2025 will be Tom Gloag's year: The team told me, "Just take a holiday, mate"

Few riders have had as much bad luck in one year as Tom Gloag, the 23-year-old British rider from Visma | Lease a Bike. He crashed severely in training in 2023 and returned in 2024 after a year of rehabilitation, only to be quickly injured again. The climber won't get knocked down and is focusing on the future. Gloag is confident he can play a big role with the Dutch team.

With the British medium Cycling Weekly, Gloag confidently looks ahead to the new season. But first, he talked about how much the crash in 2023 affected his mental state. "Two weeks after the accident, I took the cast off for the first time to shower, looked down at my knee and fainted," Tom Gloag pauses to let out an embarrassed laugh. "I'd never fainted before, but it was the sight of how much muscle I'd lost. I was out for about a minute," he recounts the shocking details.

Read more below the photo.

Gloag in action as a domestique for Roglic in the Giro

Gloag recovered quickly, but was sent on holiday by team

The unlucky rider had a long recovery, after which he immediately won the most challenging stage on his comeback at the Tour of the Czech Republic. Another crash sidelined him, but Gloag recovered well and thus can look to 2025 with confidence. "The team told me, "Just take a holiday, mate." I did recover by October. Next season, though, is a big one. I'm very confident I can be competitive at a pro level."

And that confidence is justified after his win in the Czech Republic. "It wasn't the best field, but it was a moment of, 'Wow, I'm here. I have the level'. I had tears in my eyes because finally I was feeling like a bike racer again. I wasn't nervous because various metrics were telling me that, from a physical standpoint, I was as good as I had ever been, so I was really confident," said the man full of potential.

Team owner Richard Plugge shares that confidence. "Tom is such a nice guy that I really hope he will come back at the highest level again. As he has shown by winning in his first race back, he's a very big talent and his potential is huge. That's why we have him in the team. We are working really hard with him and hope that his bad luck is behind him to find out what he can achieve as we move forward."

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