Lotta has been racing bikes on the world’s biggest stage for nearly a decade. She has 26 professional wins to her name, including Gent-Wevelgem and Dwars Door Vlaanderen. She has won Finland’s elite road and time trial national championships a combined dozen times in her career. It’s safe to say that Lotta is an experienced racer.

She is a sprinter who excels in one day races, like the cobbled classics. Her ability to both ride aggressively and read a race make her a formidable opponent. The expertise she has developed over the years will be invaluable to her teammates.

Lotta stepped away from the professional peloton in 2022 when her son was born but she knew she wasn’t finished with the sport and eagerly returned to bike racing in 2023. In 2024, Lotta will focus first on the spring classics and then will target the Tour de France Femmes.

Lotta’s love of cycling and sports in general runs deep. She imagines that if she had not become a professional racer, she would be a sports teacher in Finland. On top of racing and training, she is currently studying to be a physiotherapist.

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 is 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 earned her first pro victory earlier this year when she won a mountain stage at the Giro d'Italia Women. She has already grown so much in her nascent cycling career, but she is motivated to keep learning and improving.

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.

From Harvard to Wall Street to double Olympic Gold, Kristen Faulkner’s path has been anything but conventional. But one thing is a constant – her rigorous pursuit of excellence.

Before she became a cyclist, the double Olympic gold medalist and US road-race champion worked in finance in Manhattan. Kristen earned her bachelor’s degree in computer science at Harvard, where she competed on the university rowing team. She finished second in the world junior rowing championships, before moving to New York City to pursue her career with a venture capital firm.

She missed team sports, 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.

The 31-year-old Alaskan has always dreamed big. Ever since she was a little girl, Kristen had wanted to compete in the Olympic Games.

Growing up in Alaska gave her a deep appreciation for the outdoors and sports. She spent her childhood exploring the woods near her home and now spends her off seasons hiking and exploring new places, most recently Peru. At her European base in Girona, Spain, Kristen likes to grocery shop at the local farmers markets, letting fresh produce inspire her in the kitchen. She loves creating healthy, vegetable-based dishes. A lifelong learner, she always has a couple of books on the go.

Her childhood helped her develop a sense of resiliency too. Kristen’s parents ran a restaurant and hotel in her hometown and she was always inspired by their work ethic.

That is what kept her going when she was not at first selected to represent the USA in the Olympic road race for the Paris Games. Kristen kept her medal dreams alive by focusing on the team pursuit on the track, a new discipline for her, which she had just taken up.

Although she had won five road races already this season, including a grand tour stage at the Vuelta España Femenina and the US national title, Kristen had no control over the Olympic selection criteria. She was first reserve for the road race. She kept training hard and never gave up hope.

When a spot in the team opened up, Kristen seized her chance. She sees bike racing as a game of chess, where strategy, patience, and anticipating a competitor’s move make the sport demanding and thrilling. On the streets of Paris, she rode a smart, tactical race, biding her time on the circuit up and around Montmartre, before making a big effort to close to the leaders with just over three kilometers to go. Knowing that her rivals at the front of the race might hesitate in the hope that the other would chase, Kristen attacked and rode solo to the finish under the Eiffel Tower to win her gold medal.

With hard work and intelligence, she had made her childhood dream come true. Kristen was a gold medalist at the Olympic Games. She celebrated with her family and then turned her attention back to the track and her pursuit of excellence.

A few days later, Kristen won her second Olympic gold medal with her teammates in the team pursuit.

Swiss road-race champion Noemi Rüegg came to bike racing through her family. At first, her goal was simply to keep up with her brother who is five years older than her. Their dad was involved with a local cycling club and Noemi slowly grew more and more curious. When she was 13, she finished her first cyclocross race and was hooked.

She turned professional on the road as a 19-year-old, leaving her full-time job caring for disabled people in a home. She is a two-time Under-23 Swiss time trial national champion but her heart belongs to the classics. Noemi loves a punchy course, the more chaotic, the better. She is not afraid to be aggressive in the peloton and loves the excitement and energy of a hectic race.

Noemi is only 22 and still discovering her path in the sport. In 2024, she will focus on learning from races and her teammates. Her ultimate goals are to podium in one of the classics and to develop as a stage racer.