Neilson Powless competed in his first Tour de France with the same mentality employed by many young, talented professional bicycle riders. Whenever opportunities arose, he pedaled toward the front. It’s rarely the right approach, particularly in the sport’s most prestigious event.

A lot has changed. The former Roseville High School standout long-distance runner is preparing for his sixth participation in the event, beginning July 5. The race stretches across the sunflower-packed flatlands of France, ascends into the snow-covered Alps and Pyrenees and often crosses country borders as if visiting nearby neighborhoods.

“The first year I felt like was just going after every chance,” Powless says after a brief chuckle during a recent phone interview from Belgium. “I would attack and try to make a breakaway, get in front of the race and try to win. But the problem is I would chase that too hard and spread myself too thin. Now as I am getting older, I realize you get a lot more out of the race if you go all-in on a few more select days rather than thinking about every day taking a chance.

“The guys who win stages are the ones who focus a bit more on something where they know they can have their best chance. It just comes with age and experience. I think all of the young guys start the same way, just going crazy from the first week and going crazy on every stage until there’s nothing left, and then they’re barely finishing. Now, I am to the point where I can pick and choose the days a little better. I can be a better teammate when needed because of that.”

The 2025 Tour de France begins in Lille and for the first time in five years will remain entirely in France, with stops in iconic locales, including Dunkirk, Normandy and Toulouse. It will advance 2,063 miles, visit four mountain ranges and end July 27 on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

Powless, 28, is a leader of EF Education–EasyPost, the Colorado-based team sponsored by an international education company based in Switzerland and a global shipping technology company headquartered in Utah. It’s one of only two American-registered squads on the WorldTeam level. Cycling’s highest caliber classification comprises 18 teams from 11 countries and includes a global selection of athletes.

Not too long ago, nearly a dozen American riders competing for several different international teams participated in the Tour de France. But fewer U.S. riders are employed at the top level of road cycling. The only American finishers last year were Powless, his teammate Sean Quinn of Los Angeles, and Matteo Jorgenson, a native of Walnut Creek raised in Boise, Idaho, who rides for the Dutch squad Visma–Lease a Bike. Powless is in his fifth year of a contract that extends through the 2027 season.

Top pro cycling is nearly gone from the United States, except the Maryland Cycling Classic, the one-day men’s and women’s September race in which Powless will race. He competed in the U.S. National Championships last year but has a European race conflict this year.

While leading his team in most races, including the Tour de Suisse in June, his last preamble event before to the Tour de France, Powless will again compete in cycling’s most important event in a support role for Richard Carapaz. The Ecuadorian won the 2019 Tour of Italy and is a specialist in cycling’s three-week races, called Grand Tours.

“I’ve had a lot of success with the team and I am getting physically better every year,” says Powless, now in his fifth year with the team. “The only time I am not performing well is if I am sick or injured. It’s never because of a failure of equipment or anything like that or a failure of tactics. Because of that, I’ve always been able to take another step further every year.’

Born at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and raised in Roseville (Powless’ father, Jack, served in the U.S. Air Force), Neilson Powless and his older sister, Shayna, participated in sports from their early youth. The siblings’ mother Janette was also in the Air Force, and it’s where she met her future husband when they were stationed in Guam. Jack Powless excelled in triathlons, winning age-group Ironman Triathlon titles; Jeanette Allred (now Powless) competed for Guam as a marathoner in the 1992 Summer Olympics and was a professor and coach at Sierra College and American River College for many years.

Jack Powless’ father Matthew is a citizen of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin; Neilson and his sister Shayna, 31, a retired pro cyclist, are one-quarter Oneida. They grew up in Roseville learning about their heritage from their grandfather, Matthew Powless, and excelling at sports, notably in off-road triathlons. The siblings were both age-group national champions. Neilson also competed in basketball, boxing and soccer. He held the fastest high school five-kilometer time in Northern California.

But at age 18, Powless committed his athletic pursuits to only cycling. He joined cycling’s top level in 2018, two years after finishing ninth overall in the now-defunct Tour of California which ended in Sacramento.

The following year, Powless competed in his first Grand Tour at the Tour of Spain. (The three Grand Tours in cycling are the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France and Vuelta a España.) He competed in the first of five straight Tour de France editions in 2020, when he became the first citizen of a Native American nation to participate.

Powless’ progress toward this year’s Tour de France began last October. He won two one-day, late-season races in October, the Gran Piemonte in Borgomanero, Italy, and the Japan Cup in Utsunomiya 10 days later. Winter training produced the training tests of his career, although they were curtailed by a lingering bout of mononucleosis.

“Every time I finish a season strong, I am confident all winter,” Powless says. “I am not really trying to force anything. I finished the season on such a high, I don’t feel like I have to chase after anything. I just go out and get done what my coach tells me to do and I don’t try to overdo it.

“The season is really long and if you know that two months prior you won a bike race, there’s no pressure to have to chase after something. You just have to be confident in the training your coach is giving you and that it is working and that it did work.”

Powless is also competing in his second season as a father. He met his wife, Frances Chae-Powless, a former member of the Sacramento Ballet Company, via online dating while Powless was in Sacramento after the 2019 season. The couple anticipated a long-distance developing relationship, but COVID-19 altered Powless’ return to Europe. 

“It was really nice to meet someone out of my circle and with a different lifestyle than me,” Powless says. “She was immersed in the ballet world when I first met her. It was just really exciting and new. We hit it off from the first time we met.” The couple married in November 2020 in Big Sur.

While returning to the Sacramento area to visit friends, the family lives in Nice, France, an international cycling hub, and in Houston, Texas, where Frances was born and raised and where her parents remain. The couple’s daughter, Charlotte Ann, was born on Sept. 23, 2023 in Houston.

“I really love being a husband and a father now,” says Powless. “I’m more grounded; It’s helped me become a better cyclist. But as far as when I am on the bike, I am pretty locked in. I am not thinking about anything but the race. I can focus on what I have to do, but as soon as the race is over, I check it at home to see how my family’s day has gone. It really sort of helps me recharge for the next day.”

Neilson’s parents moved a few years ago from Roseville to Florida. Shayna Powless also lives in Florida with her new husband, Eli Ankou, a defensive tackle who has played for several National Football League teams.

Now a coach and co-founder of the Dream Catcher Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering Native American youth through sports, Shayna Powless competed alongside her brother in youth sports and has observed his pro development from afar. 

“He’s just gotten smarter and more tactical,” Shayna says. “He’s very much a jack-of-all-trades, an all-arounder. He’s not a pure sprinter or a pure climber. But he can climb very well and he can climb better than he can sprint. He’s definitely learned from mistakes earlier in his career, especially in his first couple of Tour de Frances.” 

In cycling parlance, Neilson is known as a “puncher.” He’s a rider who can maintain a strategic acceleration for several minutes with hopes of developing a sustained gap over the rest of the field or within a small breakaway group.

But in early April at the Dwars door Vlaanderen, a single-day semi-classic in Belgium, Powless had the surprise win of his career. He outsmarted and outsprinted three rivals from the same team for his first 2025 season victory.

“I feel like on any type of terrain, I am a well-balanced rider,” Powless says. “I really enjoy bike racing no matter what the course profile or what kind of rider you need to be.”

–

Subscribe to the Comstock’s newsletter today.