to a street fight for some of these stages, which we think that it will, then we’ve got the riders like Magnus, Tomos and Miguel. When the road tilts upwards, we’re going to see more of Gavin. We don’t have GC aspirations for him from the start because he’s still finding his feet, and the first few days are quite unpredictable. It’s important to protect riders in that sense, so while we certainly want to see Gavin achieve some special things, and we won’t be asking him to sit up, we don’t want to set the bar too high from stage 1,” Creed said.

“For the sprints, on his day Alfredo is as fast as anyone, but Nathan this year has been really consistent. So far he’s picked up a top-ten in all but one of the stage races that he’s started, so both riders give us options for those days. All the riders here in France cannot wait to start racing,” Creed added.

We can’t wait to see the riders in action for the team’s Tour de l'Avenir debut either!