This article was first published in Rouleur Issue 143

The local fire service park up just after the finish line of each stage of the Tour of Thailand, ready to spray the fried cyclists who have just completed another stage where the temperature hit 40 degrees celsius. In parts of China, oxygen canisters are on hand to enable riders to breathe fresh air after racing at over 4,000 metres of altitude. It’s a different world, racing in Asia, far-removed from the WorldTour bubble with its glory and perfectionism and the cherry juice recovery drinks placed in a rider’s hand as they cross the line.

And yet, there is a new phenomenon emerging in the world of professional road cycling, a shift to the east, as riders choose to leave the pressure and professionalism of Europe behind in search of something different.

Escaping the pressure cooker

Rein Taaramäe will be a name familiar for any avid follower of the men’s WorldTour. The Estonian climber spent 18 years racing at road cycling’s top level and won stages at the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España. He became known for his gangly style on the bike, a penchant for Grand Tour mountain breakaways and his relaxed, free-spirited demeanour. Ahead of the 2025 season, aged 37, Taaramäe said goodbye to the WorldTour and decided to do something different with the very end of his cycling career, signing a contract with KINAN Racing Team, a Japanese squad in the third-tier of the pro cycling pyramid. Now, instead of taking part in the world’s biggest races, he spends his season travelling around Asia, discovering new races in Taiwan, the UAE, Türkiye and elsewhere.

In the final years of his career in Europe, Taaramäe grew tired of professional cycling’s modern culture of control, where every grain of rice is weighed and every calorie counted. He wanted to return to a purer form of the sport he has devoted his life to. After years of restriction, now is Taaramäe’s time to enjoy bike racing again.

“There was no race that excited me anymore. I didn’t dream to race another Grand Tour or Classic,” Taaramäe tells Rouleur, having competed in 20 Grand Tours and 14 Monuments during his career.

“Teams are getting more and more professional; meetings, meetings, millimetres, grams, coaches, nutrition, all this creates more and more pressure. We were doing more and more things I don’t want to do… I am not that ‘millimetre guy’, I just like hard training and to ride my bike. The WorldTour system wasn’t my dream anymore. But I felt young and strong. I am lean and in shape. Why just throw all this in the garbage? I like cycling and I’d barely raced in Asia before. It looked like something I’d like to try before I stopped my career… I’ve seen those things and I’ve done those things. It was beautiful, but I needed to change and see something different, different places.”

Team Sky brought about this inevitable new era in the early 2010s, preaching a sermon of marginal gains, where every fraction of a percentage point matters. Since then, teams have sought to out-do one another and the sport has progressed beyond recognition. However, that professionalisation of every element of the sport isn’t just prevalent within cycling’s elites. The culture of perfection bleeds throughout the sport in Europe, and riders have to submit to compete, even as teenagers.

“It's got to the point now where there's a crazy, crazy amount of pressure on these professional riders,” says Luke Mudgway, who now races in China after a short pro career with the New Zealand-registered Black Spoke team. “I can see why kids are quitting younger and younger… if you're not WorldTour when you're 23, you're kind of done, you're old. They're micromanaged, they don't really have much of a life outside of cycling. That's fun for a few years, but after three or four, it can be a bit sad. Cycling doesn't owe anybody anything. I feel like cycling kicked me down a lot for a few years. Going to Asia, I feel a lot safer racing, because it's not as stressful.”

For both Mudgway and Taaramäe, racing in Asia has been a breath of fresh air, an adventure full of new experiences and a slower pace of life. Taaramäe appears to be a liberated man. When not racing, he has enjoyed spending more time at home in Estonia to train: “I’ve never spent three months at home in the summer, it was a new experience and I loved it. Everything feels more human now and pleasurable… I just ride my bike and I do as best I can and if I can't anymore, then it is time to stop. I feel that I am a super happy man at this moment. I enjoy every moment.”

Bears, mountains and new experiences

Professional racing in Europe is relentless. It’s the cost of competing at the very pinnacle of elite sport. Riders can spend months away from home, seeing their teammates more than family in the pursuit of elite performance. They spend months in the same hotels, with the same people, repeating the same rituals. In recent years there has been a trend of more and more riders retiring early, commenting on the impact of the pro cycling life on their mental health. In Asia, riders find a chance to continue racing, albeit at a lower level and with a lower salary, and to take in new experiences.

There are a myriad of different cultures and landscapes to experience across this vast continent; from the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula to the rainforests of South East Asia, the unrelenting wall of noise of an Indian megacity to the sparse populations of Central Asia – and there is bike racing everywhere. Taaramäe began his time in the KINAN team with several weeks in the team’s house in Japan, training in the deep forests of the Japanese country, trying not to think of the bears lurking in the woods. He has enjoyed an introduction into Japanese culture and discovering more of the country.

Large portions of China sit at an altitude far above the loftiest cols of the Tour de France, and these areas create an environment for truly unique bike racing. Mudgway has experienced racing in Tibet and Qinghai Lake, where the routes rarely dip below 3,000 metres of altitude, and can at times exceed 4,000.

