Neo-pros to watch out for in 2024: Timo Kielich - from the queue to the World Tour
Sebastian Lindner
· 14.01.2024
Timo Kielich is actually almost an old hand. At least, if you take his first season as a professional as a benchmark. It is still rare for a rider to grow out of the U23s before becoming a professional athlete somewhere. But now, at the age of 24, the Belgian has arrived in the World Tour. He has signed with Alpecin-Deceuninck as a neo-pro for two years.
Most recently, Kielich drove in the racing team's development team at continental level. He has already achieved a number of successes. His victory in the 3rd stage of the Tour de Wallonie, a Pro Tour race, deserves special mention. In an uphill sprint, he left the seasoned pros Florian Senechal and Simone Consonni no chance. And it's finales like this one in Mont-Saint-Guibert where the Fleming can realise his full potential.
Kielich is particularly strong in tough sprint finals
"I have very fast legs, maybe not quite for the bunch sprint, but it's always good for a more difficult final," Kielich told cycling-news.com. By then it was already clear that he would be part of the 2024 World Tour squad, in which he had already been a guest rider on several occasions.
It should actually have been enough for the pros in 2023; Kielich had already impressed in terms of performance in 2022. However, all squad places were already booked for the following year. However, 2022 was the first season in which the speedy rider focussed primarily on the road. Kielich comes from cross-country. As a junior, he took bronze at the 2016 European Championships, four years later he was one place higher in the U23. In 2021, it was bronze at the U23 World Championships.
Kielich also proved his class on the mountain bike at junior level. He was Belgian U23 champion three times in a row from 2018 to 2020. However, he was unable to make it to the absolute top of the elite field in either discipline, which is why he finally made the switch to road cycling.
Kielich wants to chase classics
When Kielich started riding more regularly on the road for the first time in 2021, things went brilliantly for the young Belgian. Out of twelve stages in smaller .2 or junior races, he finished in the top 10 eleven times. In 2022, he won the Solidarnosc Tour in Poland. At the Sels Trophy through the harbour of Antwerp and over lots of cobblestones, he then rode up to 6th place in his first .1 race. In 2023, he topped this with a stage win in Wallonia, 4th place at Nokere Koerse and 3rd place at the Grand Prix Denain. The two one-day races are not stingy with hills or cobbles.
In any case, it is the competitions with a classic character that he likes best. "Of course, the bigger races really appeal to me," he said at cycling-news.com and spoke about the really big classics. However, his chances of at least being in the line-up for Paris-Roubaix, the Tour of Flanders and co. in 2024 should also be good in the team, which has a classics focus like no other in the World Tour. And so Kielich also said: "It's a great team for me."
Timo Kielich
- was born on 5 August 1999
- holds a Belgian passport
- is 1.85 m tall and weighs 73 kg
- previously rode for the teams Era (road, 2018), Correndon - Circus (road + cross, 2018), Iko-Crelan (cross, 2019-2022) and Alpecin-Deceuninck Development (road, 2021-2023)
- will ride for the Alpecin-Deceuninck World Tour team from 2024 and has signed a contract until the end of 2025
