{"id":364824,"date":"2025-12-22T16:15:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T16:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/364824\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T16:15:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T16:15:19","slug":"britains-next-cycling-star-who-wants-to-emulate-tadej-pogacar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/364824\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s next cycling star who wants to emulate Tadej Pogacar"},"content":{"rendered":"

With 35km of the 119km route to go, a small group of riders were still together in Kigali, Rwanda. The junior world championship road race in September was on a hot day. The air quality was poor and the pace was high. As the group neared the top of the C\u00f4te de Kigali Golf climb, the 18-year-old Harry Hudson got out of the saddle and stomped hard on the pedals, moving away on the smooth, dusty tarmac. No one could go with the teenager, they just watched as the gap increased.<\/p>\n

Hudson built his cushion to 36 seconds and soon realised no one was coming across. If he wanted to win, he\u2019d have to do it solo. \u201cThe group had been pushing quite hard so I decided that was a good time to attack since people might have been struggling,\u201d Hudson says, \u201cand I thought that at the very least it would drop some more people. But I ended up going solo because no one followed.\u201d<\/p>\n

He managed his effort and tried to hold the good feeling he had in his legs until the last 15km when he decided to push. After 35km alone, Hudson crossed the line with his arms in the air, 16 seconds ahead of France\u2019s Johan Blanc. The Harrogate Nova rider, with his tuft of curly brown hair and helmet-strap tan lines, stood atop the podium in the rainbow-banded jersey. He was Britain\u2019s first ever junior men\u2019s world champion.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

Hudson on the podium in Rwanda with Blanc, left, and bronze medallist Jan Michal Jackowiak from Poland<\/p>\n

DAVID RAMOS\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty hard, it was probably the most climbing I\u2019ve done in a race of that length [2,671m in 119.3km],\u201d Hudson says. \u201cIt\u2019s still pretty weird to think that I\u2019m riding around in a rainbow jersey for the next month or so. But yeah, every time I go on a ride I get to ride in rainbows at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the moment that Hudson announced himself to the world, part of a year of great British successes, including a Giro d\u2019Italia winner in Simon Yates, a La Vuelta podium for Tom Pidcock, fourth at the Tour de France for Oscar Onley and Matthew Brennan\u2019s 12 victories. Hudson shows that the rich vein of cycling talent that has run through this country since Bradley Wiggins won its first Tour de France in 2012 looks set to continue \u2014 even as Britain\u2019s most recent Tour winner, Geraint Thomas, retires.<\/p>\n

Hudson got into cycling through his father, Paul, with whom he watched the Tour de France on TV as a child in Sheffield. He remembers Chris Froome, in particular, and Mark Cavendish, and enjoying the British dominance during those years. Hudson then started riding his bike at the weekends with his dad. <\/p>\n

\"Harry<\/p>\n

Hudson was able to pull away from the rest of the pack to take his first world title in Kigali\u2026<\/p>\n

DARIO BELINGHERI\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

\"Britain's<\/p>\n

And was left exhausted by the hot conditions<\/p>\n

JEROME DELAY\/AP<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became a bit more serious,\u201d Hudson says. \u201cBut it\u2019s usually just been for fun. And then I began to train more and more in the last few years and the last two years, I\u2019ve really focused and targeted races. I set some pretty fast times on some climbs in France, Alpe d\u2019Huez and stuff like that, and then I also won my first race as a second year under-16.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hudson had a fantastic 2025, winning not only the junior world championship road race but also the junior version of Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge with Fensham Howes-MAS Design-CAMS, a team run by Tom Pidcock\u2019s father, Giles. He also won the Classic R\u00e9gion Sud under-19 race in the Alps between La Joue du Loup and Superd\u00e9voluy. It showed that \u2014 at 58kg, the same weight as Jonas Vingegaard \u2014 he has a talent for climbing and hard, hilly days ideal for a future stage-race competitor.<\/p>\n

By the middle of the year, Hudson was already talking to Lidl-Trek Future Racing, a development team which is designed to feed young riders into its elite-level Lidl-Trek outfit, one of World Tour cycling\u2019s so-called big-budget super teams and home to riders such as the 2020 Giro d\u2019Italia winner Tao Geoghegan Hart, Mads Pedersen and Juan Ayuso.<\/p>\n

\"Rwanda<\/p>\n

Hudson is aiming to secure a spot on Lidl-Trek\u2019s elite team<\/p>\n

AP PHOTO\/JEROME DELAY<\/p>\n

\u201cI signed quite early,\u201d Hudson says. \u201cAt the start of the year that was probably one of, if not the, top team I wanted to try to get into. I felt it was the best place for me to develop into the rider I wanted to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the middle of December, Hudson headed out to Calpe in Spain to join the rest of the Lidl-Trek team at their training camp. This is not just for the development team but mixed with the elite men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams too, offering the teenager an opportunity to get a taste of the highest level of training with proven winners. Now, he has his sights on 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know what races I\u2019m hopefully going to target,\u201d Hudson says. \u201cI want to get selected for the world championships again in Canada next year in the next category up [under-23], so I need to get selected. That\u2019ll be a big goal of mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he will want to take the next step up to Lidl-Trek\u2019s elite men\u2019s team and while he\u2019s not taking that possibility for granted, he is a young man with clear aspirations for the highest level of this sport. What sort of rider does he want to be? The sort of new-era rider that has been ushered in by the likes of Tadej Pogacar<\/a> and Pidcock, one that enjoys stage races as well as the one-day classics, who likes to ride gravel as well as tarmac.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Tour de France would be the big race that I\u2019d love to win,\u201d Hudson says. \u201cBut Strade Bianche and Li\u00e8ge are pretty close. That\u2019s what I want ultimately \u2014 that would be my dream season if I made it to World Tour level.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With 35km of the 119km route to go, a small group of riders were still together in Kigali,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-364824","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\/364824","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=364824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}