Henok Mulubrhan

Henok Mulubrhan was born in Asmara in November 1999 and came up through the same Eritrean junior system that produced the generation ahead of him. He was national under-23 road champion at eighteen, took silver in the African U23 road race that year, and won the title outright a season later — the first clear signal of what he would become.

His apprenticeship in Europe ran through the UCI World Cycling Centre, then NTT Continental, a short spell with Bike Aid, and two seasons at Bardiani–CSF–Faizanè, where he made his Grand Tour debut at the 2023 Giro d’Italia and rode into the combativity award on stage seven. That same year he assembled the season that defined him: the overall at the Tour du Rwanda with two stage wins, the overall at the Tour of Qinghai Lake, and a second African continental road title.

The African championship jersey is the through-line of his career. He won the road race in 2022, 2023 and 2024 — three in a row, a run no Eritrean had put together before him. In 2024 he stepped up to the WorldTour with Astana, now XDS Astana Team, and has since added the Tour of Magnificent Qinghai overall in 2025 and a second place at the Baku–Khankendi Azerbaijan Cycling Race in 2026, where he also took the points classification.

A puncheur who climbs well enough to hold a general classification, he rode the Vuelta a España in 2026 and remains, after Biniam Girmay, the most established Eritrean in the WorldTour peloton — and the clearest evidence that the country’s pipeline did not begin and end with one rider.