Why haven't NSN Cycling's Stevie Williams and Joe Blackmore raced this season?

It has been 351 days since Stevie Williams took the start line in a bike race, and 201 days since his NSN Cycling team-mate Joe Blackmore did the same.

Both Britons are yet to compete for their rebranded team this season, and with the Ardennes Classics approaching, the week where both of them have previously made their names – Williams won La Flèche Wallonne in 2024, four days after Blackmore won the under-23 Liège-Bastogne-Liège – mystery has surrounded both riders' race programmes.

Amid growing fan concern, NSN Cycling released a statement on Thursday evening explaining that Williams and Blackmore are sidelined for medical reasons.

“Stevie Williams is continuing intensive rehabilitation for a recovering quadriceps tendinopathy with a plan to progress back to full training in the next four to six weeks,” the team said.

“Joe Blackmore will undergo further specialist consultations in the next week in the UK and Belgium to investigate persistent knee pain in training which has kept him from the start line this year.”

Williams’s last event came in May 2025 at the one-day Eschborn-Frankfurt, one of just 16 race days he rode last season.

In an interview with Cycling Weekly in November, he explained he woke up with a “sharp pain” at the top of his right knee after competing in Australia’s Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in February. This was later diagnosed as quadriceps tendinopathy, the inflammation of the tendon of the muscle that attaches to the top of the knee, which can leave the fibres too weak to cope with the load of activity.

“Right now, I don’t care if I’m flying on the bike, I just want to be pain free and healthy,” said Williams, whose first WorldTour years in 2019 and 2020 were dogged by a tendon issue in his left knee.

“I have a lot of motivation to come back, I’m fighting and working hard. Fingers crossed everything will fall into line soon. When my first knee injury happened six years ago, I thought my career was done – and it wasn’t. The body can do some extraordinary things.”

Williams issued a further update on Instagram in January: “I’m still currently trying to figure out the combinations to get my knee back in working order. There’s highs and lows like anything, I’m sure I’ll overcome this one too.”

Less is known about Blackmore's injury. The 23-year-old last competed at the UCI Road World Championships in Rwanda, where he started but did not finish the men’s elite road race. He previously shot to fame in 2024 when he became the first British rider to win the Tour de l’Avenir, the week-long under-23 precursor to the Tour de France.

As yet, NSN Cycling has not confirmed a racing return date for either Williams or Blackmore.