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Lara Gillespie Is Building a Skill Set That Shouldn't Exist Yet
Lara Gillespie's rise doesn't fit the usual template: she's a track sprinter who learned to read cobbles, and a Classics rider who still owns the velodrome — a hybrid skill set that normally takes a decade to build.
- 1/8Lara Gillespie's rise doesn't fit the usual template: she's a track sprinter who learned to read cobbles, and a Classics rider who still owns the velodrome — a hybrid skill set that normally takes a decade to build.
- 2/8Start with what got lost. Recurring illness and injury derailed her trajectory through 2024. «Everyone experiences hard times, but once things start going good again, you kind of forget about them,» she said in March 2025, looking back on the stretch that nearly buried the season before it began.
- 3/82024 was the reset: a broken shoulder weeks before Paris 2024 didn't stop her competing, and she still helped Ireland's women's team pursuit squad qualify for the Olympics for the first time, smashing the national record en route.
- 4/8That same year she stepped onto the road side of her hybrid identity. At the Antwerp Port Epic — 135km of cobbles, gravel and industrial crosswinds — she attacked on the penultimate sector and won solo, a finish that needed a sprinter's closing speed and a Classics rider's sense of timing.
- 5/8The WorldTour contract with UAE Team ADQ arrived in June 2024, after two years on their development team. «I wasn't just participating, I was actually able to compete at the highest level,» she said of that debut season, which also brought a bronze in the points race at the 2024 Track Worlds in Ballerup.
- 6/82025 was the track peak: gold in the elimination race at both the UEC European Championships and the UCI Track World Championships in Santiago — the first Irish woman ever to hold either title. Lorena Wiebes beat her in the scratch race at those same Worlds, where Gillespie finished eighth — a reminder her omnium range still has gaps next to a rider built purely for bunch speed.
- 7/8The cobbles keep sharpening too: 18th on her Paris-Roubaix Femmes debut, 8th the following year despite a fall on sector 10 — progress on a course that rewards exactly the bike-handling and power range her track background built.
- 8/8By November 2025 she sat 5th in the global UCI endurance track rankings. Two disciplines that rarely overlap this well in one rider suggest Gillespie isn't finished finding where her power actually tops out.
Sources
Lara GillespieLara Gillespie: Career, Palmares & 2026 Season ProfileLara Gillespie speeds to bronze medal at track world championshipsLara Gillespie climbing the cycling ranks and finding that extra gear despite adversityLara Gillespie named Sportswoman of the Month for FebruaryLara Gillespie crashes on Paris-Roubaix cobbles on way to 8thIreland's Lara Gillespie breaks into top 5 ranked track riders in worldLara Gillespie off to strong start in Omnium at Track World Championships