The next generation arrives: Five sprint and classics prospects to watch in 2027

Paul Magnier started stage 2 of the Deutschland Tour in August as the favourite for the sprint. He had won three stages of the Giro d’Italia in May and would finish the season with more wins than any other sprinter, as Domestique’s sprint review of 2026 showed. In Offenbach an der Queich he was beaten by Alessio Magagnotti, a 19-year-old still racing for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s development team.

Magagnotti stands out in a group of young sprinters who will race in the WorldTour next season. Several are moving into teams that have just lost a sprinter, with Arnaud De Lie leaving Lotto-Intermarché for Tudor and Juan Sebastián Molano swapping UAE Team Emirates-XRG for Lotto.

Magagnotti and Davide Stella have both won junior world titles on the track, and Seth Dunwoody took the under-23 European points race title in Cottbus this summer. Brandon Fedrizzi and Davide Donati made their names in the junior and under-23 Classics.

Magagnotti was still a junior in 2025, when he won the team pursuit and the individual pursuit at the junior track World Championships in Apeldoorn. Red Bull gave him his first elite race at the Trofeo Palma in February and made him their designated sprinter. He finished third, behind his own lead-out man, Arne Marit, and Max Kanter.

He took his first under-23 win on the final stage of the Istrian Spring Tour, then won stages 1 and 3 of the Tour de Bretagne. In Germany, Danny van Poppel and Jarrad Drizners put him in position, and he beat Magnier and Iúri Leitão for his first professional win. Before the season, he had trained alongside Red Bull's WorldTour riders at a training camp.

“In training I could compete with the World Tour teammates, but racing is another thing. When you sprint after 180-200 km, the game changes,” Magagnotti told tuttoBICI.

Red Bull have promoted him to the WorldTour team on a contract until the end of 2028, and he is expected to start in smaller WorldTour and ProSeries races. His track background is similar to Jonathan Milan's, who won Olympic gold in the team pursuit before becoming a Grand Tour sprinter. Red Bull will hope the endurance developed through pursuit racing helps Magagnotti over longer distances.

Fedrizzi won 23 races as an under-17 rider in 2024, more than any rider in Italy had managed in 15 years. In March, he won the junior E3 Saxo Classic from the sprint of a reduced bunch. Three weeks later, Lotto-Intermarché signed him, aged 17, on a four-year contract.

The plan was two seasons with the development team, followed by a WorldTour promotion in 2029. Sporting manager Kurt Van de Wouwer explained the thinking behind the deal when it was announced in April.

“Fedrizzi is still very young and is signing for four years: this gives him the chance to grow at his own pace in a protected environment,” Van de Wouwer said.

Fedrizzi went on to win stages in three Nations Cup races and finished seventh in the junior road race at the World Championships in Montreal. On 3 October, the day he finished fourth at the European Championships, Lotto announced that he would skip the development team and turn professional in 2027. The original plan had lasted less than six months.

The move comes as Lotto rebuild their sprint options. De Lie won 35 races for the team, while Molano, the sprinter brought in to replace him, has signed for only two seasons. Fedrizzi describes himself as a sprinter with a passion for the Classics, the same combination De Lie offered. He joins 21-year-old Steffen De Schuyteneer among the team's young sprinters.

Donati started 2026 with two stage wins and the points jersey at the Giro di Sardegna, beating Gianmarco Garofoli in the sprint on stage 2. In April, he won Paris-Roubaix Espoirs, ten years after Filippo Ganna last won the race for Italy.

“Someone calls me a sprinter, but I don’t like the sprinter label because I’m not just that,” Donati told tuttoBICI after Roubaix.

In June, he won stage 2 of the Giro Next Gen in Crotone, the fastest stage in the race's history at 48.597km/h. He wore the leader's jersey before helping teammate Lorenzo Finn to the overall win, and later added a victory at ProSeries level at the CRO Race.

Red Bull now have two young Italians with different profiles, both on contracts until the end of 2028. Magagnotti is the pure sprinter, while Donati has made his name as a fast finisher in harder races. Tour Magazin expects both to strengthen Red Bull's sprint and Classics squad, and Donati's victory on the cobbles makes the Classics an obvious place to start.

Dunwoody was the rider Donati beat in a bike throw at Paris-Roubaix Espoirs. A month later, he was second again at Kattekoers, the under-23 Gent-Wevelgem, where he led the chase from a select group but Cameron Rogers held on by the width of a tyre.

The 1.92m rider from County Armagh won the Irish elite road race title in June and the under-23 European points race on the track in Cottbus. In 2025, his first season as an under-23, he won stages at the Giro Next Gen, the Tour of Romania and the Circuit des Ardennes.

Bahrain describe him as a Classics specialist and time triallist, and several of his sprint wins have come at the end of hard races after the field has split.

“We’re not trying to over emphasise the sprint, get really quick at sprinting. I’ve naturally just got quicker in the sprint without really trying to achieve it,” Dunwoody told Sticky Bottle.

Bahrain announced his promotion to the WorldTour team on 24 August. He has already gained experience racing with the senior squad at the Ename Samyn Classic, Nokere Koerse and the Ronde van Limburg. In Limburg, he led out the sprint and still had enough speed to respond when a Unibet Rose Rockets rider tried to come past.

His results point towards the same races as Donati’s, with the pair having already finished close together twice in 2026.

Stella won three European junior titles on the track in 2023. At the 2024 junior World Championships, he won the elimination race and the team pursuit, the latter in world-record time. In 2025, he added the under-23 European scratch title, while on the road he won the final stage of the Tour of Sharjah.

Stella's 2026 season began with a crash at the AlUla Tour in January that left him needing 30 stitches in his back. Two weeks after returning to training, he was hit by a car.

“Two weeks after my recovery, while I was out training, a car didn’t see me and hit me, either because the driver was distracted or was doing something else,” Stella wrote on social media.

Despite those setbacks, UAE promoted him, announcing a three-year WorldTour contract on 20 August. Two days later, he won the 230.9km third stage of the Tour de l'Avenir, the longest of the race, after Enea Sambinello led him into the final metres. Thomas Capra of Bahrain's development team finished second.

Stella is a pure sprinter, and his arrival gives UAE another option following Molano's departure to Lotto. Team principal Mauro Gianetti has said he will follow a less pressurised programme next season.

His Tour de l'Avenir victory offered a glimpse of his potential, although UAE appear determined not to rush his development. Magnier made a similar step from under-23 racing, winning at the Giro Next Gen in 2024 before taking three Giro d'Italia stages two years later. For Stella, the opportunity to make that transition has now arrived.

“This step up means so much to me. It’s a dream I’ve had since I was a kid, and making it a reality now gives me the chance to set new goals and chase even bigger dreams with the team,” he said when his move was announced.