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<\/p>\nWhile\u00a0Anna Dubier\u00a0might be the reigning world junior cycling champion, the 17-year-old concedes she\u2019ll enter an entirely different league when she races in next month\u2019s iconic Tour Down Under in South Australia.<\/p>\n
Dubier, who returned from last August\u2019s World Junior Cycling championships in the Netherlands with the gold medal for the points race and bronze for the Madison, said it was a thrill to be invited to compete in a Tour Down Under field which includes Canada\u2019s world champion road cyclist, Magdeleine Vallieres.<\/p>\n
The New South Wales Institute of Sport (NSWIS) scholarship athlete, who turns 18 later this month, credited her invitation to compete in the 26th Tour Down Under to her earning the coveted Rainbow jersey that is presented to every world champion cyclist.<\/p>\n
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\u201c [Being the world champion] means I can be invited to compete in races around the world,\u201d said Dubier. \u201cI\u2019ve been selected to race in the Tour Down Under \u2013 and that\u2019s another level altogether.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be competing against people whose fulltime job is cycling, and the elite world champion [Vallieres]\u00a0 will be among them. But like many of the younger riders who\u2019ll be competing it\u2019s really an opportunity for us to learn . . . and a lot of that will be not by asking questions but from watching, and absorbing, all I can.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tour adds yet another chapter to Dubier\u2019s already impressive story. However, while this proud product of Sydney\u2019s western suburbs is described by the likes of Tour de France stage winner and NSWIS Head Coach, Endurance Cycling\u00a0Daryl Impey\u00a0as a cyclist with exceptional \u2018race craft\u2019, she credits her parent\u2019s genes for providing her with a healthy advantage as an athlete.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad was a champion road and track cyclist in India, while mum was a triathlete who represented Australia at the world championships,\u201d says Dubier of her pedigree before adding Pierre met mum, Jane, during a training session at their local\u00a0 gym.<\/p>\n
And while she\u2019s a demon on two wheels, Dubier \u00a0was also a talented runner who enjoyed competing in gut busting 800m and cross country races. Indeed, such was the slightly built teenager\u2019s versatility she was pitted against the state\u2019s best \u00a0discus throwers at the NSW junior state athletics championships.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was competing against girls who were so much bigger than me,\u201d Dubier recalled. \u201cMy cousin threw the discus and hammer, and they got me into it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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However, it was Pierre, a respected, long-term coach at the Lidcombe-Auburn Cycling Club, who encouraged her to \u00a0give the sport a go soon after she turned eight.<\/p>\n
And Dubier\u2019s older brother,\u00a0Andre, who has raced in Europe and is someone who she describes as having played a positive role in her ascent through his wholehearted support, played an unintentional \u2013 but important \u2013 role in her decision to cycle . . . even though it was through \u2018boredom.\u2019 \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was dragged along to support Andre when he competed in things like the state champs,\u201d said Dubier. \u201cAnd after getting sick and bored [of watching him race of a weekend] I thought I might as well join him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say I\u00a0loved\u00a0cycling at first, but I really enjoyed seeing my friends and it was a great community to be a part of . . . one that has helped shape who I am . But as I grew older, and better, I started winning at local level and I was surprised to learn there was prize money! It wasn\u2019t much \u2013 $20 for some races \u2013 but it helped make it even more interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her selection for the \u00a0NSW team for the ultimately ill-fated National Championships in 2021 \u2013 doomed because they were cancelled due to the COVID pandemic \u2013 was the catalyst for Dubier to choose between remaining in athletics or committing to cycling up a storm.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI had to choose which sport I wanted because I knew there could be no half measures,\u201d said Dubier, photographed above with The Hon. Steve Kamper MP, the NSW Minister for Sport at the 2023 launch of the NSWIS\/RAS Pursu32+ pilot program. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo, in the end I decided to fully commit to cycling. And travelling to different towns to race, exploring new places on two wheels \u2026 those early experiences made me want to take cycling as far as I could.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dubier\u2019s was rewarded for her decision. By her 15th birthday the teenager who loves travelling had already competed in Malaysia for the Australian Junior Development Team and then to Belgium where she competed for a Perth-based team. This year, one in which she juggled her Higher School Certificate studies, Dubier seized the national title, the Oceania title and then her headline-making world crown.<\/p>\n
\u201cWinning the world title still feels surreal,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen I crossed the line, I thought, \u2018I did it!\u2019 I wanted to soak up every second.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Impey, a South African Olympian who twice won the Tour Down Under, Dubier is an athlete who tends to makes her coach \u2018think\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s very smart on the bike, that\u2019s her strength,\u201d said Impey. \u201cAnna\u2019s real strength is her race craft, the way she rode [at the world championships] the smarts . . . \u00a0the way she carried herself . . . \u00a0especially after the disappointment she would\u2019ve felt in coming in the team pursuit and narrowly missing out on a medal highlights her character.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe loves to challenge me as a coach by asking hard questions, which is something I like. Anna wants to understand. She\u2019s very engaging, wanting to know why we\u2019re doing something. That keeps me on my toes.\u201d<\/p>\n
And like all of cycling\u2019s great cyclists, Dubier is also a strategist. When asked of her Olympic aspirations the 2025 Junior World Champion is looking at the long term.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 2028 Games \u00a0is a tough call, but Brisbane, 2032 \u2013 and in front of a cheering home crowd \u2013 I think, is very doable \u2013 as is the World Championships. I\u2019ll just make sure I do everything I can to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daniel Lane, NSWIS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While\u00a0Anna Dubier\u00a0might be the reigning world junior cycling champion, the 17-year-old concedes she\u2019ll enter an entirely different league…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-350882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}