Juan Sebastián Molano

Juan Sebastián Molano is a Colombian road cyclist and sprinter who rides for UAE Team Emirates XRG. He was born in 1994 in Paipa and grew up in a family where cycling was a common topic. According to his team, he started racing at the age of 12 at the Lancheros cycling school in Paipa; his younger brother Julián David also became a cyclist. He also won Pan American track titles in the omnium and the team pursuit in 2014.

He turned professional in 2015 with Team Colombia and then rode three seasons for Manzana Postobón, with whom he started the 2017 Vuelta a España. In 2018 he won the Pan American road race championship and the first Tour of China, with a stage win and the points classification.

Molano joined UAE Team Emirates in 2019. At that year’s Giro d’Italia his team withdrew him after stage 3 because of what it called unusual physiological results; further tests found that he was highly sensitive to changes in altitude, and he was cleared to race again in July 2019. In June 2022 he was disqualified from the Critérium du Dauphiné for punching Hugo Page. In September 2022 he won the final stage of the Vuelta a España ahead of his teammate Pascal Ackermann, despite expectations that Ackermann would be the last man in the team’s lead-out train. In 2023 he won stage 12 of the Vuelta ahead of Kaden Groves, a stage of the UAE Tour and the Grand Prix de Denain. He won the Classic Brugge–De Panne in 2025.

In 2026 he won the opening stage of the Tour of Oman in February, was third at Nokere Koerse in March and won the first stage of the CRO Race in September.