Last 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 season of biking started to unfold.
All her exhausting work in preparation appeared for nought as key objectives just like the AusCycling Road National Championships and Tour Down Under slipped by means of her fingers. However, 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 moderately than deflated.
“It was a little bit of a hurdle to beat,” Stewart advised 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 season biking, I feel it actually simply lit a hearth inside me and simply made me wish to work even more durable.”
The exhausting 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 workforce, 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 Energy Warrnambool Women’s Cycling Classic, and he or she did it with type that did way over simply get her by means of the longest girls’s occasion on the home nationwide street collection calendar however helped manoeuvre her to the very high 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 mentioned on the sidelines of the launch of the 2025 occasion in December. “I used to be heading over to Europe realizing that each one the exhausting work had fallen into place.”
The European races flowed from April by means of 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,” mentioned Stewart, who additionally went on to safe a spot within the high of the general 20 total and fourth within the youth classification at her first Women’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 last word aim, a spot within the Women’s WorldTour. That means the Melbourne bicycle owner is now setting off into this new season with the Liv AlUla Jayco Continental improvement focussed workforce after signing a two-year contract with the squad.
“I’m nonetheless within the beneath 23 class and that is actually what I want – a extremely supportive setting with out that immense stress of a giant WorldTour workforce,” mentioned 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 likely 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 Women’s Cycling Classic title in February. Still, it is for the proper causes this time and there’ll not less than be time to squeeze within the AusCycling Road National Championships earlier than she leaves.
There had, nonetheless, been a second which sparked concern it might be one other robust begin to the season and that was when she crashed on the Tour of Bright late November however fortuitously it was not sufficient to derail her early season plans as soon as once more. Stewart was capable of 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 capable of get on an ergo and now I’m out coaching on the street,” mentioned Stewart in mid-December, including with amusing that there was nothing like “a little bit of compelled relaxation”. “But yeah, all techniques go for the Road Nationals in January.”
After racing the criterium on Friday and mixed U23/Elite girls’s street race on Sunday Stewart will likely be heading straight to Europe for a January coaching camp together with her new workforce. It is then a European racing begin in Spain in February for the rider who leans towards the Classics however is fast to stress that she continues to be within the strategy of discovering precisely the place she matches.
“If I come away from the season having made one other step in the proper path, feeling proud of the workforce and with the setting then I feel that’s a giant win for me,” mentioned Stewart.
