Tanner Putt has recently signed for UnitedHealthcare for the 2015 and 2016 seasons, meaning he may not have achieved his goal of making it to the WorldTour yet. But he is confident his chance will come.

His chances are bolstered when he has been compared to stars of the sport like Peter Sagan and Greg van Avermaet, who enjoy Classics and one-day races and have fast finishes, just like Putt, the 2013 and 2014 U23 US Road Race winner.

“I look up to riders like Greg van Avermaet, like Peter Sagan, bigger guys, guys with a bigger build that can go uphill — they’re not just sprinters that will sit in and sprint at the end, they can go uphill, they can ride on cobbles, they can sprint, they can do everything, and I look up to riders like that,” he said.

And just like those two riders, Putt enjoys the Tour of Flanders and other “hard man” Classics like Roubaix and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, where Putt was ninth in the 2013 U23 edition.

“That’s my favorite kind of race; it shows who the strongest guys are. I like the harder races, the selective races, that show who has put in the hard work, who’s good, who’s there at the end,” he said.

Despite Putt’s obvious talent, he is not guaranteed a position on a top team in cycling after his two years with the Pro Continental American team. There are less teams in cycling’s top tier, with Euskaltel, Vaconsoleil and Cannondale merging with Garmin, all leaving the port in the last 12 months. And with new rules coming into place for 2017 that narrow down numbers of riders in WorldTour teams from 30 to 22, it is becoming even harder to make it into cycling’s elite level.

“Tanner is legit,” Axel Merckx (Putt’s DS at the Bissell Development team, which he has just left) said. “I’m a little concerned for Tanner, not because of his talent — he definitely has the talent — but the WorldTour situation is so difficult for young riders, and so dramatic … Tanner has been national champ for two years in a row; it’s not a fluke. He’s there because he’s the best, he’s the best in those kinds of races, which means that he can climb, and he’s fast.”

But Putt isn’t worried about that as all he wants to do right now, heading into his first year as a pro, is ride his bike.

“I [race] because I love it, not because I want to make money. I just love riding my bike, I love being able to travel the world and meet new people — all of my really close friends I’ve met through cycling. It’s really just my whole life now,” he said.