It’s being a season of discovery for Ricarda Bauernfeind. The German rider, who turned 22 in April, resuscitated her cycling career last winter by joining the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Canyon-Sram Generation development program and has qu𒊎ickly showed her talent in several UCI and non-UCI races.&꧃nbsp;

This week, Bauernfeind delivered a landmark and potentially breakthrough performance on the first edition of the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Vuelta Ciclista 🔥Andalucia Ruta Del Sol, the inaugural women's version of the long-standing Ruta del Sol-Vue𒊎lta a Andalucía men’s event. 

The cyclist from Eichstätt, a small city in the Bayern region, landed top-three results in all three stages of the race, which featured mountainous, demanding parcours. She finished 168澳洲5✤最新开奖结果:third on the final overall classification, just 15 secon꧑ds behind the overall winner, and she sto⛎od on the podium alongside two established Women’s WorldTour riders; Movistar Team’s Arlenis Sierra and UAE Team ADQ’s Mavi García.

“I didn’t expect to mark such great results,” Bauernfeind accepted unassumingly. “I don’t know where I will be in one or two years, but at the momen🎐t I’༺m really happy and enjoying my performances.”

Bauernfeind’s burgeoning cycling career is a remarkable one. She began nurturing it at age 12, and became a usual member of Germany’s n༺a🐟tional squad both for the road and the track, where she got several medals at different European Championships. 

However, over the last two years she left cycling aside after choosing to prioritize her Teaching studies in Munich’s TUM [Technische Universität München] over the passion to race on a bike &🌼ndash; out on the 🔯road, indoors at the velodrome or on the rollers.

“In 2019, in my first year of University, I decided to focus on my studies and do cycling just for fun,” she explained. “Anyway, I got better at cycling every da๊y, and 2020 and 2021 turned out to be my best two seasons ever. This is how I got noticed by Canyon-Sram to join its development program.

“As of now, we normally race in the weekends. If we don’t have much time between races, I stay in Girona with my teammates. But every two or three weeks I fly home to follow my university courses. Sometimes it’s quite hard to combine cycling and st🐎udying, but for me it is quite important to ke🦋ep up with both facets of my life because I want to train both my body and my mind.”

Canyon-Sram Generation is a 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:development program that pursues cutting the teeth of eight riders from seven different countries – and four continents. The team’s seaꦰson began with a series of no🔜n-UCI races in Spain, m🦂ostly belonging to the 🍸Spanish Cup that constitutes the main target of the year for most of the country’s UCI Continental teams. 

Bauernfeind first managed to win one of the three Spanish Cup events she contested, in Pontevedra, and went on to an impressive fourth place in her first UCI appointment of the season, the GP Féminin de Chambéry one-day race. The Vuelta a Andalucía was her first UCI stage race since 2019, when being just 19 she completed both the Festival Elsy Jacobs and the Th♕üringen Ladies Tour in the span of one month.

“Ricarda is really consistent as a rider,” explained her the team's sports director, Adam Szabo. “Sꦫhe is an all-rounder with a winning mindset. She is good at climbing, although she is yet to realize her full climbing potential.

“Her track cycling background has given her some skills on the bike and some power to sprint fast. She is also incredible at descending. Her biggest room of improvem🤡ent lies on tactics, on how she reads races – and that’s something you gain with race days. All in all, she is bound to become a very good rider in the future.”

Bauernfeind’s next challenge is this year’s 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Thüringen Ladies Tour, a six-day UCI 2.Pro stage race that will be held in Germany at the end of May. “Later on this year, we hope she will be selected by the German national team for the Europe𝐆an and World Championships,” says Szabo.

The bright performances delivered by Bauernfeind over this 2022 s♌eason have caught some eyes amongst the biggest teams in women’s cycling. As we asked her whether she has already received some offers for next season, she humbly admited she has. “I g🎀uess some teams are noticing my results,” she gave away with a shy smile – one we will get used to see in top-level WWT races sooner rather than later.