How moving to Europe as a 17-year-old changed my life – Luke Tuckwell's rapid rise to the pro ranks, in his own words

Hello everyone! When Cyclingnews, and more specifically the wonderful human that Josh Croxton is, first approached me roughly a month ago and floated the idea of writing my own column for their website, I was a young and relatively unknown rider within the WorldTour. Fast forward to the middle of June as I've started to write this first piece and that situation is now very different.

Hi, my name is Luke Tuckwell. I am a 21-year-old Australian professional cyclist for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. 2026 is my first year as a rider in the WorldTour and for the past two years I have been studying a communications degree online. So, when Josh initially pitched the idea for my own column, I immediately jumped on it due to my passion for journalism and love for communicating stories and experiences.

In this first piece I will explain my story, where I started, how I got to Europe, and ultimately how I ended up in the position that I am in today. I hope you enjoy the read, there will be plenty more to come!

Luke Tuckwell

If you didn't know Luke Tuckwell already, you almost certainly do now after he wore the yellow jersey for two days at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, ultimately finishing second overall in his first year as a pro. Luke will tell us all about that soon, but first, he wrote about how he came to be a pro in the first place.

Where did I start?

I actually don’t remember the day I said I wanted to ride a bike. I was so young that to me it has always been the norm. But I trace it back to a series of moments that my parents have subsequently told me.

For this part the Australian readers will know what I am talking about, but for the rest of you, as a toddler I was obsessed with the Australian kids show 'The Wiggles’. They were mostly well known for the colour of their shirts. The lead character Greg wore yellow, Murray wore red, and Anthony wore blue. During this stage of my life my dad also began regularly watching the Tour de France, more specifically the morning thirty minute highlight package that SBS ran. Unfortunately for me, these highlights coincided with episodes of The Wiggles. So, in order for dad to stay up to date with the race and for his toddler to be satisfied, he tricked me into thinking that The Wiggles was the Tour. I think you can imagine how that turned out; a young Luke screaming "Go Greg!" at the top of his lungs as Lance Armstrong danced away from his rivals in the Alps.

I attribute this manipulation of a child’s mind by his father as the reason why I am completely obsessed with cycling today. Cycling has been ingrained into my life for the best part of fifteen years now, and I think my love for the sport is the biggest factor to my success and enjoyment of riding my bike.

My transition From Australia to Europe

I was a slow progresser in the Australian junior scene. I was in and around the podium regularly, but I wasn’t a prolific winner and didn’t score any national titles. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the hugely successful domestic team InForm TMX Make for my second junior year, which also happened to be the first year I went to Europe.

Let me take you back to November 2021. I was sitting in the kitchen alone and received an Instagram DM from Simon Clarke, one of the most successful and well respected Australian pros there has been. I was stunned, 17-year-old Luke couldn’t believe the notification on his phone. Anyways, Simon’s message in short entailed the details of a potential opportunity to go and race in Italy the following year for a few months. I immediately said yes before consulting my parents.

Over the next few months, together with Simon and my parents, we fleshed out the details and booked the flights for three months in Italy between April and July. And so 17-year-old Luke, in his final year of high school, waved goodbye to his family at Sydney airport bound for Rome.

The first week in Italy was horrible. I was incredibly homesick, to the point where if a taxi pulled up outside where I was living bound for the airport, I would have jumped into it immediately.

My first race was a week after arriving and it was the last thing I wanted to do. I went anyway without any expectations and saw it as a good first experience in the European peloton. I think during this first race I spent roughly 90% of the race in the last twenty positions on the road questioning my life choices as Italian teenagers pushed each other off the road with 80km still to go until the finish. The 10km lap we raced around consisted of a singular, gradual 3-4km climb to the finish, and the second last time up I somehow made it to the front. The legs felt good, and I launched an attack. Of course no one had any idea who I was so no one followed, and I began my pursuit towards the breakaway a minute ahead of the bunch. I eventually caught the breakaway, continued on riding with them sitting in my wheel, and subsequently dropped them on the final time up the climb to the finish.

I won my first race in Europe. Solo. A pretty good way to start my European racing career if I must say.

I quickly drew interest from a few individuals within the sport, and after another win in late June I decided that Trinity Racing was my destination for the 2023 season, my first year as a U23 rider. The following year I did what every young Australian rider does and moved to Girona in Spain, and got my head kicked in at the limited races I did in the second half of the year. I would be lying if I wasn’t a bit apprehensive to how the 2024 season would go, and so I returned back to Europe in February 2024 for my second year with Trinity.

Things started clicking

I could ramble on here about how I progressed throughout the 2024 season and all the ups and downs I experienced, but in short I had a great year. I was hyper-focused on nailing the first six months of the year, and making sure I was on the start line of the Giro Next Gen in June.

