Catching up with rising racing star Cat Ferguson

I am feeling really privileged to be able to put a number on tomorrow: Movistar rider looks forward to Milan-Sanremo Donne and talks about her new life

I caught up with Movistar’s rising star, Cat Ferguson yesterday, on the eve of the Milan-Sanremo Donne. She was really looking forward to the race. Here’s what she had to say:

Being here in Genoa for the Sanremo is amazing! It’s such a beautiful location to have a race. The famous climbs – Cipressa and the Poggio are definitely as challenging as they were when I’ve watched the men’s race on TV over the years. 

It’s not just in the ascent you gain, but the descents are technically really challenging and I think tomorrow it’s going to rain also so I think that adds another element of technicality. so I think it’s definitely going to be an interesting race as it always is in the men’s and so now finally we have the women’s version, so I’m super-excited and feeling really lucky to be able to race tomorrow.

I think, technically I’m not amazing when you look at me in a cyclocross race but in a road race I’m okay in the wet, so I think the descents tomorrow will play to my strengths. I’m not a climber so I think for me I can a bit on the descents, even if it’s in terms of positioning before the climbs. So it’s definitely something I look forward to tomorrow.

Being from Yorkshire definitely helps in bad weather. I prefer a race to be nice and sunny and warm just because it’s nicer and there’s less things that can go wrong but I definitely know that when it does rain also it does play to my strengths and it can really demoralise my competition and for me it does not really do that and looking back at my performances I have actually had some of my best results in horrible weather and I think maybe I am more suited to when it is harder in every element of the race – the weather, the physical aspect. 

Growing up in Yorkshire has made me quite gritty and determined no matter the weather to always do my best and show my best. So if it rains it makes it feel much more like a fight tomorrow I think, to add to the story of the Sanremo. So it’s going to be such an exciting day.

Compared with the roads in Yorkshire the climbs in the Sanremo are not actually as steep as I thought they would be. The climbs where I’m from are normally a bit steeper – more gradient. But then after doing 100/150km definitely any climbs are challenging for me especially as I am definitely not a climber. But the roads do remind me of home because it’s very much sort of rolling up and down all the time and that’s what you get in Yorkshire. It’s not just one big climb or anything. So I think they suit me and I can compare them to what I get back home.

When I’m back home my favourite loop is one that goes near Malham Cove. There are some lovely roads around there and near Pen y Gent. So if I’ve got an endurance zone 2 ride that’s my favourite place to go. It’s not great if I have efforts or anything just because the climbs are so steep there’s no point doing your efforts because you have to do an effort just to get up the climb itself.

I would say the climbs back home are a similar sort of length to the 4km and 3km in Cipressa and Poggio, so definitely in terms of the distance of the climbs, it’s sort of what I’ve been used to.

I was really really surprised at the outcome at Trofeo Alfredo Binda race in many ways [Cat finished in the third place in what was her first ever WorldTour race]. It was never ever anywhere near the outcome I expected to happen. It was a total shock. During the race itself I was really struggling with many things, from just the basics of fuelling to positioning, I wasn’t believing in myself, not communicating with the team, everything like that. 

If you’d told me at that moment I was going to come third I wouldn’t have believed you. So I think to finish it off the way it did was incredible and it has definitely given me some confidence I think the race taught me a lot – not the way I thought it would teach me. The result doesn’t change anything going forwards as I still want to focus on my development rather than on results.

Nobody else is putting pressure on me to get these results. Of course it’s nice to be up there for myself, but I’m only 18 and I still feel really privileged just to be able to race like Milan-Sanremo, so for me the most important thing is doing my job for the team and proving to my team-mates that I’m here to help them and help them get their results first.

I joined Movistar as a stagiaire [in 2024] and I feel really lucky to have been able to do a couple of races as a stagiaire. It’s given me a bit of a head start for this year which has meant that I can feel relaxed when I do the WorldTour races – my first races. This was especially helpful after doing cyclocross and needing to have time off and more time to train. It’s meant that I could just come and hit the biggest races straight away after gaining a little bit of experience. I do feel really lucky to be on the Movistar team.

