Without a team for next season, Teuns calls time on his career as two Belgians make the Vélo d'Or shortlist
The Limburg climber won the Flèche Wallonne and two Tour stages among other races. Evenepoel and Van Aert are on the shortlist for the prestigious cycling award, Kopecky is not.
Dylan Teuns is retiring. The 34-year-old from Limburg announced on Instagram on Thursday that he is leaving the professional peloton, Sporza, RTBF and La DH report. His contract with French team Cofidis had expired, and according to Sporza he had already said in September that talks with other teams were not going well. Teuns wrote that he looks back with pride and gratitude on a career in which his childhood dreams came true.
Teuns started as a trainee with BMC in 2014 and later rode for Bahrain, Israel-Premier Tech and, from 2025, Cofidis. His breakthrough came in 2017, when he won eight times in two months, including the overall titles at the Tour de Wallonie, the Tour of Poland and the Arctic Race of Norway. At the Tour de France he won stages at La Planche des Belles Filles in 2019 and Le Grand-Bornand in 2021, and in 2022 he conquered the Mur de Huy at the Flèche Wallonne, the biggest win of his career. In all, he won fourteen professional races. According to RTBF, he also highlighted his podium at Il Lombardia in 2020 and four world championships in the Belgian jersey.
At Cofidis, Teuns faded from view over the past two seasons, partly because of injuries, Sporza writes. His last win dates from 2022, a stage of the Tour de Romandie.
On Thursday evening, the nominees for the Vélo d'Or, cycling's most important individual award, presented by Vélo Magazine, were also announced. Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert are among the ten men, although Tadej Pogačar is the clear favourite after wins including the Tour of Flanders, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Tour, according to Sporza. Among the women, Lotte Kopecky, the 2024 winner, is missing despite her victory in Milan-San Remo. The winners will be announced in Monaco on 28 November. Van Aert said in Hasselt on Thursday that his cyclocross programme is not yet fixed and that he probably will not race before his team's training camp on 8 December, La DH reports. The world championships in Ostend on 31 January do appeal to him.