An unforgettable week at La Vuelta

Lawyer, cyclist – is there anything Clara can’t do? She had passed the bar exam and was just starting her career as a lawyer when she began to race bikes. This was during the pandemic so she was working remotely which she didn’t enjoy at all. When a continental team based in Canada invited Clara to race with them for the 2022 season, she didn’t hesitate. She turned pro the following year.

But Clara isn’t finished with academia yet. She began a master’s degree in sports law at the same time she started racing. For Clara, both school and cycling offer an outlet from each other and she finds it energizing to have different areas of focus in her life.

Last year, in Clara’s first race as a pro at the Vuelta Extremadura Féminas, she won the queen of the mountains jersey, finished second on the queen stage, and was second on the overall podium. She also raced the Tour de France Femmes and wrapped up the year with a podium at La Périgord Ladies.

The 2024 season will be her second as a professional racer and though she’s still learning the ins and outs of the sport, Clara’s innate climbing talent is undeniable. She has already grown so much in her nascent cycling career, but she is motivated to keep learning and improving.

Clara Koppenburg brings strength, experience, and her ever curious, energetic mind to EF Education-Cannondale. The 28-year-old German has been a pro for a decade and still loves to learn about her sport.

In 2014, she was offered her first professional contract just a few months after she had ridden her first races. Her athletic background helped. When she was a kid, Clara rode horses, played tennis and basketball, and skied, both alpine and cross-country. A talented runner, who raced all the distance events on the track, she studied sports science, which she loved, because she could earn half her credits by sailing or rowing or doing other outdoor activities with her friends from class. Although her dad worked for a professional cycling team, Clara never considered riding bikes herself.

Then, she went on a trip with him to a race in Colorado and realized that cycling was a lot more intense than the off-road jaunts to cafés and ice cream shops that she’d done with him. Inspired, she decided to start training and was soon off to the races.

She just loved pushing herself to her limits. She has since won the Setmana Ciclista Valenciana - Vuelta Comunitat and finished second at the Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardèche. In 2023, she was second at the ReVolta.

Clara is a talented climber, who wants to focus on stage racing for the coming seasons. She lives in her beloved Black Forest, just outside of Basel, and enjoys spending time on the wooded climbs that she knows so well, spending evenings swimming down the Rhine with friends all the way to Basel’s city center, and trying out some difficult new recipes in the kitchen. She is already famous for her vegan banana bread, which is one of her favorite pre-ride snacks.

Kristen sees bike racing as a game of chess, where strategy, patience, and anticipating a competitor’s move make the sport demanding and thrilling. As she begins her fifth season, Kristen will focus on two goals for 2024: making the U.S. Olympic team for the time trial and developing as a GC rider. Given her palmarès, these are lofty but realistic goals. She is a proven time trialist, having won TTs in the Giro d’Italia Women, Tour de Suisse, and the Pan-American Games. She’s also had top ten GC results at Itzulia Women, Women’s Tour, Tour de Suisse, Ladies Tour of Norway.

Growing up in Alaska gave Kristen a deep appreciation for the outdoors and helped her develop a sense of resiliency.

Before she became a cyclist, Kristen worked in finance in Manhattan. She missed team sports – she had been a rower in college – and so she went to a women’s introductory cycling clinic in Central Park. She enjoyed that enough to do a race and once she experienced how much strategy and tactical thinking cycling required, she knew it was the sport for her.

When she’s at home in Girona, Kristen loves to grocery shop at the local farmers markets, letting fresh produce inspire her in the kitchen. She focuses on creating healthy, vegetable-based dishes.

Veronica Ewers burst onto the American cycling scene in the summer of 2021 when she placed third in the U.S. road race national championship. That result earned her a guest spot racing in Europe that fall which in turn led to her first pro contract. In just two professional seasons, Veronica has won the Navarra Elite Classics as well as a stage at the Festival Elsy Jacobs, and podiumed at the Giro dell’Emilia, Emakumeen Nafarroako, and Tre Valli Varesine Women. In 2022, she had a pair of top ten stage finishes at the Tour de France Femmes where she finished ninth on the general classification. Last season she finished in the top five on stages at the Giro d’Italia Women three times and ultimately came in fourth overall.

About to embark on her third season, Veronica loves the longer mountain climbs. She is proud of how far she has come but is determined to keep pushing herself and sees her development as an on-going process.

Veronica’s competitive streak extends beyond bike racing. She often brings Bananagrams, a fast-paced vocabulary game, to races and camps and will play against any teammate or staff member foolish enough to accept her challenge.

She is an avid cook and enjoys experimenting with new recipes and flavors.

Magdeleine was about eight-years-old when she learned to ride a bike without training wheels. That Christmas, she got a new bike and the following summer her dad took her on a nine-day, 1,000 kilometer bikepacking trip. She credits her dad – and that trip – with creating her passion for cycling that has guided her life ever since.

Growing up in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Magdeleine rode with her local club. She raced mountain bikes, cyclocross, and road bikes as a teenager. She also learned how to track stand and to this day cannot resist the urge to track stand when she waits at red lights. As much as she loved racing in Quebec, Magdeleine soon realized that if she wanted to continue to compete and grow as a rider, she needed to go to Europe. She earned a spot with the UCI’s World Cycling Center program where she spent two seasons soaking up every opportunity she encountered.

At just 22-years-old, Magdeleine has already raced big stage races like the Vuelta a España Femenina, the Giro d’Italia Women, and the Tour de France Femmes, and one-day races like Strade Biance and Amstel Gold. She is still learning where her strengths lie but it’s clear that her enthusiasm for cycling will help her go far.

Kim came to cycling via triathlon, a sport she took up as a teenager. When she grew tired of constant running injuries, she made the switch to cycling and has loved every minute of it.

She excels both in time trialing and on long climbs. Kim came to Europe to race for the first time in 2022 as the New Zealand U23 time trial national champion and placed fifth that season in the Mont Ventoux Dénivelé Challenge. Last year she got her first taste of stage racing and finished third on the queen stage at the Tour of Scandinavia.

With climbing and time trialing, Kim appreciates how they are straightforward disciplines. Still new to the sport, racing a TT or a climb means she doesn’t have to worry too much about tactics and can focus on pedaling and pushing herself to her limits, something she loves to do.

In 2024, Kim’s goal is to continue growing as a rider through racing and learning from her teammates.