Turning professional with a WorldTour team aged 18 used to be unheard of. Riders went from the junior category to the U23 ranks and finally joined the pro ranks in their early 20s – that’s just how it was done. This past decade, however, everything has flipped on its head: cycling is getting younger and younger, and the best talents skip the U23 division and sign for some of the best teams just a few months after finishing their education. Not everyone can have the sort of success Remco Evenepoel did though.
Michael Leonard joined Ineos Grenadiers in 2023 after winning nine junior races in Italy and Switzerland. The Canadian was held up as one of the sport’s brightest talents. Yet replicating that success at Ineos proved difficult. “From a performance point of view the first year and a half at Ineos was not good – we can be honest about that,” Leonard, soon to be 22, tells Rouleur.
He improved, winning a stage of the Tour de l’Avenir and becoming the Canadian time trial champion, but after three years his time with the British team was up. Now he’s got a second chance, this time with EF Education-EasyPost who see him as a potential GC star. “The style of racing really attracted me. They’re not a team who is content to back away and accumulate some top-10s and get UCI points – they’re a team who want to race to make a statement and that’s quite attractive,” the affable rider says.
The Canadian has a home World Championships to look forward to at the end of this season. Image: Chris Auld/SWPix.com.
Leonard didn’t fail at Ineos – he just didn’t progress in the manner he and the team would have liked. He had plenty of big race opportunities, including riding and completing eight WorldTour stage races last year alone, but the adaptation to pro life took longer than he had imagined.
“Even in the first couple of months I made a lot of mistakes in training and with nutrition that were hard to come back from and I put my body in a hole. My level wasn't good enough to be in the WorldTour,” he admits. “I was either doing too much or too little. They were basic mistakes that everyone makes and you have to do it at some point – it was just an unfortunate moment to have done it. It took me breaking my hip [in early 2024] to reset and when I came back I was good again.”
Did he turn pro too early? “It’s hard to say. In another world where I didn’t make those mistakes it could have been different. Or I could have been in an U23 team making the same mistakes and had a whole bunch of other issues. You can’t really know – you only know what’s happened – and the important point is I’ve come back stronger and with more experience and I’ve got some more years in EF to continue progressing.”
Ineos’s loss, he hopes, will be EF’s gain. As well as the racing style, Leonard was drawn to the North American identity of the team. “Culturally, it’s a nice fit,” he says. And while Ineos can also claim to boast an elite performance structure, Leonard was impressed by EF’s support network. “The TT material is super good and that’s important for me,” he says. “The general attitude in terms of the DSs and coaches is also impressive, and it feels really progressive in terms of using sports scientists to get the most out of riders, and also listening to riders.”
To date, Leonard has mostly been on domestique duties, but he has also shown his hand in time trials. “It’s hard to compete with the real specialists. Look at Josh [Tarling], Filippo [Ganna] and Remco, those guys are a step above everyone else,” he says. “I’ve not done a lot of testing and I’m not sure how much margin [of improvement] I have to be more aero. But it’s not impossible [to close the gap to the aforementioned riders] if I have a big margin in aero. But realistically I'll be using the TT to gain time in the GC.”
Leonard made his debut for his new team in Australia. Image: Zac Williams/EF Education-EasyPost
Leonard began the new chapter of his career at the Tour Down Under in January, and the plan is for him to make his Grand Tour debut this season, although in which of the three races has not yet been decided. “I absolutely want to do one and the team also want me to do one too, but you don’t get to do it for free,” he says. “It’s important that I show good performances in the first races and make selection. In one-week races I’m someone who is better towards the weekend and in the last few hard days, so I think with that trend Grand Tour racing would suit me. To do the Giro d’Italia would be good as I lived in Italy as a junior so it feels like home there and the racing suits me.”
Later in the year Leonard will be one of the Canadians hoping to be selected for a home World Championships in Montréal (he was raised in the neighbouring province of Ontario), and it’ll be a rare trip back to his own country. “I’ve not lived there since I was 16 and I don’t really have much of a reason to go back,” he says. “I’m jealous of the Colombians and the Australians who can train at home in winter, but that’s not possible for me.
“It’s going to be nice to be back for the combination of the Worlds and the GPs [Montréal and Québec]. It will probably be the only home Worlds of my career, so I want to make the most out of it, go and compete and feel like I showed myself and Canada as best as possible. In terms of results, if Derek [Gee] turns up in good shape and I take a step up we can be in the fight.”
That’s for six months down the line. In the here and now, Leonard is on a mission to seize his chance that EF have given him and become Canada’s next cycling star, just like his junior days promised. “I think there have been a lot of reasons why I have struggled a bit in the last couple of years, but now I know what those reasons are, I know what I need to do and it’s on me to do it.”
Cover image: Karter Machen/EF Education-EasyPost
