2025 World Cycling Championships: Lorenzo Finn’s second time

A year on, in a completely different setting – bathed in warm colours and without the rain-soaked patches on the tarmac reflecting the bicycle’s wheels – Lorenzo Finn relived the same scene: riding alone in the lead, heading for the rainbow jersey, having shaken off the rest of the field on the climb. In 2024 he had done so on the climb to Witikon; today, he did so on the summit of the Côte de Kigali Golf, having shaken off the group of the strongest riders 26 kilometres earlier on the cobbled section of the Côte de Kimihurura. A year ago he was competing in the Juniors category; this year, in the Under-23s. Little has changed in the final image: smiling and moved, with his arms raised beneath the finish line banner, the winner of the World Cycling Championships. In substance, however, everything has changed: because whilst winning is difficult, repeating the feat – and in a higher category at that – is even more so. Not least because, once again, before proving in practice that he is the strongest on the pedals, Lorenzo Finn demonstrated that he had the right instinct to be at the front when it mattered most.

It was decided on the final lap, on the Côte de Kigali Golf, at the U23 World Cycling Championships, when Switzerland’s Jan Huber was unable to keep up with the Italian. The battle for the top two places on the podium had been decided earlier, on the third-to-last lap. Lorenzo Finn’s World Championship was decided well before that, between 51 and 47 kilometres from the finish, namely when the peloton split, and he was up front alongside half a dozen other riders leading the race.

Lorenzo Finn couldn’t wait to cross that finish line. To do so in complete solitude. For kilometres on end, he was agitated, waving his arms about, angry and annoyed by the presence of Jan Huber behind him – more so than even a Mr Rezzonico or a Fausto Gervasoni would have been. He suspected that Huber was trying to cheat him, that he was holding back and pedalling sluggishly to conserve his energy. That wasn’t the case. This became clear a few kilometres later, when the road began to climb again.

Perhaps Lorenzo Finn was unsettled simply because he couldn’t quite believe it. Because coming first, ahead of everyone else, in your first year in a new category, can leave a climber feeling disoriented – that fleeting moment of not quite knowing where you are, which lasts but a second yet leaves you with the unease of realising that not everything is under your control. It can happen. Even far from the great mountains, from the climbing walls. It can happen even in Africa, in Rwanda, in Kigali. Especially when you look around and see neither Jarno Widar nor Adrià Pericas – widely regarded as the two strongest U23 riders around.

This can happen, especially if you realise that “exactly a year has passed since Zurich” and that “it’s just like last year – it’s simply unreal…”.

It can happen if you’re racing through a huge, boisterous crowd – it’s a blast, the best a cyclist can hope for. Or at least a competitive cyclist: “In the last 500 metres, my ears were hurting because there were so many people lining the route – it was unbelievable. The people here in Kigali are fantastic; it’s been a marvellous week. Obviously, there’s the result, but I’ll remember this for the rest of my life as the experience of a lifetime.”

It’s happened. Lorenzo Finn is still world champion. Just like a year ago, on 26 September once again.