Luka Mezgec (Team Jayco AlUla) is set to bring his 14-year career to a close at the European Championships in his home country of Slovenia on Sunday, before joining Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe as a sports director next season.
“I have signed with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, where I will be a sports director. I would like to share the experiences I have gathered over the past 17 years,” he told Slovenian radio station Radio 1.
What is unusual is that the 38-year-old will not be staying with Jayco-AlUla, a team where he has spent the last 11 of his 14 years as a professional rider. He joined the Aussie squad back in 2016 and has stayed ever since but he will not be staying with the outfit for next season as a staff member.
Mezgec had set out his retirement plans in January, when he told Siol that 2026 would be his final season and that he wanted to make the European Championships at home his last race.
“Fourteen years in professional cycling. Enough,” he said.
He also spoke about how he wanted to be a DS and explore that side of the sport. He has now confirmed that will be his next step with a team lined up.
“When I signed my first contract in 2013 and mentally went through the different roles in cycling, I said to myself: ‘Oh, what a miserable job being a sports director is. You’re away from home all the time, you drive a car … who would even want to do that? I’ll never do that,’” he said.
He has 19 professional wins to his name with eight of them at WorldTour level. His biggest achievement was taking the final stage of the 2014 Giro d’Italia when he rode for Giant-Shimano, now Picnic-PostNL, before he joined Jayco. He also finished second on two stages of the 2020 Tour de France with his best performances often coming in hilly stages that ended in reduced sprints as well as being a key lead-out man.
The Red Bull appointment will bring that combination of winning and supporting experience into the team car. It also means leaving the squad he joined in 2016 rather than making the transition within the organisation where he has spent the past 11 seasons.
Alessandro De Marchi became a sports director at the team for 2026, making the same move from racing to team management that Mezgec will make next season.
Mezgec is named on Slovenia's published elite men's entry list for the European Championships, which run from October 2 to 7. Sunday's road race gives him the home farewell he had identified at the start of his final season.
The elite men's race starts in Ljubljana at 12:30 and covers 196.2km before finishing in Šenčur. The event schedule gives an estimated finish time of 17:36, when Mezgec is due to close his racing career before beginning the new role in 2027.
