The 20-year-old started riding when she was just three years old in order to copy her older brother. Now, after spending her entire life riding and racing, Stina is joining her dream team.

“When I started really getting into road cycling, I was looking at EF Pro Cycling and I kept thinking, ‘That’s a cool team,’” Stina said. “And then when I was getting into racing even more, I noticed I really liked how the team raced. The riders are attacking a lot, very aggressive. This gave me a good feeling about the team. It looks like everyone has fun when they’re at the races. I think it's easier to develop and get good results when you’re having fun.”

For Stina, fun is an essential ingredient in life. She hails from a large family and thrives in such an energetic, and perhaps even chaotic, setting.

“I have a big family and everyone has a bit too much energy sometimes,” Stina said. “We are four siblings so with my parents, we are six in the family, plus the dog. I am the third child. All of my siblings live at home. We are close, only seven years apart. It’s a lot of people at home. Even the dog sometimes thinks it’s too many people and you see her walk away to find a place to sleep.”

Stina got her start in mountain bikes and ultimately transitioned to road cycling after attending a mountain bike program as a junior that also had a road component. She loved the rush she got from hitting top speeds on her road bike but what hooked her was the team element of the sport.

“I started to travel with the road national team. That experience was so cool, something new to me, because it was just so much fun to ride as a team. In mountain biking, you race by yourself a lot so in road cycling I got to experience riding as a team which made me want to do it even more. It was just something new for me,” she said.

It’s simple for Stina: a family is a team and a team is a family.

“I’ve learned that cycling is not just a sport,” Stina said. “It’s a lifestyle. It’s not just cycling. You have your friends around it, your family needs to support you, you need to have everything to get it to work. You can’t just ride your bike and think that’s enough. You also need your team around you that can help you do what you want and succeed with your goals. You need a team to even get to the race, to tune the bikes, to prepare the bidons. You need to have a good team around you. It’s not just one person. It’s everything around you.”

General manager of EF Education-Oatly Esra Tromp is eager for Stina to continue her development.

“Stina has a powerful engine and that’s something we want to help her develop and refine,” Esra said. “But it’s important to remember that she’s only 20 years old. It takes time to develop a rider, to allow her to make mistakes and to absorb those lessons. We don’t want to rush this process. Giving Stina the time and space to develop at her individual pace is the best path to ensuring she grows into the polished rider we believe she can become.”

This July, Stina won her first elite national title as the Swedish time trial champion. The TT win backed up her 2024 time trial wins at the Volta a Portugal Femenina and the Tour de Pologne. Despite her time trial successes, Stina is reluctant at this early point in her career to pigeonhole herself as a TT specialist.

“I don’t want to say I’m a time trial rider. I like time trials but then sometimes I don’t,” Stina said. “I’m still learning. I really like the Ardennes classics with a little bit of cobbles and a little bit of climbs so I’d like to be a punchy rider. I can also climb a little bit. It’s hard to say yet what I will become. It’s fun to see how I’m developing. For now, I hope I can be a good rider and a good teammate.”

Stina is keeping an open mind when it comes to her goals and expectations for the upcoming season.

“I hope to help my teammates. In the beginning, I just want to help our team get good results. I’m pretty strong in time trials so maybe I’ll do some chasing or getting into breakaways,” she said.

“I want to race smart and race hard. I want to get some good results. I’d love to do the Ardennes classics and to keep my Swedish national title. I’d really like to do the world championships so I hope I can get selected but I also want to do some of the grand tours like the Vuelta and Giro,” she said.

Welcome to the squad, Stina!