Spain’s newest teenage prodigy is not planning to wait for Tadej Pogacar to fade.

“Of course I’d like to beat Pogacar, but that’s going to be quite difficult,” Benjamin Noval, 18, told MARCA, in quotes picked up across the cycling press.

“Maybe when he starts declining, but right now I see it as pretty much impossible.”

The Spaniard goes into 2027 as the most hyped teenager in the sport. In September he swept both the junior time trial and the junior road race at the World Championships in Montreal, winning the road race by attacking with 27 kilometres to go and becoming only the second male junior to double up at a single Worlds, after Remco Evenepoel in 2018. The following month he claimed the European time trial title on his 18th birthday.

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INEOS Grenadiers moved for him early. The British team confirmed his signing in June 2025, when Noval was still 16, and will promote him directly from the junior ranks to the WorldTour in 2027, skipping the under-23 development route altogether. His reported fee has earned him the nickname “the million-euro Ineos guy” in the Spanish press.

Pogacar as the yardstick

Noval does not hide that Pogacar is the standard he is measuring himself against. Asked by MARCA to assemble his ideal rider from the current peloton, he picked Pogacar for climbing, Evenepoel for the time trial, and Jonathan Milan, Paul Magnier and Jasper Philipsen for the sprints.

“Right now Pogacar is the perfect rider,” he said.

But he resists direct comparisons.

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“I don’t think I’m truly like any of them. I try to be a different kind of rider.”

The Slovenian is a long way clear of the field. In July he won his fifth Tour de France, beating Evenepoel by more than six minutes and matching Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain on the all-time list. He was absent from Il Lombardia this month through injury, handing Paul Seixas the Monument and underlining how much the sport’s narrative still orbits around him.

The weaknesses he admits

Noval’s self-assessment is unusually sober for a teenager with two rainbow jerseys. He has named sprinting and flat races as his weaknesses, and told MARCA he is wary of what senior racing will do to him.

“What scares me most is the level of competition and how I’ll feel on the climbs after five hours in the saddle.”

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He is not promising wins in his debut season.

“The goal for next year is to support the leaders as best I can, and, of course, to establish myself as a key rider.”

Noval also addressed the chatter around his contract and the pressure that comes with it, saying criticism “actually motivates me” and that outside opinion leaves him unmoved. He makes his WorldTour debut with INEOS Grenadiers at the team’s first race of the 2027 calendar.

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