Meet Lorenzo Finn, Italy’s teenage cycling super talent with an Irish grandmother

About nine months before Lorenzo Finn first announced himself as the best junior rider in the world, his father Peter sought out an agent who understood something about the rise of the teenage super talents. At that stage few people outside of Italian cycling had witnessed his son’s potential, and no one could have imagined how swiftly he was about to flaunt it.

Starting with the 2024 World Championships in Zurich, where Finn won the junior road race by more than two minutes, earning his first rainbow jersey, the upward trajectory has rarely been less than astonishing. Within the last 12 months he became the first ever rider to win a world under-23 title (while still only 18), then add the Giro Next Gen and Tour de l’Avenir by similarly commanding margins – the two most prestigious and often most telling development races in the sport.