After several years competing in triathlon and duathlon, Lauren Dickson decided to try her hand at road racing for the first time in April 2024. Just over a year later, the Scot is making a name for herself and attracting offers from several top teams.
This week, Dickson has been racing the Tour of Britain Women for the Handsling Alba Development Road Team, one of the smallest teams in the race. An unlucky puncture on the first day left her out of the General Classification picture, but she excelled in the difficult second and third stages.
“It's been really exciting. I didn't really know what to expect at the start, coming into a WorldTour race,” Dickson told Cycling Weekly before the final stage on Glasgow Green.
“On the first day I was caught out with how hard it would be to move up later in the race. It's almost like if you imagine a gridlock - the girls are so well drilled. And then with about 4km to go I punctured and couldn't ride it. It was out of the rim. So that kind of took me out of GC because I lost 50 seconds on the group I'd been in.”
“Then the past two days I was really pleased with how I rode. I think we took a lot from the first day and tried to improve on it,” she added.
Dickson finished the race in 17th overall. It’s her first ever WorldTour race, but follows a season so far in which she has taken incredible strides forward, winning the Lincoln Grand Prix before mixing it with WorldTour riders at the Tour of Norway and placing third overall. These results are a world away from where she was this time last year when she was just learning the ropes of road racing.
Dickson may be new to the sport, but she has been involved in elite competition since she was a teenager as a triathlete and duathlete and has also represented Great Britain in mountain running. She credits her rapid rise to her sporting background, but also guidance from her men’s WorldTour rider partner Sean Flynn, who rides for Picnin-PostNL.
“My boyfriend's a WorldTour rider. So although I hadn't raced, I've been with him since I was 17. To be honest, he took me from not being able to take a bottle out of the bottle cage to following him in his reps, training behind him on the descents and it's all just a gradual accumulation. And then as I moved more towards duathlon from triathlon, it was a natural step to just try cycling,” Dickson said.
The 25-year-old has learned an awful lot this year, the learning curve is steep to get to the top level of cycling. She has made the most progression on several technical elements.
“Even if you look at my heart rate in races at the start of the year, I was so nervous in the wheels, like petrified sometimes when we were descending, whereas now I've learned to enjoy it and just to embrace the adrenaline, which does wonders for you in a race. If you can be calm, you use your energy more efficiently and that really helps you.”
Cycling Weekly understands that Dickson has been in conversations with more than one WorldTour team about stepping up to the very top level for next season. When asked about the possibility, she replied “Yeah, hopefully. I’ll hopefully turn WorldTour next year.”
