After 12 full seasons as a professional, U.S. climber Gavin Mannion ended his career this week and will not pursue a contract to continue road racing. He was a fixture on the front lines of the peloton with the UnitedHealthcare team in 2017 and 2018, when he was in his mid-20s, and was one of the leaders in the Human Powered Health organization for the next four seasons.

"It still sounds weird to say 'retired,'" Mannion, now 31, told Cycling News this week.

"Looking back now, I think my 2017 and 2018 years with UnitedHealthcare were the best. In those two years, I was on the podium in most of the races that I wanted to win. So, yeah, I think those two years were my most consistent and most successful seasons."

In two of the most prominent UCI stage races in the U.S. at the time, Mannion finished second overall in 2017 at the Tour of Utah, "the toughest stage race in America," and soared to overall victory in the equally challenging Colorado Classic the following season.

The New England native, who now lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, moved to Rally Cycling (now Human Powered Health), which gave him the opportunity to compete in more European races, but as a professional team in Grand Tour races He said he never entered the race as a wild card entry. Mannion said he wished he could have started the Grand Tour, but he has no regrets.

"It would have definitely been nice. It was my goal a few years ago, but I don't think I did anything wrong or didn't do enough. I thought that if the team grew into the World Tour over the last few years, we would have a chance at Human Powered Health."

Mannion told Cycling News that several factors contributed to his decision to retire from racing. After recovering from shoulder surgery over the winter, he broke his wrist in mid-July. He then found out that his contract with a professional team in the U.S. would not be renewed, and he had two options, neither of which was positive.

"After my wrist surgery, I found out that I would not have a contract with a team for the next year. If I had joined a professional team in Europe, I would have continued for at least one more year, maybe two. [I mean, the talent has grown by leaps and bounds in Europe over the last couple of years, and it's getting harder to get work, and five years ago, when the domestic racing scene was thriving here [in stage races in the U.S.], I would have loved to be on this calendar for a year as a transition period. But that's not the case anymore

"I had some teammates who went to L39LION (Los Angeles) and obviously the NCL has started. The idea of going back and racing crit didn't really appeal to me. I figured the best way to not hate cycling was to go back and not do it. I think there will always be a place for criterium racing in the US. Honestly, I wish the road would come back."

Mannion grew up in Boston, racing criteriums and cyclocross, and in 2007, when he was 16, he was a member of the U.S. Hot Tubes Junior Development Team, winning the national junior criterium championship, and the following year he won the national championship at the nearby Green Two years later, he joined the Trek LIVESTRONG Devo team and began to make the podium in the Pro 1-2 events, this time taking silver in the Green Mountain Criterium.

However, climbing the podium is different from climbing in a race. Axel Merckx, then sport director for the Bontrager LIVESTRONG team, thought Mannion was too big. That year, in the third stage of the USA Pro Challenge in Aspen, he finished fourth in a field of World Tour riders, ahead of Janez Brajkovic (Astana), Andreas Klöden (RadioShack-Nissan), and Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Sharp). (Garmin-Sharp).

The following year, he finished fifth in the US Pro Road Race Championships held on the hilly course in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He also finished second in the youth class at both the Tour of California and Tour of Utah. From 2014 to 2016, he rode for four different programs, including Drapac Professional Cycling at the Pro Continental level (now a pro team); in 2017, he joined the dominant UnitedHealthcare Pro Team, where he was a climber and He solidified his form.

"Oro y Paz in Colombia (2018) was just crazy. I think there were probably a million spectators. I've been going to the Tour de Suisse for the last few years, and I've had five guys in the top 10 of the Tour de France, and they're almost in Tour de France shape, so it's an eye opener and humbling every year," he said of races outside the US.

His two European victories came in consecutive stages of Le Tour de Savoie-Mont Blanc in 2020.

"2020 was a crazy year with the pandemic, a lot of races were cancelled. I won two races in Europe that year. I raced with Brandon McNulty and won the 'Tour de Sicilia,' which led to his entry into the World Tour and UAE Team Emirates. It was a pretty big team effort."

In his last two seasons with the U.S.-based team, Mannion also helped two of his teammates, Joey Roskopf in 2021 and Kyle Murphy in 2022, win US pro road races. Now Mannion can focus on himself.

"I'm in the process of figuring it all out. I've been coaching for a long time and I'm definitely going to do more," he said of coaching at Durata Cycling. He intends to keep at it, but is also working on other career plans.

"I want to work in cycling, not as a rider. And obviously, I still ride bikes for fun. Like, I do gravel races as a hobby."