Where are the rising stars of the 2015 UCI World Championships now?

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The 2025 UCI Road World Championships are in full swing in Rwanda. Alongside the grandstand elite men's and women's races, the World Championships showcase the next generation of cycling in the men's and women's junior and under-23 competitions.

Often, the under-23 and junior world champions go onto greatness, with former winners including Mathieu van der Poel, Remco Evenepoel, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Marianne Vos. However, some suffer a rainbow kiss of death, as riders fail to live up to the lofty expectations had of them as a teenage sensation. Regardless, a rainbow jersey can launch your career, for good or bad.

Today, we turn back the clock to 2015 - a year when a blue and black dress went viral, Star Wars returned to the cinemas, Uptown Funk ruled the charts and Zayn Malik left One Direction. That autumn, the UCI Road World Championships headed stateside, with a week of cycling festivities in Richmond, Virginia on a course with cobbled climbs, wide open streets and a Classics-like profile. Now a decade on, let's check up on the results sheet from 2015 and find out how the rising stars of yesteryear have got on.

Before the days of Jonas Vingegaard, Mads Würtz Schmidt was believed to be the big hope in Danish cycling. By claiming the under-23's time-trial in Virginia, Mads Würtz Schmidt added a second world title to his promising palmarès, having scored the gold in the junior category in 2011 and the Junior Paris-Roubaix in 2012. The Jutland native moved onto the WorldTour in 2017 with Katusha, then to Israel-Premier Tech in 2020 when the squads merged. Würtz Schmidt's promise never translated into big time-trial and Classics results in his 20s, but he would still claim a sole WorldTour victory from the breakaway at Tirreno-Adriatico and an elite national title in 2021. The Dane recently switched his focus to gravel, having retired from the road in 2024 at age 30. He quickly found his feet in the off-road discipline, claiming the Traka 200 and four rounds of the UCI Gravel World Series in his first year. Just in the past fortnight, he was crowned the European Gravel Champion.

The two remaining podium finishers have cracked the WorldTour too. Runner-up Maximilian Schachman rides for Soudal-QuickStep and has won Paris-Nice twice, while Lidl-Trek's Lennard Kämna has scored stage wins at all three Grand Tours.

The junior time-trial title wasn't the only rainbow jersey to be won by Leo Appelt in 2015. His gold on the road would join his junior world title in the individual pursuit on the track. He was named German Junior Cyclist of the Year in 2015 and received a golden ticket to BMC's Development Team the following year. In 2018, he moved across to the Continental LTK Brandenburg squad, but he'd soon retire from the sport at age 21. He now works as a videographer in Germany.

American Adrien Costa - the silver medalist not just in 2015, but 2014 - has had a more tumultuous story. The Californian podiumed the Tour de l'Avenir and Tour of Utah in 2016 as a teenager, then moved to QuickStep as a stagiaire for a while but no WorldTour contract would follow. In 2017, he retired from cycling while at the Axeon squad. He decided to pursue his studies in Outdoor Leadership and Tourism at Oregon State University, however a rock climbing accident in 2018 resulted in Costa receiving an above-the-knee amputation of his right leg.

Fellow American Brandon McNulty rounded out the podium. He's no doubt the most successful of the three on the road. He now rides for UAE Team Emirates XRG and recently won both the Tour de Pologne, GP Montréal and the Tour de Luxembourg.

On home roads, Chloé Dygert swept to victory in the time-trial, paving the way to her future world titles in the elite category. Indeed, just four years later, she would claim the world title in the elite category, becoming the youngest woman to win that category in its history. She's continued to feature at the top of the time-trial pecking order, despite several crashes throughout the 2020s.

Behind Dygert, who hadn't yet discovered her lucky pink shoes, her compatriot Emma White would claim the silver. The New Yorker was a promising talent in multiple disciplines, having won medals in cyclocross and on the road. Following an impressive World Championships in 2015, she signed for Rally Cycling (now Human Powered Health) in 2016. While her road results were solid throughout her brief career, she became World Champion on the track as part of the American team pursuit squad. In 2021, she would add an Olympic medal to that palmarès, but that would be her last foray onto the international podium as she retired from the sport in 2021 to become a full-time software engineer.