The energy and the atmosphere we have in the team is really lovely. I think the addition of Marlen [Reusser] and having Liane [Lippert] as sort of our leaders and then having the younger riders like me and Carys [Lloyd] who has also just joined the team is a really really nice balance and the contrast between the young and the old, experience and everything is just really something special and do feel like this year we are sort of a new team with a new approach and a really positive mindset.

I think lots of the girls on the team have acted in a sort of sisterly or motherly role to me which is so lovely and I really do have a lot to learn, even just from things like weighing all my food and learning how to put a radio on. They really have accepted me and welcomed me and found me not to be the annoying little 18-year old asking loads of questions and everything!

I do feel really lucky to be surrounded by the girls and Claire Steels has been like a mum to me on the team. She’s British as well, so it’s lovely to have that in common with her. Again it feels definitely like a bit of a family which is super-nice. When I was on the junior team my dad actually ran it, so I’ve been used to family environments on teams. So to be able to carry that on and have that atmosphere and feeling in a WorldTour team I think is really special.

I said good bye to my parents and my dog and everything and live in Andorra now. I’ve been there for three weeks now, and am really really loving it despite the weather not actually being great right now. I am really loving the independent life.

I live on my own but other team-mates and other girls live nearby so it’s nice to be able to train with others.

I’m not used to having so much time for training because before I would be at school and then going to training. But now I just train. So I do have a lot of time at the moment. So I am spending more time trying to learn Spanish, having online lessons with a tutor. I’m hoping by the end of the year I’ll be able to speak it better, though as a typical British person, I’m very very much not naturally good at languages so it’s taking quite a lot of work!

There’s a real buzz around the race. Our team is staying in a hotel where there are quite a few other teams. It just feels quite special as it’s the first time for me doing a monument race, but it also feels strange because it’s the first time for everyone else doing this race. I am lucky to join women’s cycling at this time. It’s the best women’s cycling has ever been – which in some way is a little bit sad that it’s taken this long for us to have almost equal opportunities as the men’s peloton. But then again I feel extremely privileged to be able to join at this time when there is so much opportunity.

I don’t expect to be the protected rider in the race - I’ll find out at the team meeting tonight. I expect my job more to be about positioning the team and maybe going with any of the main attacks in the race I think.

A good outcome for me is to feel like the team is happy with me and how I’ve done my job. It might sound like a bit of a strange goal, but it’s what this year is about for me. It’s about learning and carrying out the job the team gives me to the best of my ability. If that’s just getting a bottle from the feed or getting a bottle from the car or positioning someone into a climb.

That’s what I’m going to commit to tomorrow – whatever they tell me to do. So the goal is very qualitative tomorrow. It’ll be about whether I feel I’ve completed my job well and I’ve taken that extra step in learning and developing. This can hopefully help my career in a couple of years when I will hopefully change focus to be a more results based rider.

So I am feeling really privileged to be able to put a number on tomorrow. So it will be a race to remember forever despite how the race goes.

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Women's Tour de France delivers drama and new stars

Tour de France Femmes peloton on the stage to Albi (photo: Thomas Maheux)

Following the successful staging of the reborn Tour de France Femmes in 2022, this year's edition of the event, sponsored by Zwift didn't fail to disappoint.

Last year's women's Tour de France Femmes began to the fanfare of the women racing Stage 1 on the Champs Elysees a few hours before the men's concluding stage of their Tour de France. The women then contested their remaining stages of their Tour in the East of France, in the Alsace/Vosges area with an exciting finale on the Superplanche des Belles Filles.

I must admit that when I saw that this year's stage would be starting from Clermont Ferrand, it seemed a slight downer compared with the iconic landmarks of central Paris. Granted, the event was in the shadow of the Puy de Dome, but the famous road up the extinct volcano was not included in the women's race itinerary.

However, the race more than made up for it with the final stages snaking through the Pyrenees, over the col d'Aspin and the col du Tourmalet, culminating in a time trial on undulating roads around Pau. 