I got my first top 10 GC result in May in Ronde de l’Isard where I finished sixth. That was followed the next week by a fifth in the Belgian one-day race Flèche Ardennaise. At this point I was well and truly on track to be at the start of the Giro in Aosta, and in Aosta I was. I spent two long weeks up at altitude in Tignes solo prior to the race, and was in flying form from the beginning of the race. Coming into the last weekend of the race I was in the top 10 overall, then spilled out of it, and on the final day I pulled the first breakaway stunt of my career and snuck back into GC and finished 10th. The first big result of my career.

During the race John Wakefield from Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe approached me expressing their interest in me. They were excited by my style of racing and my development trajectory. John also explained the team’s plans of forming a development team for the 2025 season and, following my performance at the Giro Next Gen, I had a Zoom meeting with the team. Within the week, I was contracted to the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Rookies for the 2025 season.

The year that changed my life

I was blown away by the entire Red Bull organisation. Coming from a relatively small development team in Trinity Racing and stepping into the first day of the team's October camp in Austria with the likes of Primož Roglič and Jai Hindley sitting in the same room, cycling fanboy Luke couldn’t believe the position he was in.

I started slow last year. I had two great opportunities to race with the WorldTour team in Mallorca as well as Andalucia in the first two months of the year before I shifted my focus to the first big goal of the year, U23 Liège-Bastogne-Liège. I put in a solid performance finishing eighth but I felt as if I was far from my best.

Prior to the 2025 edition of the Giro Next Gen I spent three weeks in Andorra on an altitude training camp together with the rest of the Rookies team. I had an exceptional few weeks of training and was feeling the best I had ever felt on the bike, so confidence was high heading into the Giro once again. I was looking for another good GC result in the race, with the minimum expectation of exceeding my 10th place from the year prior.

After the first uphill test of the race on stage 3 I found myself sitting in third overall, with my team mate Lorenzo Finn sitting in second behind the previous year's winner Jarno Widar. Collectively as a team, we saw a golden opportunity to put some pressure on the race leader on the fifth stage to try and launch one of us into the leader's jersey. After a flurry of attacks midway during the stage I found myself in a group of ten other riders that slowly rode away from the maglia. We crossed the line a minute and forty five seconds ahead of Widar, and I had taken the maglia rosa for the first time. This was the second GC break away stunt of my career.

As I crossed the finish line and made my way towards my soigneur, I was overjoyed. My dad had travelled over from Australia for the duration of the race and he couldn’t contain his excitement. I couldn’t quite believe I was in the race lead of such a prestigious event with only three stages remaining, but my focus quickly shifted towards defending the jersey with an eye on winning the race overall. The following day was relatively uneventful and I retained my lead without any problems. I headed into the Queen stage with a slender margin over second place. Stage 7 also happened to be my 21st birthday, so I can’t begin to describe how incredible of an experience it was to race in the maglia rosa on my birthday. I unfortunately lost half of my margin on this day, and I would go into the final day looking to hold on to win the race.

I unfortunately did not win. Slovenian star Jakob Omrzel dropped me on the final climb and won the race by 12 seconds. I was heartbroken. I felt I had come so close to winning the biggest U23 race in the world and the chance slipped through my fingers.

The thing that did help with the disappointment was that in the following two weeks, I was offered a WorldTour contract. This moment was the culmination of years of hard work and a childhood dream of one day becoming a professional cyclist.

Although I would continue to beat myself up about what happened on the final day in the Giro for a long time afterwards, the realisation that I would be pro for the following season allowed me to slowly move on. But the pain of losing a bike race would seem like a drop of water a few months later.

After fighting chronic illness for the prior two and a half years, my younger sister Antonia’s health had taken a turn for the worst. I immediately rushed back to Australia in the first week of September and thankfully made it home in time to be there for her final days. I couldn’t quite comprehend the curveball life had thrown at myself and my family, where all of us only two months earlier were celebrating my first pro contract, to now all of us sitting together in a hospital room.

Losing my sister has been the most painful experience of my life. It took a very long time for it to actually feel true, but I was determined to continue to give my all in my career in honour of her. It is the only way she would have wanted me to live out my life.

New beginnings

And so 2026 rolled around and so did my first year as a professional cyclist. I moved to Andorra, like the majority of professionals do once they turn pro. I had my first serious December training camp with the entire team in Mallorca, and I started my season in Australia at the Tour Down Under, which is a race that is close to the heart of all Australians. It was the first time my entire family had the opportunity to come and watch me race at the highest level.

Little did I know that after the year that 2025 was, 2026 would find a way to outdo it. In my next piece next week I'll dive into it and the experience that was this year's Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

See you then!