As for third-placed Anna-Leeza Hull, she now lives in New Zealand and has studied Clinical Exercise Physiology. After dabbling in the continental circuit, she retired from bike racing.

France filled two spots on the final podium in the men's under-23 road race, with Kévin Ledanois crowned the champion. Some riders to finish outside the top ten included Søren Kragh Andersen, Nils Politt, Tao Geoghegan Hart and Eddie Dunbar.

French rider Kévin Ledanois won the UCI World Championships after making a brave solo move in the final kilometres of a nailbiting under-23 race. Son of former pro and Vuelta stage winner Yvon Ledanois, Kévin was already contracted to the Arkéa squad when he won the world title. He would stay at the team for the rest of his career, and was later joined by his father, who is still a sports director there. Ledanois would spend a decade with the team, in which time he would wear the polka-dot jersey for a day at the 2018 Tour de France. He wouldn't score any pro wins by the time he retired in 2024 though.

Runner-up Simone Consonni has risen to become one of the best lead-out men in the pro peloton. The Italian, whose sister Chiara also rides on the pro level, has become Olympic, World and European Champion on the track. In total, he's won ten medals at the UCI Track World Championships, all at the elite level. He now works in tandem with track teammate Jonathan Milan at Lidl-Trek, where he helped his countryman to the green jersey at the 2025 Tour de France.

Bronze medallist Anthony Turgis has also enjoyed a fruitful career as a pro. He's been a long-term fixture on TotalEnergies and has podiumed Milan-San Remo and won the gravel stage at the 2024 Tour de France. His story was well-documented in Netflix's Tour de France: Unchained series, in which he discusses his brothers' health issues.

Many of the remaining spots in the top ten are occupied by current pros. The marmite Gianni Moscon, Danish rider Alexander Kamp, Tudor's Fabian Lienhard and time-trial medallist Lennard Kämna have all ridden Grand Tours in 2025 and remain strong fixtures on the pro scene.

Several of the top ten finishers haven't had quite the same fortune. Czech rider Michal Schlegel competed at the 2021 Olympic Games and was signed up to Caja Rural for some time, but he slipped down to the Continental level this year after several underwhelming years at the Spanish team. Argentine Lucas Manuel Gaday, now 32, still races across South America, and recently competed at the Pan-American Championships. Ninth place Adam de Vos was also dropped from the pro ranks in 2023 after his Human Powered Health team folded.

The junior women's race would be the only road race for the female youngsters. There wasn't an under-23 women's race - we'd have to wait another decade for that. Regardless, Juliette Labous, Liane Lippert, Marta Lach and Karlijn Swinkels all participated alongside some big names who finished in the day's top ten.

Dygert and White, future teammates on the track, finished first and second at their home World Championships, adding to their two medals in the time-trial.

Almost two minutes behind Dygert, Poland's Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka rounded out the podium, adding a second consecutive bronze in this junior event. She now rides for Canyon-SRAM-Zondacrypto and has enjoyed several big victories, including a GC title at the Baloise Ladies Tour and the recent Maryland Classic in nearby Baltimore.

Yumi Kajihara will be known to track fans. The Japanese rider, who previously competed internationally in swimming as a teenager, would soon become an 18-time Asian champion on the boards. In 2020, she was crowned world champion in the omnium, a year before earning a silver medal in the same discipline at the delayed Tokyo Olympics. By doing so, she became the first Japanese female cyclist to win an Olympic medal. After relocating to Europe, she competed at the Paris Olympics, but failed to win another medal. She now competes on the road for Dutch squad Talent Cycling.

Looking further down the top ten, we find some WorldTour staples. Norwegian sprinter Susanne Andersen now rides for Uno X, while Elisa Balsamo managed to flourish into a world champion on the elite level on a similar circuit in 2021. Yara Kastelijn in eighth has also won a Tour de France Femmes stage in her pro career and is a fixture in the top 20 of races throughout the year.

British rider Grace Garner is the younger sister of double junior world champion Lucy Garner (now Lucy van der Haar). The Brit was a strong talent as a youngster, winning stages at the Rás na mBan as a teenager. She was picked up by top-division Wiggle-High5 in 2017, but would retire in 2020. She now works as a nail technician in Yorkshire.