Lotte Kopecky (photo: Getty Sport)

What also makes the race are the riders. It was no surprise to see women from the mighty SD Worx team occupying the upper echelons of the General Classification rankings, but it wasn't totally one-way traffic for the Netherlands-registered team flush with National, European and former World Champions. This made the overall racing exciting and introduced an element of suspense - an important ingredient for an engaging sports competition.

Where the men's Tour de France solicited a guessing game about whether Tadej Pogacar or Jonas Vingegaard would come out on top, the women's race led to debates around whether it would be Movistar's Annemiek Van Vleuten who would replicate her triple Grand Tour victories from last year (she had already won the women's Vuelta a Espana, and Giro Donne) or whether Demi Vollering would stop her compatriot in her ascendancy.  

After Vollering drew first blood by thanks to the stage one victory by Belgian National Champion Lotte Kopecky, allowing her SD Worx team to seize the maillot jaune (yellow jersey) and keep it thanks to further stage victories from Lorena Wiebes (stage 3) and Marlen Reusser (stage 8). However the team was punished with setbacks which could have toppled its aspirations. In reality, these problems were self-inflicted and would have been associated more with a small newbie team, than with a dominant World Tour Team led by some of the most experienced riders and sports directors in the women's peloton.

On Stage 4 from Cahors to Rodez, won by a breakaway rider Yara Kastelijn (Fenix-Deceuninck), Vollering crossed the finish line in a celebratory mood, in second place after bursting forward from her group. She had not realised there was another rider further up the road who had won the stage - despite her having radio communication with her team mates and sports director, and knowing that there had been a breakaway which had as much as 10 minutes time advantage over the GC chasing group at one point.  

The following day, during Stage 5, SD Worx effected a bike change for Vollering when she got a puncture. Looking at the TV pictures, the bike change must have been the slowest change in the history of bike racing! Unsurprisingly the rider lost a significant amount of time on the peloton including her GC contender rivals, so she slipstreamed off her team car in order to be paced back to the bunch. 

It wasn't plain sailing for SD Worx (photo: Thomas Maheux)

The only problem was her sports director drove down the wrong side of the road, dangerously overtaking, and potentially putting other participants in danger. 

After an initial reprimand from the race commissaire during the race for excessive slipstreaming and dangerous overtaking, sports director Danny Stam received a 200CHF fine and Vollering received a 100CHF fine. Stam was later expelled from the race after dismissing the UCI commissaires' ruling as ridiculous. 

While SD Worx had the means to pay the fine and co-sports director Anna van der Breggen could still manage matters during the race, the real bite came when Vollering received a 20-second time penalty which relegated her from second to seventh place in the GC, and 12 seconds behind Van Vleuten. This was in addition to the double whammy of seeing Movistar's Emma Norsgaard (Jorgensen) sprint to win Stage 6 into Blagnac ahead of yellow jersey wearer, Kopecky on the eve of the decisive weekend for the race.

During the decisive penultimate stage from Lannemezan to Tourmalet, Van Vleuten and Vollering had a face-off on the lower slopes of the giant of the Pyrenees. There was no love lost between these two Dutch girls - even less so since last year's Tour de France Femmes, as well as this year's Vuelta a Espana when Vollering believed Van Vleuten had been unsporting en route to her historic win. [Van Vleuten allegedly attacked while Vollering, who was in the lead, took a loo break.]

Such stand-offs can actually be advantageous to others, as Canyon SRAM's Kasia Niewiadoma found when she launched her own attack off the front, staying away until shortly before the finish line when eventual winner Vollering caught her, though the Pole still stayed ahead of Van Vleuten by more than half-a-minute. Deservedly Niewiadoma was awarded the polka dot jersey for the Queen of the Mountains.

An emotional Demi Vollering on realising she's won the Tour de France Femmes (Thomas Maheux)

What we learned during this Tour de France Femmes was that contrary to fellow competitor Elisa Longo Borghini who once described Van Vleuten as an alien, the all-powerful Movistar rider is human. She began to show signs of weakness and fatigue as the route passed through the mountain villages of St Marie de Campan, and La Mongie, and the World Champion was unable to match Vollering's attack through the mist in the Hautes Pyrenees as she crossed the finish line over two and a half minutes ahead of Van Vleuten as the new wearer of the yellow jersey. 

