Moving directly from the junior ranks to the WorldTour isn’t a complete novelty anymore, but it remains a rarity. Michael Leonard joined that elite cadre when he skipped the under-23 category to join Ineos Grenadiers at the start of this season, and the 19-year-old has lined out for his first WorldTour race this week at the Tour of Guangxi.
“This week has been a good experience, I’m learning a lot from being in a peloton with high calibre riders,” Leonard told Cyclingnews in Nanning. “There have been a lot of races earlier this season where I’ve struggled with illness but I pushed through them. It’s the tough moments that allow you to grow.”
The leap in standard is a considerable one, but then Leonard had arguably already taken a bigger plunge when he left his native Canada early in 2022 to race as a junior in Italy with the Franco Ballerini squad. Early exposure to racing in Europe has long been a part of the maturation ordeal for aspiring North American riders, but few make the trip alone at such a young age.
“I’d say probably moving to Tuscany was a bigger step than going from juniors to racing professionally,” Leonard said. “I didn’t speak the language, I had no clue of what I was getting into. That was a reality check. [Joining Ineos] was a big step, but I was already in the environment and I knew more or less what I was getting into.”
At first glance, Leonard’s decision to seek a European squad before he had even completed high school seems the act of a young man in a hurry, of an ambitious rider following a bullet-point plan to reach the WorldTour as quickly as possible.
The reality, he explained, is that it was more an act of exploration. Leonard’s results from his first year as a junior had suggested he was good, and he figured the time in Italy might tell him exactly how good. But no matter how the racing unfolded, it was going to be an adventure.
“I didn’t go to Italy thinking I needed to do that to go to the WorldTour or whatever,” Leonard said. “I went to Italy just thinking it was going to be an awesome year, come what will. Whether it was the end of my cycling career or the start of it, I was going to have a good experience.”
Leonard had contacted Team Franco Ballerini in the modern fashion, by sending a direct message on Instagram, although he had already caught the squad’s attention when he placed second at the 2021 Tour de Leman with the Canadian national team. The squad, which serves as a feeder for Corratec, provided accommodation, and he arrived in February of last year.
By March, Leonard was already standing atop a podium as winner of the Trofeo Ballero nel Cuore. “Then I kept winning and it just sort of slowly progressed from there,” he said. Slowly perhaps isn’t the operative term. By late summer, he had signed a three-year deal with Ineos, after weighing up the pros and cons of skipping the under-23 category.
“I’m not sure one way is necessarily better than the other, it’s just that different things work for different people,” Leonard said. “But my programme this year has had mainly 2.1 and 2.Pro races anyway, so it’s not so different to being in a Continental team.”
Perhaps it helps that Ineos, currently in something of a transitional phase, have invested so heavily in youth in the past couple of seasons, lowering the age profile of the squad in the process. Their 2023 roster includes eight riders aged 23 or younger, including Leonard’s fellow teenager Josh Tarling.
“I’ve been at races where the average age of our team is under 22, so being in the environment with those guys is maybe a bit more comfortable,” said Leonard, who is now based in Andorra, where Ineos have a service course. “The team has definitely put an effort into supporting young riders. They’ve hired Simon Watts as performance pathway manager, so there’s a lot of support, and that definitely helps as well.”
After riding to win every time he raced as a junior, Leonard has naturally been deployed largely in a supporting role since joining Ineos, though he downplayed the notion that the transition was a difficult one to make, citing racing in the service of Egan Bernal at the Tour of Hungary in May as the highlight of his maiden season.
“What motivates me is doing my best and doing a good job,” he said. “If my job is to win, like it was in juniors, and I do that, then I’m happy. But if my job is to bring a teammate to the right spot or to ride until a certain kilometre, then it makes me equally happy if I achieve that."
“Racing in Hungary with Egan was a special experience, and I was able to do my job quite well there. I was happy to help the team and just learn as much as I could from him. Next season will be about continuing my progress and increasing my level physically, just to be more in the finals of races.”