“It’s brutal,” Mudgway recalls. “There's nothing like it. You never forget the feeling of getting to the top of a climb, trying to follow a wheel and just being out of breath. You start blacking out because there's just no oxygen in the air and you’ve used all this anaerobic power sprinting up this hill to follow.” The air is thin, particularly in Qinghai, which is the world’s highest UCI race. That means that speeds are higher, with stages raced at over 50km/h average on wide highways, while drafting is less productive.

Early on in his career, South African rider Stefan de Bod knew that he wanted to experience more than just what racing in Europe had to offer. He spent a year racing for Malaysian continental team Terengganu in 2025. “It's completely different. You do the race and at night we were walking around exploring… I was always looking to drop down to a continental level team to do one or two years doing all these races. I wanted to go to China to do the Tour of Qinghai Lake with the altitude. I wanted to experience that. I wanted to see the country. I wanted to also do the Tour of Thailand because I think it’s a really cool race.”

A genuine alternative to Europe

What De Bod didn’t expect was that he would be moving to race in Europe quite so early in his career. Late on in 2024, having had a solid year on the bike as part of the EF Education-EasyPost team, the then 28-year-old learned that his contract wouldn’t be renewed. In a last-gasp attempt to continue his career, De Bod reached out to Terengganu, a squad which has been among the best in Asia for a decade and had just reignited the career of Eritrean rider Merhawi Kudus, who returned to the professional ranks after a year racing in Asia. De Bod went into the 2025 season with one clear goal: to bounce back to the professional ranks.

“I wasn't done with professional cycling, so I made the most out of that year to try to return to the pro peloton,” De Bod says. After years working as a domestique and fighting to hang on in some of the world’s biggest races, De Bod re-found his racing spark in Asia and relished the opportunity to fight for victory. He won three races and claimed several top stage race results. It was enough to attract the interest of brand new American ProTeam Modern Adventure and shows that racing in Asia can provide a route back to the professional level. “They gave really good opportunities, really good racing and good equipment that you can perform on.”

It happens every year. Teams fold late on, or a rider misses out on that contract and is left scrabbling to save their career. Some are forced to retire, or struggle to make ends meet in a European continental team, but more and more are finding opportunities to continue their career in Asia where, often, they find that the salary and conditions are better than in European continental teams.

Mudgway was in the same boat as De Bod at the end of 2023. He could have pursued options to stay in Europe with a continental squad, but chose to join the Li Ning Star team in China instead. “If you go continental in Europe, you’re probably not going to get paid any money, or very little,” he says.

Salaries for the biggest riders in China are reportedly comparable to an average salary of a rider on a small ProTeam in Europe, while in other parts of Asia, some riders earn between €1,000 and €3,000 per month. It’s not a huge pay-packet in modern cycling terms and it’s not the same on every team, but most can get by. Plus, there are generous bonuses on offer at most Asian races. “We're making huge amounts of money, just in prize money alone,” says Mudgway, whose Li Ning Star squad includes several former professionals and is one of Asia’s most successful teams.

Equipment can be good too. After almost a decade racing on European UCI teams, Henrietta Colborne says that she has never been better resourced than this season, having joined the XDS China women’s team for the 2026 season. “The [X-Lab] bikes are the best I’ve ever ridden,” Colborne says. “This is the first year I’ve been given a power meter by a team. I think the team's really thought about everything to make you the best cyclist you can be. It's very refreshing to have good equipment and good support around you.”

Colborne’s 2025 team folded in December and she counts herself fortunate to have found an opportunity to continue her career with the new Chinese team. “Why wouldn't you? It's such an opportunity. Why wouldn't you go and experience the cultures, get to know a different way of how a team works, go and try different racing?” Opportunities for women to race in Asia have been scarce up to this point, but now there are new races appearing each year and the Asian women’s cycling scene is finally beginning to develop.

The Future

It’s no secret that the lower-levels of the sport in Europe are struggling. Races and teams disappear on an annual basis, the continental scene has become a development league for WorldTour development teams and it is becoming harder and harder to make a living as a cyclist at that level.

So what does the future look like? One possibility could be that more and more riders choose to head east to Asia as lower-level racing in Europe experiences further decline. Taaramäe thinks that racing in Asia will develop and has had several WorldTour riders in his Instagram DMs asking about his experiences. However, he also accepts that a transition from racing in the WorldTour to Asia is not for everyone. “World-Tour riders are put off Asia because of the money, but those who just love riding their bikes could come. Often guys with my palmarès, they prefer to stop. They are often tired of cycling and they refuse to compete for €1000 to €3000 per month. Guys who come to Asia at my age are just the fanatics.”

“I definitely think you will see a lot more riders picking Asia to race,” says De Bod, whose career could have gone so differently had he not taken the leap to race for a Malaysian team. So often in this sport, riders who have given their all to create a career face the unfulfillment of not being able to finish on their own terms as they run out of viable options in Europe. Now, in looking eastward, there is an alternative.