Introducing Pablo Torres: Our latest WorldTour debutant

Making the step up to the UCI WorldTour can be a daunting prospect for any rider, let alone a 19-year-old making the move to a team ranked as the No.1 in the world for the two years prior. New expectations, new rivals and new opportunities, perhaps, but for young Spaniard Pablo Torres, new surroundings were not a challenge to be overcome as he began his 2025 neo-pro campaign.

Following a season in which he came of age at races such as the Valle d’Aosta, the Tour de l’Avenir and the Giro Next Gen, Torres earned a promotion from the Gen Z ranks to the WorldTour arm of UAE Team Emirates-XRG. Making a transfer from within, it has not taken Torres long to feel at home in his new-old surroundings.

“It has definitely made things easier because I knew so many of the riders and the staff already from the WorldTour squad,” he says. “This feels like my home already because, from the start of the season, all of my teammates have gone out of their way to help me and make me feel like a part of the group.

“I really appreciate this and I was glad to be able to repay their faith in Australia, where we worked well as a team to support Jhony.”

Enjoying a stroll through Singapore’s Changi Airport, the youngster is enjoying the afterglow of a successful spell of racing in Australia, where UAE Team Emirates-XRG won the first WorldTour stage race of the season through Jhonatan Narváez. As he speaks to the team during the customary layover, it soon becomes clear that Narváez’s impact Down Under has been profound.

“He’s a really good guy, and he’s really professional. And he has taught me a lot of things which I can use to improve,” notes Torres.

For the almost three weeks that UAE Team Emirates-XRG spent in Adelaide, the pair were roommates throughout, offering Torres the chance to learn from a man who would leave Australia as the newly-anointed ‘King of Willunga Hill.’

“He is really well organised and he taught me how to use this to my advantage,” he continues.

“Before we headed to the race, he would organise his things so that when he arrived, he didn’t even have to think about it. Before, I would wonder about what to bring and what I would need at the stage start, which would cause some headaches, but with Jhony, he taught me to be prepared. In both the Tour Down Under and future races, this allows me to be relaxed and focus only on the race. It is always important to have things such as this under control, which is perhaps the best lesson I learned from Jhony.”

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While Narváez and Torres parted ways following the final stage – with the Ecuadorian heading straight home to race in, and win, the national championship road race – the young mentee could head back to Europe with a string of impressive performances in tow.

Beginning the race as the second-youngest participant, Torres was a feature towards the front of the action throughout. Be it as a helper for Narváez, a man to mark a move on the front of the peloton, or as an aggressor himself on the Queen stage, there was no shying away from hard work for the 19-year-old.

Torres had made nine appearances for UAE Team Emirates-XRG in the 2024 season, but the Tour Down Under was to be his first experience of WorldTour competition, and with it came many lessons to be learned.

“It was really nice but it’s very different,” he reflects. “Here all the guys are very very strong and in the bunch, it is easy to be suffering on your limit whilst you look around and the rest of the guys are seemingly not struggling.

“I think I need to learn a lot, because I know in this race, for example, I suffered too much in the flat because the pace was very high and the other riders tend to have more power than a small guy like me. I have to get used to that pace, but I felt strong in the climbs.”

Strong enough to infiltrate the breakaway on stage 5 to Willunga Hill, Torres left his mark in a number of moments during the week. On the third day, he expertly tracked the wheels in the peloton as his teammate Marc Soler made a daring late attack, whilst stage 4 saw the Spaniard make an effective attack in his own right. With both Soler and Torres on the front foot on that day to Victor Harbor, UAE Team Emirates-XRG were able to distance a number of the pure sprinters and guide Narváez to bonus seconds across the line.

Eventually winning the overall race by a margin of just nine seconds, every bonus was vital to Narváez and the team. As for his spell in the breakaway on stage 5, Torres performed his role diligently, tracking moves and ensuring that UAE Team Emirates-XRG would be represented up the road if required. Once there, however, his own strong performances throughout the week would prove his enemy.

“Once we were joined by Juanpe López, we were a group of six, but the other guys did not want to work with me because I only had a small gap to the race lead in the GC,” he admits, having begun the stage just 35 seconds behind the race leader.

Sensing the group’s frustration, Torres followed the wheel of López as the Lidl-Trek rider attacked, with the pair opening up a gap to their breakaway companions behind. As they approached the next feed zone, though, Torres and his experienced compatriot would rue a lapse in concentration.

“We were ultimately caught by the four guys and dropped because I was taking a bottle when they attacked us. It was a slight descent and they came over the lip of the hill carrying perhaps 30km/h more speed than us, so it was impossible to follow them. Once they had escaped, the team asked me to wait for the peloton because it would be a waste of my energy to chase back to the front.

“Next time, I will certainly be more careful in the feed zone,” he chuckles.

A moment of naivety notwithstanding, Torres ended the race in third place in the young rider’s classification, providing UAE Team Emirates-XRG with another high point from an enjoyable three weeks in Australia.

Humble in his assessment of his first WorldTour outing, Torres is a rider in whom many have already placed plenty of promise. A winner of two stages of the Tour de l’Avenir in 2024 – including one atop the famed Colle delle Finestre – Torres’ performances over the course of the year were enough to attract plenty of deserved plaudits. With his transfer to the WorldTour at a tender age, his stock has risen, and so have expectations.