Similarly, at the closing time trial, where Van Vleuten has traditionally prevailed, she was also caught wanting, when she finished in 14th place, over 1 minute 40 seconds behind Reusser.

So it wasn't to be for Vleuty, who finished in fourth place in the GC almost four minutes behind the victorious Vollering. Meanwhile the SD Worx camp enjoyed huge celebrations following Reusser's victory in the time trial, Lotte Kopecky's green jersey, and Vollering's maiden yellow jersey for her overall win at the Tour de France Femmes.

As well as the battle between these two arch-rivals, this Tour de France Femmes was also spiced up by young guns going for it - new riders, young riders, smaller teams, throwing themselves out there and trying their chances for a stage win.

A crash-filled Stage 2 saw Lianne Lippert take flight with a maiden victory. The young team-mate of Van Vleuten finished ahead of Kopecky who punctured before the finish line after being led out by Vollering. Stage 3 saw the dreams of Julie Van de Velde of the young team Fenix-Deceuninck crushed as she was caught agonisingly close to the finish line after launching a long breakaway. Her cyclocrosser team-mate Kastelijn (who eventually won the overall combativity prize) finished the business by winning Stage 4 into Rodez. 

Ricarda Bauernfeind, new kid on the block (Thomas Maheux)

In spectacular style Ricarda Bauernfeind, a recent arrival at Canyon-SRAM having been in the development structure Canyon-Generation took the biggest win of her short career in stage 5 (from Onet-le-Chateau to Albi) and at age 23 years and three months she became the youngest winner of a TDFF stage.

Additionally, the likes of Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio, racing for the newly formed AG Insurance-Soudal-Quick-Step team, whose sport director is former racer Jolien d'Hoore, also put time into Van Vleuten on the slopes of the Tourmalet. Kopecky who is known as a sprinter and also a handy track cyclist emerged as the Wout Van Aert of women's racing as she also put in a sterling ride in the mountains.

So all in all, the Tour de France Femmes this year turned out to be an engaging race, with interesting stories and talking points, excitement, intrigue, and new stars. 

As much as I like Van Vleuten and it would have been a good note on which the 40-year old could close out career, doing the triple, I must say that I am happy that there were a few twists and turns in the competition. Although SD Worx dominated in the rankings, we certainly saw fearless challenges from riders across the spectrum of age, experience, and team strength.

                              Jersey winners: L-R: Cedrine Kerbaol, Kasia Niewiadoma, Demi Vollering,
Lotte Kopecky (photo: Thomas Maheux) 

Next year's Tour de France Femmes with Zwift will start in the Netherlands, and we will find out the full itinerary in October. I look forward to seeing what 2024 will bring.

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Daily photo - 19: Speaking Italian again...to Tatiana Guderzo

Tatiana Guderzo with her bronze medal at the Innsbruck World Championships last year

My foreign language skills have been put to good use in recent times, notably when doing cycle journalism and interviewing cycle racers when I interviewed cycle racing legend Jeannie Longo in French, and Movistar's Sheyla Gutierrez in Spanish. I have also interviewed people in Italian too.

Earlier this year I spoke to Marta Bastianelli at the Tour of Flanders cycle race after her victory in this cobble-stoned classic. In June I also spoke to an Italian top racer from the 1980s, Maria Canins about her cycle racing and her success during her heyday. Today I spoke to BePink's Tatiana Guderzo, the 2009 World Road Race Champion who is on her way to the championships in Yorkshire.

Speaking to all of these women was very pleasant, and I feel that making an effort to speak in their language goes some way towards helping relations and also having them open up more in our conversations. I had been a little bit nervous beforehand, but I think watching episodes of Un Posto Al Sole and following the latest love triangle of Serena, Leonardo and Filippo has been very helpful!

Tatiana came across as quite vibrant and dynamic, and was very positive about the upcoming championships. Everyone has been talking about the Dutch cycling team being the strongest. It is true that they have some very strong riders and Tatiana acknowledged that too, but she is also sure that she and her Italian team will fear no one. For the 2018 bronze medallist, it is not always the strongest team that wins. I wish her and team Italia all the best.


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