Michael Leonard 🇨🇦

Rider Type: Climber / Time Trialist - Age: 18 - Weight/Height: 35.29 kg/m

An 18 year old? Why are you doing a profile of an 18 year old? There's barely any races under his belt!

This is completely true, but if you know us by now, we're all about our value picks and dark horses when it comes to placing bets. Leonard will be hot eventually and get a big result, so it's best to know about him before the big day to take advantage of the long odds the betting houses will doubtless be giving him prior to his breakout performance (think Vine at Tour Down Under).

Plus he's Canadian, and well, we are too 🇨🇦. This undoubtedly is biasing us in thinking he'll be great so take this whole article with a grain of salt.

Team

Michael has signed with the INEOS Grenadiers through 2025 - which is a major deal for one so young who has yet to prove himself. But these days, with the youngsters heating up cycling and taking wins early and often, that's par for the course.

However, with the INEOS team so strong (think Geraint, Pidcock, Ganna, Plapp, Sheffield) it's hard to see exactly where he'll be given the opportunity to shine.

Personally we believe in 2023 he'll almost never be given free reign until the end of the season in the fall, and INEOS will be using the start of the season to get him experience riding in the bunch and everything else that comes with the pro cycling calendar.

Hence we won't actually be placing any bets on him for a little while.

Strengths

As with any young rider, they seem to know what CdA (Coefficient of Aerodynamic Drag) is and how to retrofit their gear to get the best possible value.

Basically these youngsters know not to waste watts and will take any potential performance advantage they can get, be it aero suits or awkward looking helmets.

On that note, Leonard's best performance so far has been 9th in an ITT (Individual Time Trial) at the Coppi e Bartali. This is similar to Sheffield, another youngster on INEOS who's best performances have been during two ITTs.

Leonard also comes from a track background, which generally translates well to TT's. TTs matter a whole bunch for week or multi week stage races, so expect him to perform well at those in the coming years. It's well known that Enric Mas suffers at performing well at ITTs which usually limits him from a top 1/2/3 position. This shouldn't be the case with Leonard or Sheffield.

When to bet?

Not yet. 😅 But soon. Expect him to be given more free reign at the later end of 2023 in some smaller week long stage races and in early 2024. If there's an ITT stage however it's well worth placing money on either him or Sheffield to perform remarkably.