Riding Against both Father and Son

[shalgo]

This doesn't exactly fit under the topic of this thread, but another longevity-related statistic occurred to me after seeing both Rebellin and Ghirmay in the GP Industria & Artigianato results. Ghirmay was born in 2000. That means that Rebellin has competed against riders born in the 2000s, 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, and 1950s (Sean Kelly, for example). Has anyone else competed against riders born in six different decades?

 

[Leinster]

This doesn't exactly fit under the topic of this thread, but another longevity-related statistic occurred to me after seeing both Rebellin and Ghirmay in the GP Industria & Artigianato results. Ghirmay was born in 2000. That means that Rebellin has competed against riders born in the 2000s, 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, and 1950s (Sean Kelly, for example). Has anyone else competed against riders born in six different decades?

What makes you so sure there weren't any riders left from the 40's when Rebellin started in the peloton? (Hennie Kuiper appears to have come close, and Zoetemelk was just a little too old...)

 

[valentius borealis]

Philippe Gilbert has raced against Johan and Stefano Museeuw.

Since we've been discussing this topic, interesting article in Marca. We have this about the 3 sets of father and son pairings he's raced against (not just racing at the same time, but actually raced in the same races as).
The 3 sets are:
Erik and Rick Zabel, Nicola and Riccardo Minali, and Erik and David Dekker

Que pase el siguiente para Valverde. ¡Alejandro ha competido contra tres parejas de padres e hijos!

Alejandro Valverde, que este martes sufrió más de lo previsto en la subida al Jebel Hafeet en la tercera etapa del Tour de los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, puede presumir tras esta carr

www.marca.com

That's not a complete list, though - more like lazy journalism. Valverde also raced against both Farazijn father and son. Against Peter Farazijn e.g. at Milan-Sanremo 2002, against Maxime Farazijn at Flèche Wallonne 2017.

Indeed, but what is notable is that he raced against Rick Zabel, Riccardo Minali and David Dekker in the UAE Tour after racing against Erik Zabel, Nicola Minali and Erik Dekker at Tirreno-Adriatico and Milano-Sanremo in 2002.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Dries Devenyns rode on the same Davitamon/Predictor/Silence-Lotto team as Wim Vansevenant from 2006-08 (racing together 10 times), and is now (and was last season) on the same Deceuninck Quickstep team as Mauri, sharing 7 race days so far.

I know the thread title was "Racing against both father and son", but this seems more noteworthy.

 

[rallybanana]

Oscar Sevilla, who was once a teammate of Erik Zabel, raced against Rick Zabel for the first time at the 2023 Vuelta a San Juan. In the same race, he also completed the father and son set against Dmitri and Alexander Konychev.

 

[YavorD]

Nibali has raced against Fran and Vladimir Miholjevic.
Not sure about Caruso, was he a team-mate with the father?

Edit: Nope, but he raced against both.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Everyone who raced the Vuelta a Tachira in 2021 raced against both Jose and Jeison Rujano, probably the only instance of father and son riding together on the same team.

 

[rallybanana]

Jos van Emden and Maciej Bodnar are around long enough to have raced against Magnus Bäckstedt.

They both raced against Elynor Bäckstedt in the 2023 World Championships - Mixed Relay TTT.

Is this the first case of riding against father and daughter?

 

[rallybanana]

This doesn't exactly fit under the topic of this thread, but another longevity-related statistic occurred to me after seeing both Rebellin and Ghirmay in the GP Industria & Artigianato results. Ghirmay was born in 2000. That means that Rebellin has competed against riders born in the 2000s, 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, and 1950s (Sean Kelly, for example). Has anyone else competed against riders born in six different decades?

What makes you so sure there weren't any riders left from the 40's when Rebellin started in the peloton? (Hennie Kuiper appears to have come close, and Zoetemelk was just a little too old...)

Raúl Alcalá raced against Kuiper and Zoetemelk. So now holds this record.

 

[RedheadDane]

Does Raúl Alcalá have a grandson? If so, some of the younger participants at the Gran Premio New York City last year could eventually race against said grandson, making it the first case of racing against both grandfather and grandson.


Not sure if it was mentioned earlier, but I have a feeling there are quite a few people who've raced CX against both Sven and Thibau Nys.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Does Raúl Alcalá have a grandson? If so, some of the younger participants at the Gran Premio New York City last year could eventually race against said grandson, making it the first case of racing against both grandfather and grandson.


Not sure if it was mentioned earlier, but I have a feeling there are quite a few people who've raced CX against both Sven and Thibau Nys.

