Kate McCarthy won the most races and money in the sport’s history in 2025, but there are a few more things she wants to win.
Image: Kate McCarthy/Instagram
New Zealand’s Kate McCarthy didn’t just dominate cycling esports in 2025. She set a new bar.
She won 87% of the elite races she entered and finished off the podium only once all season. By the time the year closed, McCarthy had piled up 44 victories in the MyWhoosh Sunday Race Club, swept the Sprint and Climb stages at Zwift Games ’25 on the way to overall victory, and captured six of seven stages at the US$1 million MyWhoosh Championship, along with the queen of the mountains jersey and the general classification.
Her season’s centerpiece came at the UCI Cycling Esports World Championships, where McCarthy emphatically defended her rainbow jersey. She won all three stages and finished with a lopsided 72-point gap over her nearest rival.
Claiming her first world championship on the live stage in Abu Dhabi in October of 2024 boosted McCarthy’s self-confidence. Still, she never expected or aimed for the level of preeminence she reached in 2025.
Instead, McCarthy told Escape, “My focus was on showing up to every race with the goal of giving my best effort each time. I wanted to finish every race feeling like I truly deserved to be in the rainbow jersey. From there, it was about being smart with recovery, choosing key races to prioritize, and finding the right balance between training, racing indoors and outdoors, and managing my job alongside everything else.”
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