Going for gold at Amstel

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.

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.

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.

Riding bikes is almost a requirement to be in the Borghesi family. Letizia and her younger sister grew up hearing stories from her dad about his wins as a U23 racer and Letizia thought to herself, “I could do that.” She started racing as a 12-year-old and hasn’t looked back. Her parents still ride and you’ll often find them at Letizia’s races, having driven their camper van from their home in the mountains of northern Italy to support their daughter.

In 2022, Letizia earned a pair of top ten finishes in the spring classics. She continued her growth the following season with top ten results in both one-day and stage races. Letizia has raced the Giro-Tour double for the last two years, enjoying demands of back-to-back stage races. Her biggest result to date is her 2019 stage win at the Giro d’Italia where she spent the day in the breakaway before sprinting to the stage win.

Growing up in the mountains of northern Italy, Letizia is happiest when she is outside. She adores her home region of Trentino and you can often find her hiking to the nearby lakes when she’s not training on the road. She earned the silver medal in the 2022 Italian gravel national championships, her first ever gravel race, and has since also raced the gravel world championships. In the off season, Letizia enjoys competing in the local cyclocross races. Given her experience in cyclocross, it’s not a surprise that her favorite races are the cobbled classics because she loves the steep climbs and is used to the harsh weather conditions.

Letizia completed her bachelor’s degree in sports science and she is currently studying for her master’s degree in biology/nutrition.

Lukas Nerurkar is only 19, but has already won stages of the Giro Next Gen and Orlen Nations GrandPrix and finished sixth on GC at Spain’s O Gran Camiño. That one was against the pros. Lukas joins them in the WorldTour this year.

Racing runs in his genes. Bike racing was never the most straightforward choice for Lukas however. He grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where his dad – Olympic marathon and 10,000-meter runner Richard Nerurkar – moved their family after he had hung up his racing flats. He’d always trained in Africa and loved the atmosphere. Lukas’s mom Gail was a runner too. His sister Almi was soon bounding in their footsteps. She became a runner as well. But as soon as Lukas started riding bikes, he knew that cycling was the sport for him. When he was a kid, he and his dad would escape Addis Ababa’s clogged streets and ride up into the hills above the city.

Lukas just loved going farther and faster.

He has been doing that ever since. When he was seven, Lukas’s family moved back to England and settled in Brighton, where Lukas started racing with the Preston Park Cycling Club. He stayed with this local team all the way through the youth categories. By the time he was 16, he was ready to step up. He joined VC Londres in London and soon caught the eye of the racers in the club, who introduced him to Trinity, a British Continental team. There his talent blossomed. Over the past two seasons, in races all over Europe, Lukas has made a name for himself on the under-23 circuit. Now, he is ready for the WorldTour. A punchy climber, he is confident that he has what it takes to compete with the best. O Gran Camiño proved that. But Lukas knows that he still has a lot to learn. He will stay humble, but never lose his competitive fire. After all, he is Girona’s town-sign sprint and chess champion.

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.

Marijn van den Berg started cycling when he was seven. His dad would take him and his older brother out on the roads near their home, which was just outside the Dutch city of Utrecht, where Marijn still lives. For a while, Marijn wasn’t sure if he had much talent for racing, but he enjoyed getting the most out of himself on the bike. He rose through the ranks, riding for Dutch teams, before moving to France in 2021. That season, he had a breakout year, winning eight races with the juniors, including two stages of the Tour de L’Avenir. He is a strong sprinter who can get to the finish of hard-fought hilly races.

In 2022, his first season in the WorldTour, he earned a number of top-ten places. In 2023, he put to use all that he learned from his rookie season, taking wins at Trofeo Ses Salines - Alcudia and stage wins at the Tour of Poland and La Route d'Occitanie - La Dépêche du Midi. He earned the sprinter's jersey at Région Pays de la Loire Tour and La Route d'Occitanie - La Dépêche du Midi.

Marijn is still looking to learn all that he can and race for results every chance he gets.

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.

Whatever you picture when you think of an accountant, you’re probably not imagining Nina Kessler. Yet the 35-year-old earned her undergraduate degree in business economics and enjoyed her years in accounting before she made the leap to becoming a professional cyclist, although – luckily for us – she doesn’t plan to return to bookkeeping anytime soon.

Nina began cycling as a child. She used to ride with a club near her house and when she got a pink bike as a seven-year-old, that sealed her love for the sport. She branched out from road cycling and raced mountain bikes and on the track, but when she felt she was spread too thin across so many disciplines to reach her potential, Nina chose to focus on road racing.

The Dutchwoman is an experienced sprinter, though these days she often prefers to be a road captain. She has over 500 days of road racing experience and has learned a thing or two as a result. She prides herself on being able to accurately read a race situation and guiding her teammates through the finals of a race.

Away from the racing season, you’ll still find Nina surrounded by cycling. Not only does she compete recreationally in beach races in the winter – think mountain bikes with big tires and low pressure racing along the Dutch coastline – her parents are soigneurs in the Netherlands and her siblings are big fans of the sport. In fact, they are her biggest supporters.

Owain is one of just two Welsh speakers in the peloton and became the first Welsh-speaking athlete to win a gold medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

While he loves to explore new places on long rides, his favorite place to ride is in the Peak District — preferably on a sunny day. For Owain, setting goals and giving his all in their pursuit is deeply satisfying. In the moment that a race kicks it up a notch, he finds motivation in reminding himself that the outcome will be worth the effort. Owain, the runner-up in the 2019 edition of Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne, loves racing the Classics and Grand Tours. When Owain is not on his bike, you’ll find him overseeing 5 Rings, his coffee company named for the Olympic rings.

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.

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.