Laurence Pithie and Finn Fisher-Black will begin their time at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe collectively on the Tour Down Under in January, after becoming a member of from Groupama-FDJ and UAE Team Emirates respectively within the Summer.
The Kiwi pair have raced beforehand as teammates on the house nation’s squad on the New Zealand Cycle Classic stage race again in 2021, nevertheless, being simply seven months aside in age, they’ve raced extra incessantly as rivals.
“We’ve most likely identified one another since we have been 13, 14, years previous, I reckon,” Fisher-Black instructed Cyclingnews and The Cycling Podcast, talking alongside Pithie at their workforce’s December coaching camp in Mallorca.
“We sort of grew up racing collectively. I bear in mind again in Paris-Nice this 12 months, we have been already sort of throwing up concepts that it will be good to be racing on the identical workforce subsequent 12 months, and a few months later, we discovered it will be going forward.”
Both natives of New Zealand’s south island, the pair know one another effectively from the close-knit racing group again house, albeit, with Fisher-Black usually popping out on high in response to the narrowly youthful rider Pithie.
“We’re from a 5 or six-hour drive aside. But in New Zealand, everybody races towards one another as a result of it is not such a giant group there. We grew up doing nationals all collectively and junior excursions across the nation,” mentioned Fisher-Black.
“We’re each from the South Island so yeah, it is fairly shut. Now we dwell in the identical place, again in Christchurch, so we’ll do some coaching collectively after we’re again in New Zealand. Growing up collectively it was all the time good to race with Finn. But additionally not good as a result of he’d all the time smoke me,” mentioned Pithie with a smile.
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“We have been all the time aggressive on the bike, all the time buddies after we hopped off. I all the time seemed ahead to when Finn left the age group and I may have my time to shine once more.”
They’ve had differing journeys into the WorldTour from racing in New Zealand, nevertheless, they now discover themselves at one of many sport’s ‘tremendous groups’ after important funding from Red Bull into Ralph Denk’s challenge.
After Pithie’s breakthrough 12 months in 2024, when he confirmed himself to be a possible Classics star of the long run with a spotlight seventh-place end at Paris-Roubaix, his season will revolve primarily across the bergs and hellingen of Flanders after kicking issues off in Australia.
“I’ll begin on the [Tour] Down Under. Then I’ll do the Surf Coast basic and Cadel’s to attempt to defend the title there,” mentioned Pithie, who took his first WorldTour win again in January on the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.
“Then I’ll transfer on to nationwide champs to do the TT and street race. Then again to Europe to do [Milan]-San Remo and into all of the Flemish Classics.”
For Fisher-Black, who missed out on Grand Tour racing with UAE in 2024 regardless of impressing within the early season Middle-East races, he’ll goal GC on the Tour Down Under to kick off the brand new 12 months, earlier than moving into the hilly Classics and extra stage racing.
“My greatest targets for the primary a part of the season is the Tour Down Under and the Ardennes,” he mentioned. “Then Basque and Romandie, after which to be in a Grand Tour within the second half of the 12 months. Whether it is the Tour or the Vuelta, it is not confirmed but, however hopefully, we’ll be at certainly one of them.”
At 22 and 23 years previous, the New Zealand pair nonetheless has an abundance of potential to unlock and will probably be hoping that is available in their time at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.