I was unable to find any races where Sergey Sukhoruchenkov and Raúl Alcalá both started unfortunately - I thought it could be possible Alcalá would face both Sergey and Bogdan Zabelinskiy, his grandson via his daughter Olga Zabelinskaya, but it seems politics prevented it; Alcalá tended to run a North American and Tour de France-based program, while the Soviet teams tended to do Open races and the Vuelta. Sergey did the Vuelta twice and the Giro once before the fall of the USSR, while Alcalá only did the Giro once during Soukho's active career and didn't enter the Vuelta until after his retirement - sadly Raúl did 1988 and Sergey 1989.

Obviously it would be extremely difficult to pull off such a feat because you'd need multiple father-son combinations within relatively short periods of time to be able to pull it off - for example here, Sergey's final year of competition was 1990, while Bogdan's first recorded results on a notable enough scale as a junior come in 2023, meaning you would need a 33-year spread of results to race against both. For context, the only rider I can find other than Alcalá who could even theoretically reach that spread was Davide Rebellin, with 34 years from first to last results (1988 as a junior through to 2022 when he finally stopped racing and sadly passed away). The longest-running active pro is Óscar Sevilla, who has a 27-year spread from 1998 to 2025 - but would have been racing as a junior and espoir before that, it's just that he didn't compete in junior championships or anything like Rebellin did to appear before his Kelme years. Muradjan Khalmuratov is only one year behind him, though - he debuted in the Junior Worlds in 1999 and is still active today.

Likewise I looked at the Amplers, as Klaus' son Uwe's son Rick went on to have a minor career in the sport as well; Klaus' final year of competition was 1970, and Rick's first was 2006, giving a 36-year gap. This is harmed by the tendency of the amateur riders to quit at a younger age back in the Ostbloc days, Klaus retiring at the age of just 29. Soukho raced on until he was 34 with the chances to race with Alfa Lum at the end of the 80s, which gives a bit more of a chance.

For this reason I would think that a family like the Rujanos are your best bet for a possibility for this, as Jeison is only 19 years younger than José, but José is also continuing to enter races now well into his 40s , meaning if Jeison has a son himself relatively soon, it's possible that somebody relatively young racing now - especially in the insular Venezuelan scene where they could continue to race the domestic races for years to come, especially if they're local Tachirense talents - could still be racing at least part-time when said son starts to compete. Take somebody like Arlex José Méndez, who won a stage of this year's Vuelta al Táchira racing against both José and Jeison, and is still a teenager. He could feasibly still be racing when somebody born today is entering the race themselves.

 

[Unchained]

Does Raúl Alcalá have a grandson?

MONTERREY 2025 | Raúl Alcalá

www.raulalcala.com

 

[Wyndbrook]

Does Raúl Alcalá have a grandson? If so, some of the younger participants at the Gran Premio New York City last year could eventually race against said grandson, making it the first case of racing against both grandfather and grandson.


Not sure if it was mentioned earlier, but I have a feeling there are quite a few people who've raced CX against both Sven and Thibau Nys.

There were at least ten riding against Thibau yesterday who competed with his dad.

 

[Potomac]

I'm holding out for George and Enzo Hincapie.
Enzo is still young, so it will have to be some grizzled old veteran to "do the double" on that one.

 

[rallybanana]

I'm holding out for George and Enzo Hincapie.
Enzo is still young, so it will have to be some grizzled old veteran to "do the double" on that one.

Stuyven and Kelderman might be the youngest ones still in the peloton who have raced against George. However if Enzo does some American gravel races he could bump into Lachlan Morton.

Caja Rural's Tyler Stites raced against George in the 2023 El Tour de Tucson. He's just 10 years older than Enzo.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Caja Rural's Tyler Stites raced against George in the 2023 El Tour de Tucson. He's just 10 years older than Enzo.

As did Matthew Riccitello.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

I've tried to find out whether Femke Verstichelen raced against any brother/sister and/or daddy/daughter combos during her career. Before her transition, she came in with the same group as Gert Vanderaerden in the 2004 Omloop van de Vlaamse Scheldeboorden (they both beat John Gadret), but it appears she raced her last kermesse race three days before Anna Vanderaerden rode her first back in 2022.

She has however raced against both Danny Stam and Anna van der Breggen, but I guess you can say that about multiple SDW riders as well

 

[rallybanana]

I don't think there's a demand for a thread called "Riding against both Father's Cousin and Son" so I'll put it here. Niko Eeckhout raced as a teammate of Jos van Aert in 1994 and against Wout van Aert in Tour of Belgium 2013.