Final yr the promising younger ARA-Skip Capital rider from Melbourne, Lucinda Stewart, was sitting on the sidelines with a damaged collarbone because the all-important summer time of biking started to unfold.
All her onerous work in preparation appeared for nought as key objectives just like the AusCycling Street Nationwide Championships and Tour Down Below slipped by her fingers. Nevertheless, it was nonetheless a season to recollect as a result of, as irritating as that begin to the yr could have been, Stewart was spurred on quite than deflated.
“It was a little bit of a hurdle to beat,” Stewart instructed Cyclingnews in Melbourne of her early season-ruining coaching crash in 2024. “I actually needed to refocus my objectives.
I spent a month on the ergo and though I missed out on the Australian summer time biking, I feel it actually simply lit a hearth inside me and simply made me wish to work even more durable.”
The onerous work paid off and the season that began with catastrophe quickly proved a pivotal profession constructing block for the 20-year-old who’s now signed to the Liv AlUla Jayco Continental improvement group, together with her fortunes shortly taking a flip as soon as her damage hiatus was over.
Stewart got here again to racing in 2024 on the most gruelling of occasions, the 160km Lochard Power Warrnambool Girls’s Biking Basic, and he or she did it with kind that did way over simply get her by the longest ladies’s occasion on the home nationwide highway collection calendar however helped manoeuvre her to the very prime step of the rostrum on the prestigious occasion.
“To get the win within the Warrny, particularly being such an extended race, it was that little bit of confidence that I wanted going into the season,” Stewart stated on the sidelines of the launch of the 2025 occasion in December. “I used to be heading over to Europe understanding that each one the onerous work had fallen into place.”
The European races flowed from April by to August of 2024, and Stewart shortly added a world podium to her outcomes tally with a 3rd place on the lumpy 1.2 ranked Région Pays de la Loire Tour Féminin.
“I used to be actually proud of that,” stated Stewart, who additionally went on to safe a spot within the prime of the general 20 general and fourth within the youth classification at her first Girls’s WorldTour degree European race, the RideLondon Classique.
“I form of wasn’t even anticipating outcomes and that wasn’t even actually the main focus going into it –
I simply needed to construct on the earlier season and give attention to the method. The outcomes have been simply the additional reward.”
Importantly the progress, and the seen indicators of it, additionally helped Stewart safe her subsequent step on the pathway towards the final word aim, a spot within the Girls’s WorldTour. Meaning the Melbourne bicycle owner is now setting off into this new season with the Liv AlUla Jayco Continental improvement focussed group after signing a two-year contract with the squad.
“I am nonetheless within the underneath 23 class and that is actually what I want – a extremely supportive atmosphere with out that immense stress of a giant WorldTour group,” stated Stewart. “I’m actually excited for brand spanking new alternatives, new racing and I really feel like I’ve heaps to be taught.”
Stewart will probably be making the transfer to Europe this month and getting settled in Girona so whereas she’ll as soon as once more miss a lot of the early season Australian racing, together with a defence of her Warrnambool Girls’s Biking Basic title in February. Nonetheless, it is for the precise causes this time and there’ll not less than be time to squeeze within the AusCycling Street Nationwide Championships earlier than she leaves.
There had, nonetheless, been a second which sparked concern it could be one other powerful begin to the season and that was when she crashed on the Tour of Brilliant late November however thankfully it was not sufficient to derail her early season plans as soon as once more. Stewart was in a position to rebound shortly after the stage 1 fall which left her nursing some bruised and fractured ribs.
“I had, form of per week off after which I used to be in a position to get on an ergo and now I am out coaching on the highway,” stated Stewart in mid-December, including with fun that there was nothing like “a little bit of compelled relaxation”. “However yeah, all methods go for the Street Nationals in January.”
After racing the criterium on Friday and mixed U23/Elite ladies’s highway race on Sunday Stewart will probably be heading straight to Europe for a January coaching camp together with her new group. It’s then a European racing begin in Spain in February for the rider who leans towards the Classics however is fast to stress that she remains to be within the strategy of discovering precisely the place she suits.
“If I come away from the season having made one other step in the precise path, feeling proud of the group and with the atmosphere then I feel that’s a giant win for me,” stated Stewart.
