The 19-year-old Brit Matthew Brennan has won more in 2025 than Tadej Pogačar, but don’t you dare go saying he’s the next Wout van Aert.
Visma-Lease a Bike’s sensational speedster crushed two stage wins and claimed a breakout first GC victory last weekend at the Tour of Norway.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the bulldozer Brit finished second on the two stages he didn’t win, and threw the overall youth and points classifications into the bag too.
It’s another huge step for a rider already – perhaps mistakenly – hailed as “the next Remco,” “the next Wout,” or “the next Cav.”
“This is amazing,” Brennan said Sunday after he completed his rout of Norway.
“This is my first GC win as a professional, and it’s something I’ll never forget.”
Brennan betters Kristoff with huge power
Matthew Brennan out-sprinted the experienced Alexander Kristoff on Stage 4 at the Tour of Norway, hitting massive numbers in the process
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#ToN25 pic.twitter.com/rDxU8kf7xI— Velon CC (@VelonCC) June 1, 2025
Brennan now counts eight UCI wins for 2025.
That’s the same as Mads Pedersen and one more than Pogačar.
Sure, the Tour of Norway is no Giro d’Italia or Tour of Flanders.
But Brennan is delivering the exact consistency that newly crowned Giro d’Italia champions Visma-Lease a Bike will crave for their super team slugfest with Pogačar and UAE Emirates-XRG.
Also read: Visma signs teen talent Brennan through 2027
And more to the point, it’s pretty impressive for a kid who was riding with the Visma-Lease a Bike devo team as recently as winter 2024.
Grand tour racing can wait for Brennan
Brennan is the latest teen phenom to have made the jump from juniors to WorldTour look like child’s play.
It’s inevitable that the world has been quick to compare him to Remco Evenepoel and Pogačar, or to closer prototypes like Van Aert and Cavendish.
Not that Brennan is fully flattered.
“If people want to compare me to them, that’s fine. I take it as a compliment,” Brennan told the media earlier this summer.
“But I shouldn’t do that, I should focus on myself. If I want to achieve something, I have to follow my own plan and build my own career.
“I’m not Wout van Aert, I’m not Mark Cavendish,” he continued. “They also each followed their own path. And it is very clear that I am nowhere near those two. I think I am also just different. Cavendish didn’t win a stage with 3,000 climbing metres, for example. And Van Aert has a much bigger engine than I do.”
Comparisons aside, some say the sky’s the limit for Brennan.
He beat back some heavyweight competition on heinously hard stages at the WorldTour-rated Volta a Catalunya and Tour de Romandie. The WorldTour rookie went deep into his Paris-Roubaix debut to flank teammate Van Aert.
Yet he’s unlikely to see a grand tour debut this summer.
For now, Brennan is still bullish about chasing his pursuit dreams on the track, and is happy to take his time to work toward three-week racing.
It will be worth the wait.
Joint-most wins and he’s still only 19
Matthew Brennan’s three victories at the Tour of Norway 2025 took him level with Mads Pedersen for the most wins this season so far.
Sprint Cycling
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#ToN25 pic.twitter.com/xavNStaFAY— Velon CC (@VelonCC) June 2, 2025