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But with a level head, the 19-year-old is not letting any outside noise derail his own personal pathway.

“I try not to listen to outside expectations too much. I am only 19 years old and it is always difficult to get a result in this sport, never mind in such a short space of time at the beginning of my career. I am very young and I have a lot of things to learn, so whilst some people might like me to secure ten victories this year, this will not be my expectation,” he insists.

“I will take things at my own pace and take every race as an opportunity to learn, so in this way, the pressure from the media does not affect me. In the end, the person who puts the most pressure on my shoulders is myself because I want to have a result more than any other person wants me to score a result.”

For a rider whose ascent to the WorldTour has occurred relatively quickly, Torres’ self-effacing nature can be traced back to his early experiences of using cycling to handle growing pains. Never more than a once-a-month mountain biker as a child, Torres’ relationship with two wheels changed when injuries began to take their toll on the aspiring footballer.

“Seven years ago, when I was 13, I started to ride my bike because, in football, I had some problems with my knees. When I was young and maybe half a metre shorter than I am now, I carried a little bit more weight, and football caused too much stress on my joints,” he admits.

Making his first foray into racing as a teenager for Unión Ciclista Coslada, success did not come overnight for the young Spaniard. Often lapped and failing to finish in the local circuit races, Torres began to see improvements only when he resorted to an indoor trainer during the COVID lockdowns.

“There would be nothing else to do, so I rode for one hour and a half, or even for two hours on some days, and I really enjoyed it.

“In the junior ranks, I had joined the Union Ciclista San Sebastian de los Reyes [Ed. Sanse], which is maybe the best team for juniors in Madrid, and our trainer would give me a list of efforts to do on the bike. He would send me a video of a stage of the Vuelta a Espana, and when the climb would start in the race, I would do an effort, and then I would recover in the flat, and this is how we would work. It is something funny to look back on but in the end, it improved me as a rider a lot.”

With age and hard work, Torres began to get leaner, and although he did not start winning races right away, he could see that the hard work was paying off.

By 2022, the 16-year-old was starting his first junior national championships and making inroads abroad. Beginning the year with a win at Trofeo Antonio Gomez Del Moral, Torres would go on to compete in the Netherlands at the Watersley Junior Challenge and take a further three victories throughout the season.

Another year and further victories beckoned with Sanse in 2023, but it was in 2024 that Torres first began to make headlines with his performances.

“Every year after beginning indoor training, I would improve a little bit and last year, I was able to improve a lot,” he remembers. “I did not expect to improve so much.”

Having been scouted by and signed to UAE Team Emirates’ Gen Z squad, the Spaniard claimed second overall at the Giro Next Gen, won the Queen stage of Valle d’Aosta and achieved two memorable stage wins at the Tour de l’Avenir – guiding him to second overall.

It was an Indian summer which set tongues wagging when his winter transfer to UAE Team Emirates-XRG was announced. Now a teammate of the likes of Tadej Pogačar, João Almeida and Adam Yates, the boy from Madrid would get the chance to test his resolve alongside and against the world’s very best. But for all the talk of how he might take to the WorldTour, Torres is keen to leave another big impression on the race which under-23 talents value above all else.

“I won’t do any Grand Tours this year but I will go to the Tour de l’Avenir and this will be my main goal of the season,” he says. “I will hope to begin the race in top shape and try to go one better than my second place from last season. It was very close last year, with only 12 seconds separating me and the winner, but of course, this year will be a new challenge.

“Each year, the level gets higher and it will be difficult, but I know that I can improve myself and with each race I start this season, I will be learning new lessons.”

Before he clashes with his generation’s best climbing talents in France, however, Torres will continue his season with UAE Team Emirates-XRG at the Vuelta a Andalucía in a little over a week’s time. There, as opposed to in Australia, the Spaniard will be on climbs of significant length and well suited to his skillset.

It will present Torres with his first chance to put into practice the lessons he learned from his time Down Under.

“I know that in climbs of more than 30 minutes, I am very strong, because I know that I am a light rider and I have good watts per kilo,” he recognises.

“But maybe in the flat, I don’t have too much power to push like the other guys. So that is a thing that I want to improve, to arrive at the climb and have more energy, because if I suffer in the flat and I don’t have the energy, then I can’t show my true self on the climb.”

Since returning from an impressive debut outing at the Tour Down Under, life in Europe has returned to normal for Torres. There have been plenty of hours spent training, of course – albeit not watching old stages of the Vuelta a España on an indoor trainer – but there has also been time for the youngster to indulge in his passions away from the bike.

A keen Lego builder and an avid player of the F1 video game on his PlayStation, Torres also likes to use his spare time to remain creative.

“It is not something I take seriously, but I really enjoy drawing on my tablet. This is something that started when I was a kid in school. I would doodle in my notebooks, and it is something that I still like to do to relax away from the bike.”

With a measured approach that belies his age but a wide-eyed innocence that only comes with youth, Torres is well set for his first season in UAE Team Emirates-XRG colours.

You need only speak with the 19-year-old during a transcontinental airport layover to discover a wise head on young and promising shoulders.

“I know that I will be here for a long time, that the guys want me in the team, and so I have all the confidence to be focused on the learning process in the meantime. In the future, I will, of course, aim for top results, but at the moment, I am here to learn. In time, I hope that the results will come.”