Ready for De Ronde

You’ve seen her dancing on social media, on the podium, and everywhere in between. Alison’s love of movement, whether it’s dancing, riding, or being outdoors, is infectious.

Alison earned the biggest win of her career to date in 2023 when she won Paris-Roubaix from a breakaway that she kept alive from the race’s early kilometers. She followed it up the next month by winning the Canadian road race national championships in her native Alberta. Alison is an Olympian and has raced nine times in the world championships, including a sixth place finish in 2021.

For Alison, winning is important, but it doesn’t matter to her whether she’s atop the podium or if it’s one of her teammates. She’s more interested in making a difference in each race and contributing to the best result possible for the team.

Growing up on her family’s farm in Vermilion, Alberta, Alison had endless opportunities to exhaust her energy by helping with chores or playing with her siblings. But her mother noticed that Alison’s energy never seemed to dwindle, so she signed her daughter up for every sport available in her hometown of 4,000 people. Alison’s curiosity and innate athletic talent led her to pick up swimming, compete provincially in gymnastics, go hiking in the Himalayas, and eventually to pick up an old bike that a former farmhand had left behind on her family’s farm. Fast forward to today and Alison is still driven by that same sense of curiosity, but this time she’s wondering just how far she can push her limits on the bike.

Coryn has been a bike racer for over two decades, getting her start as an 11-year-old. She grew up racing mountain bike, cyclocross, track cycling, and road racing in southern California. Over the years and across the disciplines, she has won over 70 national titles and is currently the American criterium national champion.

She is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to one-day racing or punchy climbs, having won the Tour of Flanders, RideLondon Classique, Trofeo Alfredo Binda, as well as stages at the Giro d’Italia Women, the Women’s Tour, Thüringen Ladies Tour, and the Lotto Belgium Tour.

As much as Coryn loves to race, she cherishes her downtime in the off season when she can relax at home in Pennsylvania with her husband and Tank, their dog who enjoys napping and walking. She and her husband converted a Sprinter van which they use to travel around the U.S. for trips and Coryn’s training. They even have a portable pizza oven for the van, so Coryn, an avid cook, can make homemade sourdough pizza crust anywhere in the country.

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.

Jonas Rutsch loves the Classics and is always excited when he gets to race up the Muur-Kapelmuur. The lanky German won the U23 Gent-Wevelgem and finished 11th at the 2021 Paris-Roubaix. He is a very versatile rider, who is always ready to work for his teammates.

In 2022, he even impressed in the mountains at the Tour de Suisse.

This is already Jonas’s fifth season racing with the team. He says that racing in the WorldTour had been his goal since he was a little boy, when cycling’s historic races captured his imagination. He has now finished two Tours de France and even proposed to girlfriend on the Champs-Élysées after the 2022 Tour.

In addition to racing, Jonas also finished his exams at the German police academy. While he follows a training schedule, his favorite days are when he just gets to ride his bike. Whenever he has the chance, he goes mountain biking.

Kristen sees bike racing as a game of chess, where strategy, patience, and anticipating a competitor’s move make the sport demanding and thrilling. As she begins her fifth season, Kristen will focus on two goals for 2024: making the U.S. Olympic team for the time trial and developing as a GC rider. Given her palmarès, these are lofty but realistic goals. She is a proven time trialist, having won TTs in the Giro d’Italia Women, Tour de Suisse, and the Pan-American Games. She’s also had top ten GC results at Itzulia Women, Women’s Tour, Tour de Suisse, Ladies Tour of Norway.

Growing up in Alaska gave Kristen a deep appreciation for the outdoors and helped her develop a sense of resiliency.

Before she became a cyclist, Kristen worked in finance in Manhattan. She missed team sports – she had been a rower in college – and so she went to a women’s introductory cycling clinic in Central Park. She enjoyed that enough to do a race and once she experienced how much strategy and tactical thinking cycling required, she knew it was the sport for her.

When she’s at home in Girona, Kristen loves to grocery shop at the local farmers markets, letting fresh produce inspire her in the kitchen. She focuses on creating healthy, vegetable-based dishes.

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.

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.

Michael Valgren grew up in Østerild, on the west coast of Denmark. When he was a kid, he would race between towns by the North Sea, pretending that he was in the Tour de France. Michael now lives in Monaco with his wife and two young kids, but his favorite road is still the stretch through the dunes between the fishing villages of Klitmøller and Hanstholm, where he got started.

The races he loves most are the classics. Michael shines on the cobbles and on short, punchy climbs. He has already won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and the Amstel Gold Race.

Michael was injured in a crash in 2022. It took time and a lot of hard work for him to get back to form, so we are thrilled to have him back racing with us.

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.

Noemi came to bike racing through her family. At first, her goal was simply to keep up with her brother who is five years older than her. Their dad was involved with a local cycling club and Noemi slowly grew more and more curious. When she was 13, she finished her first cyclocross race and was hooked.

She turned professional on the road as a 19-year-old, leaving her full-time job caring for disabled people in a home. She is a two-time Under-23 Swiss time trial national champion but her heart belongs to the classics. Noemi loves a punchy course, the more chaotic, the better. She is not afraid to be aggressive in the peloton and loves the excitement and energy of a hectic race.

Noemi is only 22 and still discovering her path in the sport. In 2024, she will focus on learning from races and her teammates. Her ultimate goals are to podium in one of the classics and to develop as a stage racer.

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.

When Stefan Bissegger was ten, he signed up for a bike race in his home village in Switzerland. He just didn’t know that he needed a racing bike. The organizer, an old pro, called him and said he could borrow one. He is still Stefan’s coach.

Stefan had fun at the race. Soon he was dreaming of winning classics like Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders. He was good at time-trials and long solos and wanted to become the kind of racer who could ride away from all of his rivals on the Oude Kwaremont.

After a stellar few years in the juniors, Stefan came to our team in 2020. He had a breakthrough season in 2021, with time-trial victories at Paris-Nice and the Benelux Tour and an outstanding solo stage win at his home race: the Tour de Suisse. To cap it all off, he participated in his first Olympics on the track with the Swiss team-pursuit squad.

In 2022, Stefan won the European time trial championships, the TT at the UAE Tour, and a rainbow jersey in the mixed relay at the world championships.

He had a difficult start to last season, breaking his wrist right before his favorite race of the year: Paris-Roubaix. He worked his way back into form however and won the Swiss national time-trial title.

If Stefan wasn’t a racer, he would be a bike mechanic. He likes tinkering with the set-up of his SuperSlice and testing his position until it is as aero as possible.