There isn’t a doubt that Lidl-Trek are as soon as once more one of many key groups to observe on the Girls’s Cadel Evans Nice Ocean Street Race, as they hunt for that first victory on the one-day Girls’s WorldTour race with a packed hand with an thrilling new card added into the combination in 2025, Niamh Fisher-Black.
The rider from New Zealand hasn’t but raced the occasion, the closest factor she has to a house one-day WorldTour occasion, largely as a result of she has spent the previous 4 years with SD Worx – a crew that doesn’t enterprise out to the Australian WorldTour openers in January.
Fisher-Black‘s shift to Lidl-Trek has opened the door to the Australian summer season racing and the rider is now wanting ahead to her first alternative to tackle the 142.4km occasion which sweeps out from Geelong by way of the coast and into rolling countryside earlier than tackling the brief however steep climb of Challambra Crescent twice within the Geelong ending circuit.
“I’ve solely ever watched on TV, however I’ve seen the way in which it is raced – it is steep and punchy hills, which usually I actually like and it ought to swimsuit me,” Fisher-Black instructed Cyclingnews in Adelaide final week after racing the Santos Tour Down Beneath.
It’s the kind of terrain the place she has definitely delivered loads of proof of her prowess, from Giro d’Italia stage podiums to a Tour de Suisse stage win and the very first U23 ladies’s world highway title in Wollongong in 2023.
Fisher-Black is coming into the occasion from a Tour Down Beneath which didn’t essentially ship on all of the groups hopes however definitely wasn’t a interval of racing with out some exhibits of power – Fisher-Black ending twelfth general whereas Amanda Spratt was seventh.
“For positive, I missed some race legs this time of 12 months, however now I’ve the [Tour Down Under] within the financial institution,” stated Fisher-Black who has additionally since then added Sunday’s 1.Professional ranked Schwalbe Girls’s One Day Traditional and Wednesday’s 1.1 ranked Surf Coast Traditional.
“We will see if we are able to open one thing up however I believe it is also a massively tactical race, and I’ve a pleasant crew behind me.”
Fisher-Black shall be racing alongside skilled palms on the occasion like Lauretta Hanson and Spratt, who shouldn’t be solely a fount of data but additionally an alternate card. The 37 12 months outdated who received the race in 2016 – whereas racing with the Australian crew now referred to as Liv-AlUla-Jayco – has additionally been on the rostrum in her final three begins plus has put clear proof of her type on show on the Tour Down Beneath. Add to that the crew have additionally acquired a lift from the in-form Clara Copponi’s dash victory on the Schwalbe Girls’s One Day Traditional.
Meaning whereas the ladies’s Cadel Evans Nice Ocean Street Race typically throws up unpredictable outcomes – with final 12 months’s shock winner being Rosita Reijnhout (Visma-Lease a Bike) – given that there’s terrain that fits, a strong crew and extra race legs within the day Fisher-Black heads towards the race with each cause to hope.
“I am excited for it, optimistic as effectively,” concluded Fisher-Black.
Hold watching Cyclingnews for extra from the interview in Adelaide with Fisher-Black, with a function coming quickly.
