Harry Sweeny
Hometown
Warwick, Queensland, Australia
Date of birth
9 July 1998
Languages
English and a little Italian
Nicknames
Sweendog
Harry Sweeny is excited to broaden his horizons with EF Education-EasyPost. The 25-year-old Australian joins our team in 2024. It will be his fourth season as a pro. Harry is still discovering his limits as a racer. As a U23, he won Il Piccolo Lombardia and has since ridden the Tour de France, where, as a rookie, he finished third on a stage and rode onto the Champs-Élysées in the break, as jets trailed red, white, and blue streaks into the sky overhead. He has raced Paris-Roubaix in the wet and Liège-Bastogne-Liège alongside his friend, the former winner and local legend, Philippe Gilbert. This year, he finished fourth on GC at the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon. Harry believes that his best is yet to come.
He came to cycling late. As a kid growing up in Brisbane, where his family moved when he was a child, he played soccer and rugby and did gymnastics and swam. He took up triathlon as a schoolboy, but focused on cycling when he was a junior and was recovering from a running injury. He started out racing local crits. His athleticism soon shone and he was picked to race the world championships in Richmond, Virginia for the Australian national team.
He moved to Europe to race, first for a small junior team in Belgium, and then for two years with the Australian Institute of Sport squad, which was then based in Italy, before moving back to Belgium for his final year as an U23. Those years opened up new worlds for Harry.
EF Education-EasyPost’s open-minded international character is a big draw for him. On the teams he has raced for in the past, he has often been one of the few foreigners. Our team is made up of riders and staff from dozens of nationalities. Most of them know what it is like to build a life far from home and can help with all of the little difficulties that come with that. Our multicultural make up helps us to expand our outlook and think beyond traditional ways of doing things too.
Harry is a lot more than a bike racer. He is a keen cook and he loves to go camping and hiking with his girlfriend, an environmental scientist, near their adopted home in Andorra. In the winters, he loves to ski. And he is a YouTuber.
Watch out for Harry on RaceTV. He is going to bring an exciting perspective to our team this year.
Questions & Answers
How did you get into cycling?
I used to be a triathlete and had an injury which required more cycling as rehab.
When a race gets tough, what do you tell yourself?
Plenty of worse things to be doing than suffering here right now.
If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go? Why?
Madagascar or the Amazon rain forest for the nature and something completely new.
Think about your best teammate ever. What was the quality in them that you appreciated?
Communicated exactly what they want or need.
What is your favorite word in your native language? What does it mean? What do you like about it?
Strewth - to express surprise or amazement.