This article was first published in Rouleur 143
Peter Finn remembers being flabbergasted by his son Lorenzo’s resilience and character. “Before cycling he played football and tennis, and for one tennis match we had a one-and-a-hour drive to get there,” Peter, speaking by video call, recounts to Rouleur; Lorenzo was ten at the time. “The game started at 5pm and it shouldn’t have lasted long. But it didn’t finish until 8pm as one set went back and forth for three hours. Lorenzo just wouldn’t give in – I’d never seen such dedication from any of my kids before.” Eventually, in the fading light, Lorenzo was beaten on the red clay court. “He never cries but it was the first and last time he’d come off court in tears as he’d been so determined to win,” Peter continues. The next game Lorenzo played? “He won; he got that monkey off his back.”
In the ensuing years, Lorenzo would drop the tennis racquet in favour of a bike and two wheels, swapping dreams of Grand Slam titles for world championship realities: in 2024 he became the junior road race world champion in Switzerland, and a year later the U23 world champion in Rwanda. The once promising tennis teen is now cycling’s most exciting and talented teen. Ralph Denk, manager of big-moneyed Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe whose World-Tour team he will race for from 2027, has identified Lorenzo as “our future”.
Through the years and his various sports, there’s been one defining trait that has guided him: he might be representing the tricolore of Italy, but he’s got Sheffield steel and Yorkshire stubbornness coursing through his veins. “I’m classic English: composed, I need to keep it cool as I’m in front of customers a lot, and very competitive,” Peter, from Sheffield, says.
“Lorenzo’s picked up that character from me, and that marks him out from others.” Italy’s rising star was made in Genoa but has his roots in the British Isles.
(Image credit: Alessandra Bucci)
Sheffield steel
Lorenzo was born and raised in Italy, growing up in the Mediterranean port city of Genoa, but his British and Irish connections have also significantly shaped him. His father Peter’s family is Irish, and Peter called Sheffield home until he went to university in Coventry. From there he went globetrotting, working in IT in Munich, Montreal, Dallas and then back to Coventry, before finally settling in Genoa (the hometown of his wife Chiara who he met in Montreal), where he’s a product manager at the telecommunications company Ericsson. In December 2006, Lorenzo arrived – the couple’s first and only child together, and Peter’s fourth. “I wanted to call him Lawrence, the name of my Grandad, but my wife was adamant it was going to be Lorenzo,” Peter says.
They brought Lorenzo up in the centre of the city that also gave birth to Christopher Columbus. The Finns wanted Lorenzo to be as worldly and as travelled as the 15th century explorer. “The plan originally was to speak English at home, and Lollo – as we call Lorenzo – could learn Italian at school,” Peter says. “But I went away on a business trip once when he was two or three and his mother had changed the rules! So since then he spoke to one parent in one language, and the other in another.”
Being bilingual from a young age was a necessity for Lorenzo, for every year he’d make several trips to the UK and Ireland to meet his father’s family. “We mainly went to Sheffield and Coventry, around that area, and also to Ireland to visit some cousins,” Lorenzo says backstage in London at Rouleur Live. “Christmases here were really nice, and we’d have a proper British Sunday roast. Even when we celebrated Christmas in Italy, we’d do it the English way and with a big turkey.”
The best memories – from Peter’s point of view, at least – were attending Sheffield Wednesday football games. “We had to get to Hillsborough when we went to Sheffield – we couldn’t miss that,” Peter, a lifelong fan, says. “I went to quite a few games,” Lorenzo confirms, adding that he’s got an old Owls kits in his wardrobe at home. “I quite liked the stadium, but they’re not doing so well this year. The owner has created a bit of a mess.”
Concerned about the team’s current malaise indicates that Lorenzo was clearly bit by the Wednesday bug, but the club he most follows is Genoa CFC – Italy’s oldest existing football club which was founded by Englishmen abroad; the CFC stands for Cricket and Football Club. “I’d hoped he’d choose Sampdoria [also based in Genoa] as Wednesday have had a few players linked to Sampdoria, but his friends supported Genoa so he did, too,” Peter says.
One of those players was Wednesday legend Des Walker – and in his primary school years, alongside his tennis commitments, Lorenzo played in the exact same position as Walker. “I was a centre-back,” he says. “I was average, but it was fun and I enjoyed it.”
(Image credit: Getty)
When on visits to Ireland, Lorenzo would be introduced to his Irish ancestry. “My mum’s family were brought up as Irish catholics,” Peter says. “We’ve got a family cattle farm in County Galway that my uncle runs and it was good to get Lorenzo over there to experience it. My mum and her four siblings were raised on that farm, growing crops, raising all sorts of animals. It was successful until everyone moved away, leaving my uncle on his own. He’s very old now but he’s still got a few cows.”
As Lorenzo grew up, visits to the UK and Ireland became less frequent for one simple reason: he found cycling. Groin pain initially prompted Lorenzo to hop on a bike while he sat out of tennis and football, but the temporary sport soon became his permanent one. “There’s a pre- and post-cut off point in Lorenzo’s life: before and after he started cycling,” Peter says. “Once he took up cycling our whole world turned upside down. He enjoyed tennis and football and got quite good at both, but he never got as passionate for those as he did with cycling.”
