China Glory-Mentech announce 2025 squad with WorldTour additions
Top Chinese talent stays as veteran sprinter Reinhardt Janse van Rensburg retires
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China Glory-Mentech announces 2025 squad, with WorldTour additions
Ambitious Chinese Continental team China Glory-Mentech have revealed their full team for 2025, with five new signings including two straight from the WorldTour.
The team announced through a post on their Instagram account that they will have a roster of 16 riders next season, retaining their core Chinese contingent while adding top-tier riders and more talent from the Chinese racing scene.
The team aims to raise a generation of elite Chinese racers, hoping to propel them into the professional level of the sport. China Glory-Mentech also has high ambitions in itself, and reports have circulated in the past of plans to progress to the professional level in the future.
Two riders have joined the squad from Astana-Qazaqstan - which will itself be a Chinese registered team in 2025. 2022 Asian continental champion Igor Chzan joins alongside Yevgeniy Gidich, who was 6th on a stage of the Tour of Oman this year and was the Kazakhstan national champion in 2022.
Astana Qazaqstan have undergone something of a purge of their Kazakh riders this off-season, with five leaving their WorldTour team as they scrap for survival in the top-division.
Chzan and Gidich add firepower and experience to a squad which has developed steadily since its inception in 2021.
Also joining China Glory-Mentech is former Israel Start-Up Nation racer Norman Vahtra. The Estonian transfers over from French Continental team Van Rysel-Roubaix and will provide valuable lead-out power to the team’s developing sprinters, Binyan Ma and Li Zhen.
Vahtra is a like-for-like replacement for retiring South African Reinhardt Janse van Rensburg, who hangs up his wheels after a career that included ten years as a professional with 23 wins and 9 Grand Tour appearances.
Also departing is Frenchman Julien Trairieux who won the 1.2 Tour of Alanya for the team in February.
The team retains the services of two other former professionals, South African Willie Smit and Frenchman Lucas de Rossi.
Continuing to develop with the team is their most prominent Chinese rider, Xianjing Lyu. The 26-year-old became the first Chinese rider in history to win a European UCI race last year when he won a stage of the the Tour of Sakarya. He added the Tour of Poyang Lake to his wins last year and won two more races in Türkiye this season and also raced both the Worlds and Olympics.
Several other Chinese riders who have shown promise continue with the team. They include sprinter Binyan Ma, a winner of two UCI races in 2024, fellow fast-man Li Zhen and Haoyu Su, who put in an impressive attacking ride at the 2023 Tour Guangxi.
Also joining the team are Yuheng Li and Yun Teng. 22-year-old Li looks a good talent, having finished 5th at the 2022 Tour of Qinghai Lake (before international racing in China restarted again after the COVID pandemic) and 5th at this year’s Tour of Zhaotong.
China Glory-Mentech go into 2025 hoping to build on their best season yet, having taken eight wins at UCI level - all of them coming in Türkiye.
Of course they also enter 2025 in the context of Astana Qazaqstan taking on Chinese investment and Chinese registration. It’s a big moment for cycling’s globalisation and marks China’s first real major step into the sport.
Astana’s roster will not include any Chinese riders within their WorldTour or development teams, so China Glory-Mentech maintain the mantle of being the primary developers of Chinese talent. Another year on the road, bigger things can be expected from the likes of Lyu, Ma and Zhen.
What do you expect from China Glory-Mentech in 2025?
Full 2025 China Glory-Mentech squad:
Igor Chzan (Kaz)
Lucas de Rossi (Fra)
Enqi Fu (Chi)
Yevgeniy Gidich (Kaz)
Yuheng Li (Chi)
Zhen Li (Chi)
Xianjing Lyu (Chi)
Binyan Ma (Chi)
Yutao Shen (Chi)
Willie Smit (RSA)
Haoyu Su (Chi)
Changsheng Sun (Chi)
Geng Teng (Chi)
Yun Teng (Chi)
Norman Vahtra (Est)
Jiaqing Yu (Chi)
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