Being talented is no longer enough in pro cycling – if your UCI points sheet is thin, your entire career can suddenly be on the line. And this is exactly the harsh reality Kevin Colleoni is living through right now – a rider with proven potential, suddenly left without a contract in the chaos of a team merger.
The 26-year-old Italian climber is heading into winter without a team, without a confirmed race calendar, and without any real security about his future. After the merger between Intermarché-Wanty and Lotto, many riders have been left scrambling for spots, and Colleoni has unexpectedly become one of the victims of an increasingly brutal and crowded job market. He openly admits that, after five straight years at WorldTour level, he assumed his profile and experience would attract far more interest than what he is actually seeing now.
According to him, the logic of the sport has become painfully simple: teams increasingly judge riders through one narrow lens – the UCI points they can deliver. That numbers-first mentality can completely overshadow a rider’s history, role, and potential. He explains that right now he “has practically nothing in his hands”: fewer available places because of mergers and teams folding, and a peloton where managers scan rankings more than they evaluate a rider’s full contribution. After half a decade at the top level, he expected at least a few serious opportunities, but instead, he finds himself in limbo. But here’s where it gets controversial: if a rider’s worth is reduced almost entirely to points, what happens to domestiques, climbers, or support riders whose work rarely translates directly into big results?
When Intermarché opted not to renew his contract ahead of the new 2026 partnership with Lotto, Colleoni was forced to redesign his entire winter by himself. He calls it a do-it-yourself off-season: no structured team training camp, no official race programme to prepare for, and no clear roadmap for the coming year. For a professional who is used to living by meticulously planned schedules, that kind of uncertainty is mentally exhausting. Still, he is trying to behave as if he already had a team, keeping a disciplined routine instead of drifting into frustration.
A big part of his current struggle can be traced back to a turning point most people would barely have noticed at the time: a crash at the 2022 Coppa Agostoni. On the day, it looked relatively minor – the sort of incident that happens all the time in the peloton. But for Colleoni, that fall marked the start of a long, draining journey through back pain, endless adjustments, and constant treatment. What seemed like a small setback slowly became a serious obstacle that derailed his momentum just as his career was taking shape.
He admits that the crash “put him on the ropes” and that he has never fully felt like his old self since. The sensations on the bike changed; he no longer recognized his own body when he pushed hard, and the ease he once had started to disappear. In an effort to fix things, he tried almost everything: modifying his position on the bike, experimenting with different saddles, working regularly with physiotherapists and, eventually, collaborating closely with an osteopath. Only this year have they managed to find some kind of balance that allows him to ride and train without being constantly held back by discomfort.
Even now, he does not claim to be completely back to his pre-crash level. However, by adding consistent gym work and strengthening exercises, he has found a way to manage the pain and occasionally recover those “old sensations” that defined his early years. Despite this partial progress, he sums up the last two seasons as negative overall: he has not really enjoyed racing, and he feels those years do not represent what he is actually capable of. That is why he is now actively searching for a project that can relaunch him – a team environment that believes in his potential and helps him return to the rider he knows he can still be.
This stands in sharp contrast to his reputation when he was racing in the under-23 category. Back then, Colleoni was considered one of Italy’s most promising young climbers. He finished 3rd at the Giro Next Gen (the U23 version of the Giro d’Italia), took 2nd place at GP Capodarco and Trofeo San Vendemiano, and soon after, in his first years as a professional, he was already posting top-10 results at races like the Czech Tour, Tour of Oman, and Tour de Hongrie. Those performances marked him as a rider with serious long-term potential, especially in stage races and mountainous terrain.
Yet today’s transfer market shows little mercy for past results when recent seasons are complicated by injuries and limited opportunities. Colleoni is very open about the fact that he might have to step down a level simply to keep his career alive. He says he is ready to listen to all offers, even from teams in a lower category, and would accept a more modest race calendar if it allowed him to chase results and prove that he still belongs at a high level. His aim is not just to stay in the game, but to rebuild his reputation and show that he can once again be competitive where it matters.
At the same time, he is clear about his limits. He has no desire to return to the amateur ranks just for the sake of pinning on a number, nor is he particularly interested in spending a full season racing only in far-off Asian events, even though he says this with full respect for those calendars. For him, the goal is to relaunch, not just to survive. He wants to demonstrate that he can perform in races that genuinely reflect his talent, rather than simply filling a spot wherever there is an opening.
While WorldTour teams are already gathering at their pre-season training camps, Colleoni is preparing on his own, trying to keep the same discipline as if he were already integrated into a professional squad. He admits he cannot claim to be completely calm, but he also says he is not experiencing this period in a dramatically negative way. He has started training again with the mindset of a contracted rider, and he plans to bring in the support of a coach later on to fine-tune his work. The most difficult part, he explains, is the mental side: training hard every day without knowing whether it will actually lead to a contract.
He has set himself an internal deadline: he will give the situation until the end of the year. If no suitable opportunity appears by then, he will “pull the brake” a bit and seriously evaluate his alternatives – his Plan B. He hints that he is already thinking about what that might look like, but he prefers not to dwell on it for now. His priority, in his own words, is still to continue as a professional cyclist, and he wants to exhaust every realistic option before looking beyond the sport.
For the moment, Colleoni’s future depends on whether at least one team is willing to look past the raw UCI points column and see the broader picture: a rider whose development was disrupted by injury, but who still has untapped potential and a proven background as one of Italy’s standout young climbers. This is the part most people miss: numbers do not always tell the full story of what an athlete has overcome, or what they still might achieve under the right conditions. The clock is undeniably ticking on his off-season, but his determination remains strong.
And here’s where it could get really divisive: should modern teams rethink how they evaluate riders, giving more weight to context, role, and long-term upside, or is the cold efficiency of UCI points the only fair measure in a results-driven sport? Do you think someone like Colleoni deserves a second big chance based on his early promise and resilience, or should teams focus only on what the last two seasons show on paper? Share your thoughts – is the current system fair, or does cycling need a different way of judging a rider’s true value?
