Factor Road Racing Recap

Race proven.  It’s a statement we stand by at Factor, it’s with great pride that we support our teams and athletes.  They inspire us to go further in our research and development, and fuels our passion and drive to engineer the fastest bikes in the world.  We support athletes across multiple disciplines, from world class triathletes, to record-breaking track racers, to gravel and MTB privateers - on the road we sponsor nine teams:

• Israel Premier Tech and Human Powered Health in the men’s and women’s World Tour

• Our in-house Factor Racing men’s team in the Continental Tour

• Japan's JCL Team UKYO, in the Continental Tour

• Norway’s Team CO-OP Repsol in men’s and women’s Continental Tour

• Africa’s Team AMANI in men’s and women’s gravel and Continental Tour

• Portugal’s Anicolo/Tien21, in the Continental Tour

• USA’s L39ION in criterium racing

• Australia’s road and track National Development Team, ARA

• Slovenia’s Pika Team, a women’s junior development team

Our road teams have been racing and winning across all continents, and as spring comes to an end and the summer’s grand tours begin we look back on the first part of 2025, touching on a few of the stories and results from our World Tour teams and our very own Factor Racing squad.

With victories in Spain, France, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Rwanda, Factor riders have truly found success across the globe. They’ve also faced inevitable challenges like crashes and illness, which help to make each success more valued.

Israel - Premier Tech

Perhaps the revelation of the 2024 season, Derek Gee entered this year with big ambitions to perform. He couldn’t have gotten off to a better start with a stage win and overall (plus KOM jersey) at O Gran Camiño in Spain. He continued the good form with a 4th place at the prestigious Tirreno-Adriatico. At the Tour of the Alps, his third stage race of the season, Gee put in a solid performance, finishing on the podium in 3rd place overall.

Currently racing the Giro d’Italia, Gee has had a tough start to the grand tour, since he was among those who crashed hard on the slippery roads to Napoli. He finished the day without suffering any serious injury. All eyes are looking to the third week of the race where the big challenges will come, and Gee will have the chance to fight for the podium in a wide-open Giro field.

The early stages of the Giro were not overly kind to pure sprinters, with a preponderance of climbs late in the stages, but Corbin Strong managed to get a 2nd place in stage 3, which was the final hilly stage in Albania.

IPT scored another headline victory early in the season when Ethan Vernon won stage 2 of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya in March. Vernon outsprinted an impressive Matthew Brennan on the road to Figueres.

Young Brady Gilmore, who normally races for the Israel - Premier Tech Academy, spent some time on the main squad for IPT, not only participating but taking some big wins in his young career. He won the overall classification of the Tour de Taiwan and the Circuit des Ardennes. He also won two stages at the Tour du Rwanda and one at Taiwan.

The team enjoyed double success at the Tour de Taiwan, since Itamar Einhorn also won a stage.

And if the youths on IPT found a lot of success in this first part of the season, Pascal Ackermann won the one-day race Classique Dunkerque / Grand prix des Hauts de France, proving the veteran German still has the speed and tactical nous to get big wins in mass sprints.

Dunkerque provided propitious opportunities for IPT’s Jake Stewart as well. At 4 Jours de Dunkerque, Stewart finished 2nd on stage 3 and won the bunch sprint for the final stage to take his first win of the season after numerous honorable placings.

Not far from Dunkerque is Roubaix. A month earlier we were welcomed into the very heart of the Israel Premier Tech team for the final build up to Paris Roubaix. We witnessed first-hand the tension building ahead of The Hell of the North.

Human Powered Health

Starting off her first year with Human Powered Health strongly, Thalita de Jong won the Spanish Trofeo Binissalem-Andratx in late January. Her season was then derailed when she was caught up in a crash near the end of the Trofeo Alfredo Binda. A spectator collided with some racers and Thalita was unable to avoid going down. She broke her collarbone, though she recovered quickly enough to be at the startline for the Vuelta España Femenina by Carrefour.es. She worked her way up to a top 20 finish (16th), which was great for her first race back and the first grand tour of the season.

Photo credit: Human Powered Health Cycling / Getty Sport

Staying in Spain, Thalita made an even stronger impression in May at the Izulia Women, the iconic race in the Basque Country. She took 5th on the difficult final stage around Donostia which secured her an excellent 5th place overall.

Ruth Edwards also had a strong start to the season, taking top-10s at the Santos Tour Down Under and the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race. She won the Pan-American Continental Championships Individual Time Trial and took a strong 3rd place in the hilly Navarra Women's Elite Classic on May 14th in Pamplona, Spain.

Photo credit: Human Powered Health Cycling / Getty Sport

Human Powered Health’s younger riders are also finding early success with 22-year-old Giada Borghesi sprinting to 3rd at La Classique Morbihan in France on May 9th, and the 23-year-old and three-time world MTB marathon world champion Mona Mitterwallner took 2nd place in Grand Prix Féminin de Chambéry one-day race in early April.

Factor Racing Team

As Factor’s first factory team, Factor Racing got off to a flying start in 2025 when Paul Wright won the New Zealand National Road Race Championships in early February. He followed up that strong performance with a win on stage 3 at the Belgrade Banjaluka in April, which netted him 2nd on the overall classification.

Perhaps the most surprising signing for Factor Racing, Brazilian mountain biking superstar Henrique Avancini has extended his professional career to test his legs on the road. He has been proving that he hasn’t lost his big engine, taking 10th overall at the Istrian Spring Tour in mid-March and 8th in the GP Slovenian Istria one day race, where teammate Paul Wright also finished well in 6th place at the end of March. Henrique is in the unique position to be both mentor and mentee on his squad, since he has a wealth of experience and knowledge to share with his young teammates, while they can lend him some support learning how to negotiate his way through the peloton.

Factor Racing took another victory on May 1 when Jaka Marolt escaped his breakaway companions to win the GP Vorarlberg p/b Radhaus Rankweil. The squad’s next big appointment is at their home race, the Tour of Slovenia at the beginning of June where the young team will aim to make their mark.

More to come

There is more than half the season still to race, and some of the biggest events on the calendar are facing our sponsored road teams. They will be training and racing on the Factor OSTRO VAM and O2 VAM, with the HANZŌ time trial bikes waiting in the wings for when the race against the clock calls the fastest TT bike in the world into action.

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