After finishing in ninth place, Jessica Pratt went to university and qualified as a nurse. In 2019, she won the Zwift Academy, which granted her a place on Canyon-SRAM's pro team in 2020. She wasn't kept on by the team, but she continued to ride on the domestic level back home in Australia. In 2024, she switched nationalities to Malta, having qualified through her grandmother. She has competed for the Mediterranean island at several international events, including last year's UCI World Championships in Switzerland.

The men's junior road race was open to riders under the age of 19. In 2014, Jasper Philipsen, Derek Gee, João Almeida, Matteo Sobrero and Michael Storer all took part in the race, however none of them cracked the top ten despite their WorldTour pedigree these days. Instead, Felix Gall defeated Frenchman Clément Betouigt-Suire in a bike throw to the line.

Chances are, you know Felix Gall already. The Austrian has claimed a Tour de France stage and recently finished inside the top five at the Grande Boucle. It took him some years to warm up to the WorldTour level, but after moving to Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale in 2023, he's become a reliable GC force. To see him win on a Classics-like course here is maybe a surprise in hindsight.

France's Clément Betouigt-Suire missed out on the rainbow jersey by milimetres. However, perhaps he would have been one of the most cursed rainbow jerseys if he had made the difference. The Frenchman fell out of love with the sport just a couple of years after the Richmond Worlds. He suffered from burnout in 2017 after making it onto Team Sunweb's development team. He told DirectVélo that he was 'disgusted by his bike' and that he was unhappy with the way juniors were treated as equivalents to full-time pros. Unsurprisingly, he hasn't competed on the road since he broke his contract with Sunweb in the spring of 2017.

Rasmus Lund Pedersen may have taken the bronze that day, but he now has more world titles than anyone else in the top ten. The Dane briefly pulled the pin on his cycling career in 2016 in the pursuit of a life in American football. Two years later though, he received a call from the Danish national track cycling team, who had asked him to compete in the European Championships. After accepting, he became embedded in Denmark's golden track generation as apart of the team pursuit foursome. In that role, he's won three world titles, three European titles and an Olympic silver.

Like Pedersen ahead, fourth place Reto Müller was also a track rider. The Swiss-native raced in a junior team pursuit squad alongside Stefan Bissegger and the late Gino Mäder during the mis 2010s, but his biggest victory would come in the junior madison race in 2016 when he was partenred up with Marc Hirschi - who finished inside the top ten in the 2015 World Championship road race. He was soon signed onto both BMC and Decathlon's development teams, but would eventually retire in 2021. According to his social media, he was studying economics at the time.

Fifth place finisher Martin Salmon was picked up by Team Sunweb (now Picnic-PostNL) soon after his breakthrough performance in Richmond as one of the youngest in the field. He was signed onto their WorldTour team for a couple of years, even making it to a Grand Tour, but was forced to retire from the top level in 2021 when his contract wasn't renewed. He now rides domestically and focusses on the track, where he recently podiumed in the German National Championships.

Sixth and seventh place finishers Nicola Conci and Mathias Norsgaard have managed to stick around on the WorldTour level, with the latter now the tallest rider in the sport's top flight.

Manx rider Nathan Draper finished in eighth on the day, but his name has been largely forgotten about in the British scene. In 2015, he became junior national champion and he won the overall title at the Junior Tour of Wales, an event won by the likes of Tom Pidcock, Eddie Dunbar, Fred Wright and Dan Martin. Draper signed onto Team Wiggins for 2017 and 2018 and would compete for his island at the Commonwealth Games and Island Games, where he would go on to win a silver medal. After leaving road cycling, he would briefly play for Manx football team Marown AFC. Nowadays, he works as a consultant in Leeds.

As for tenth place finisher Pit Leyder, the Luxemburger would retire from the pro peloton four years after his top ten finish in Richmond. This decision would come shortly after a brief stint at Cofidis. In a statement at the time, he wrote: 'I don't want to lead a life like that in the future'. He's now back in the sport, but as a sports director for the Austrian Tirol KTM Cycling Team.