EF Education-EasyPost announced on Thursday they have renewed their contract with 27-year-old Neilson Powless through the 2027 season.
The American has steadily risen through the ranks of the pink-clad team since his breakthrough victory in the Donostia San Sebastian Klaskoa in 2021 to become one of their most successful riders. This season Powless won the GP La Marseillaise and Etoile de Bessèges and landed on the podium in the Dwars door Vlaanderen and Maryland Classic, making 2023 the best year of his career to date.
"It is a pretty awesome feeling," Powless said in statement released by the team. "I joined the team in 2020 and have just grown so much here and developed so much as a rider and a person. Every year, I have been getting better with this team and its support and structure.
"It was pretty clear that this place felt like the best place for me to succeed and continue to grow. I just feel so at home here and am really happy with the direction of my career and the people that I have around me to support that."
Other results this season hint at Powless' prospects in bigger races, with a fifth place at the Tour of Flanders, seventh in Milan-San Remo and eighth in Liège-Bastogne-Liège fuelling his desire to add a Monument to his palmares, and a fifth in the road race at the World Championships a promising indicator ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
"This year was a really big eye-opener for me in terms of being able to go after wins in the Spring Classics," he said. "That is a really, really exciting path, an exciting adventure for me to try to go after. Those were races that I didn't really think I was going to be able to be a part of, but I just think it was awesome that I was in a team that was willing to take a chance on it and give it a try.
"I would like to win a cobbled classic. I would like to win a Monument and keep going after world championships every year. This is an Olympic year coming up as well. I have a lot of one-day racing ambitions, and then, obviously, there is the Tour de France. You always want to show up to the Tour with the best form you can to race the best guys in the world when they are at their peak fitness, but the cobbled classics and the Monuments are special races in their own right. It feels like I am knocking at the door of one of those races, so I hope I can nail one next year."
The Tour de France has also brought out the best in Powless in recent years. After the cobbled stage 5 in the 2022 Tour, he climbed to second overall and on the punchy stage to Longwy, won by Tadej Pogačar, he came four seconds shy of moving into the maillot jaune, ultimately finishing 12th overall. This year, he spent a dozen days in the polka dot jersey.
"It feels like I am getting physically stronger, but I am also just learning new ways to race and learning about different types of races that I can be competitive in and just being on a self-discovery path like that at this level is really exciting," Powless said.
"There have been plenty of races, especially this last year in the classics, when having a teammate just completely sell out for me would absolutely make or break my race, and having teammates who were willing to make that sacrifice and were happy to do it, were happy to just suffer for me, knowing that it is for me, not for them, that really hits deep," Powless said.
"It gives me a lot of motivation, a lot of confidence, and it makes me really appreciate the guys that I have around me, the guys who are willing to go through that pain for me, knowing that they aren't going for a result themselves, but that they are going through all of that pain to put me in a position to do well, that really makes me want to go even deeper."
