Nineteen-year-old Henry Hobbs isn’t due to turn professional for at least another year, but already he’s off the mark with his first pro road win.
The Visma-Lease a Bike rider sprinted to victory in the fifth and final stage of the ZLM Tour in the Netherlands on Sunday. In doing so, he beat seasoned WorldTour pros in Max Walscheid (Lidl-Trek), Florian Sénéchal (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and Danny van Poppel (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) to crown a breakthrough week on the race’s circuit finish in the city of Waalwijk.
“It was a hectic final lap,” Hobbs said afterwards. “The team played a really big part today, especially with positioning and keeping me out of the wind. A big chapeau to them. To win my first professional race today makes me very happy.”
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Hobbs, who hails from the London-Essex border, joined Visma-Lease a Bike’s under-23 development team straight out of the junior ranks at the start of this year.
Last week’s ZLM Tour was the teenager’s first time representing Visma’s elite squad. He finished 17th overall as the fourth youngest rider on the start list, and with his stage win, caught the attention of his team’s sports director Arthur van Dongen.
“This is a great compliment to our scouting department, which has done a great job identifying these guys and supporting them through our development program,” Van Dongen said.
This June, Hobbs also won a stage of a fourth-tier, non-professional stage race in Austria. He then went on to claim two gold medals on the track for Team England at the Commonwealth Games: the team pursuit and scratch race.
A three-time track world champion as a junior, the Briton hopes to continue developing both inside the velodrome and on the road as he looks towards turning pro in 2028. His contract with Visma’s development team runs until the end of next season.
“[Seeing] what they’ve done with Matty Brennan – I’m quite a similar rider to him, pretty good on the track and on the road – we thought my development would be best in this team,” Hobbs told Cycling Weekly last August.
Two years older than Hobbs, Brennan followed an almost identical career path – via the British Cycling Academy and Fensham Howes-MAS Design junior team – and already counts 22 pro wins.
“Hopefully they can do with me what they’ve done with him, because that’d be ideal,” Hobbs said last year. “A big goal of mine in the next few years is the LA Olympics [in 2028], hopefully – I’m working towards it.”
The teenager’s older brother, 22-year-old Noah Hobbs, stepped up to the WorldTour with EF Education-EasyPost this January, and has since won two pro races: the Belgian one-day Heylen Vastgoed Heistse Pijl and the opening stage of the Tour de l’Ain.
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