Ane Santesteban will draw her professional racing career to a close at the GP Eibar on 5 October, on the familiar roads of the Basque Country and in front of the people who have accompanied her journey from promising junior to one of Spain’s most consistent stage racers.
Her farewell comes with the emotion of someone who has lived every moment with intensity, with the honesty that has always defined her, and with the pride of having built a career not filled with victories but rich in values, lessons, and lasting connections.
A career built on resilience and consistency
Santesteban claimed her sole professional victory at the 2013 Spanish national road race championships, but her palmarès is defined more by steady performances than by outright wins. She finished eighth overall at the 2023 Tour de France Femmes, seventh at the 2020 Giro d’Italia Donne, and sixth at the 2022 Vuelta España Femenina. Podium finishes came at events including the Tour Féminin l’Ardèche in 2021, Tre Valli Varesine in 2022, and the Navarra Elite Classics in 2022.
She was also a frequent contender on home soil, taking silver in the Spanish road race championships on three occasions and placing second at the GP Ciudad de Eibar and Durango-Durango. In 2024 she added another runner-up finish at the Women Cycling Pro Costa de Almería, showing her competitiveness well into the latter years of her career.
A journey across teams and nations
The Basque rider began her career with Debabarrena-Kirolgi and Bizkaia-Durango before moving through some of the most prominent squads in the women’s peloton, including Alé Cipollini, WNT Rotor, Ceratizit-WNT, and Team BikeExchange. After two seasons in Australia’s WorldTour programme, she returned to Spain in 2024 with Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi, where she has ridden her final campaigns.
Across more than a decade and a half, Santesteban established herself as a trusted general classification rider and mountain specialist, valued for her climbing depth and tactical dependability.
An enduring connection to cycling
Though she will step away from competition after Eibar, Santesteban has underlined that her commitment to the sport remains intact. “Cycling does not end when the race finishes. Like life, cycling continues,” she said in announcing her retirement.
Her departure from the professional peloton marks the close of a career that embodied perseverance and humility, and her presence will leave a mark not only on the races she contested but on the many riders and teams who valued her as a teammate and competitor.
Looking ahead
Santesteban departs the sport with a record of steady excellence and a reputation as one of the most respected figures of her generation. While her palmarès counts only a single professional victory, her consistency across the world’s biggest races and her role as a standard-bearer for Spanish women’s cycling ensure her legacy is measured in far more than results.
Her last race at the GP Eibar will serve not only as a farewell but as a celebration of a career defined by resilience, dedication and an enduring love of cycling.
