Catalina Soto Campos talks with Escape about her path to the pro peloton from Chile through Australia, and why there aren’t more women from South America racing in Europe.
Cor Vos
Despite growing up in a country with very little cycling tradition, Catalina Soto Campos has always been drawn to her bicycle. She would ride it everywhere as a young child as if it was part of her.
She began riding on the track with a club in her home city of Santiago, Chile. When her family moved to Australia when she was 13, the bike was her continuous friend in an unfamiliar new home. She started racing, picking up results on the track and was spotted by a UCI World Cycling Centre coach at the South American Games in 2017, earning a place at the WCC in Aigle, Switzerland.
Today, Soto Campos is Chile’s only female professional cyclist, part of the Laboral Kutxa-Fundaćion Euskadi team, which has a women’s ProTour license. She has grown in stature over the past few years and is now earning her place in the sprinting ranks of the European peloton with a string of top-10 results including sixth at the recent Clasica de Almeria and two UCI wins to her name.
The 24-year-old defied the odds to make it as a professional, and now wants to give back to the development of cycling in Chile, where there are very few opportunities.
In this interview, we spoke about the state of cycling in Chile, her unique journey into the sport and how more South American cyclists can get into the sport.
Chilean champion Soto Campos at the recent Setmana Ciclista Volta Femenina de la Comunitat Valenciana.
Dan Challis: What are the opportunities like for young boys and girls to get into cycling in Chile?
Catalina Soto Campos: I don’t come from a cycling family, but usually people start from a cycling family.
It’s really important for you to have money to actually practise the sport. There’s a saying in Chile I always remember, “It’s a rich sport practised by poor people.”
I think in Chile it’s really hard to get opportunities overseas. There are some races and now it’s improving a lot. I think the federation is doing quite an effort to actually give opportunities because I think they realise that we have lost the base of the sport. There’s no kids and there are not many schools. There’s not a lot of development.
I think it’s important to have opportunities to race more in South America, but that also is not a Chilean problem. It’s a whole-continent problem because there are not many races and the races are really far away and again it’s really expensive.
DC: Are there kids who are wanting to get involved in the sport or is it struggling to get young people in?
CSC: Well, now this is very important for me because it’s my country and I do represent it and I don’t want to be the only Chilean riding overseas, not now and not in the future. [Vicente Rojas, 23, rides for the Bardiani CSF 7 Saber team on the men’s side, the only Chilean man at a similar level to Soto Campos. -Ed.]
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