Hills and thrills
Lorenzo remembers his first few times on a bike. “I just fell in love with it,” he smiles. “Being on your own in the mountains where I live, and doing certain climbs with no cars was very nice.” His love of the sport grew in the summer of 2018, aged 11. “The first Tour de France I watched was when Geraint Thomas won,” he says, highlighting the Welshman as his idol. Thomas has sent Lorenzo a few messages on Instagram after his own big wins. At first, however, Lorenzo found success difficult to come by. “When I started it was hard,” he admits. “I wasn’t underdeveloped but there were some guys bigger than myself. But at 12, 13, you don’t need to be good – you just have to have fun, that’s what counts.”
Peter recalls the evolution of his son’s interests. “He was a kid who did lots of different sports but he dropped everything because he was so passionate about cycling.
Any day of the year he’d have a race on the TV. I’m not sure how many TV subscriptions I’ve had up to now. He read, listened and watched cycling. He studied it all. From the age of 14-and-a-half there was no room for anything else.”
The obsession developed into a father-son bond. “My Dad played football his whole life and only started cycling when I did, so I attached the passion to him, I guess,” Lorenzo says. “Now he’s really into cycling and has got more bikes than me!” On one trip to the UK, Peter was keen to give Lorenzo the home experience. “We managed to do some cycling in Sheffield,” Peter says, discussing guiding Lorenzo around the Steel City also known as the land of seven hills. “He had to experience that, what with all the great hills to climb.”
Back in Italy, Lorenzo was beginning to get noticed. “He progressed slowly but surely, and every year he surprised me more, getting better and better,” Peter reflects. In 2022, Lorenzo was selected as one of four to represent Italy at the European Youth Olympics in Slovakia. “That came a little out of the blue,” Peter says, “but he could see that when he trained properly he was very good on climbs. He had no sprint – and still hasn’t got a sprint now – and he was coming second a lot, but he figured out he could counteract that by going early. He started winning lots of races, especially if there was a hill in there.”
At the end of his first year as a junior, Lorenzo, riding for his home Liguria region, finished second at the Giro della Lunigiana stage race. “It was an international race and my first big result,” he reflects. “I was like, yeah, I can be at this level.” That result sat alongside six national-level victories in the same campaign. Word was getting out about his talent. With the help of agent Jamie Barlow (Peter came across Barlow after reading a Rouleur article on him) Lorenzo signed for Grenke-Auto Eder – Bora-hansgrohe’s junior team – for the following season. He took ten wins, including the road race title at the World Championships in Zurich with a trademark long-distance attack. He only got to wear the rainbow bands once as he was graduating out of the junior category, but he made the most of the moment, winning one more domestic race to add to his growing palmarès.
Steady away
Instead of signing pro with Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe straight away, Lorenzo signed a two-year contract with the team’s U23 development team. Even after winning the U23 world title in Rwanda last September – once again, courtesy of a solo move a long way from the finish – he didn’t feel the need to change course and, as planned, won’t join the WorldTour until 2027. Time is on his side. “Especially after having won the Worlds, I can do one more year [at U23] in the jersey,” he says. “There’s no rush and the team has confidence in me. Winning the Worlds as a junior came as a shock and I didn't really savour it as much, whereas this year I will. I have a whole year to enjoy it and it will feel more real.”
As his father points out, working on his finishing speed is an area of improvement, but neither does he want to alter the aggressive, attacking style of racer he is. “In general my sprint needs to be worked on,” Lorenzo accepts. “I tend to win on my own, and if I am in a small group it’s not the best for me.” There’s no surprise which current riders he admires and wants to base himself on. “I want to say Tadej [Pogačar] but I think you need to have the legs for that,” he answers. “It’s not really a flashy name, but I like the way Ben Healy rides – he gets the maximum out of what he does.”
(Image credit: Getty)
Red Bull see Lorenzo as a future GC rider, and fourth at the Tour de l’Avenir and sixth at the Baby Giro in 2025 demonstrate his stage racing capabilities. “Doing the Baby Giro with the Italian team last year was so sick,” he says, his command of English slang as complete as his repertoire of skills on the bike. But at his heart he's a one-day rider. “Courses like Kigali where I won I really like,” he says. “Those that are hard all day, with short, punchy climbs.” He’ll be one of the favourites for the U23 world title in Montreal in September, going for a hat-trick of rainbow jerseys just like Pogačar in the elite race. “That’s the goal,” he confirms, with a glint in his eye.
Whatever Lorenzo goes on to achieve, he’ll do so under the red, green and white flag of Italy, the country of his and his mother’s birth, and the place where his father finally settled. But his links and connections to the UK and Ireland will continue to shape him and follow him around everywhere he goes. Take, for example, the tendency of Italian commentators to give riders their full names, like with Simon Philip Yates, for example. Lorenzo’s middle name is Mark. “My wife chose the name Mark minutes after Lorenzo was born,” Peter says. “It’s the name of my brother; I wasn’t expecting that. Where it gets complicated is that whenever they announce riders and call them up to the stage, for some reason they always switch his name around to Mark Lorenzo Finn. Commentators are the same – he gets called Mark.” Peter suspects it may be a convenient mistake, rather than an unknown error. “They like Mark as they can compare him to Marco Pantani. It’s an annoying comparison.”
Not entirely accurate, too, as even as Italy gets excited about Lorenzo Finn, he can trace a lot of his attributes back to the UK and Ireland, and particularly the Steel City of Sheffield. Unlike Pantani, he’s less ‘Elefantino’ – little elephant – and more a Yorkshire terrier. “He could qualify for England, Ireland or Italy – and he’s still got time to change his mind,” Peter laughs.
(Image credit: Véronique Rolland)
