{"id":452696,"date":"2026-02-04T05:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T05:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/452696\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T05:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T05:55:11","slug":"the-story-of-cycling-esports-most-dominant-season-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/452696\/","title":{"rendered":"The story of cycling esports\u2019 most dominant season yet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                        <img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/feat.jpeg\" alt=\"The story of cycling esports\u2019 most dominant season yet\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                        <a class=\"article__category\" href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/tag\/esports\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Esports<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"article__sub-title\">Kate McCarthy won the most races and money in the sport\u2019s history in 2025, but there are a few more things she wants to win.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__thumbnail-caption\">Image: Kate McCarthy\/Instagram<\/p>\n<p>                                <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Chris Schwenker\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"author__photo lazy \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_7377-2.jpeg\" width=\"99\" height=\"99\"\/><\/p>\n<p>New Zealand\u2019s Kate McCarthy didn\u2019t just dominate cycling esports in 2025. She set a new bar.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201925 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.<\/p>\n<p>Her season\u2019s centerpiece came at the UCI Cycling Esports World Championships, where McCarthy emphatically <a href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/osborne-and-mccarthy-repeat-as-cycling-esports-world-champions\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">defended<\/a> her rainbow jersey. She won all three stages and finished with a lopsided 72-point gap over her nearest rival.<\/p>\n<p>Claiming her first world championship on the live stage in Abu Dhabi in October of 2024 boosted McCarthy\u2019s self-confidence. Still, she never expected or aimed for the level of preeminence she reached in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, McCarthy told Escape, \u201cMy 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>            This post is for paying subscribers only<br \/>\n            <a class=\"gh-btn\" data-portal=\"signup\" href=\"#\/portal\/signup\" style=\"color:#FF6F42\">Subscribe now<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Already have an account? <a data-portal=\"signin\" href=\"#\/portal\/signin\">Sign in<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n<p class=\"reactions\" data-post-id=\"697c1fb7b98b29e79b8abf43\">\n                    \ud83d\udc4dYep<br \/>\n                    \ud83d\udc4eNope\n                <\/p>\n<p class=\"tags\">\n                        <a href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/tag\/esports\/\" title=\"Esports\" class=\"tag tag-67aeb16bf92092dc201c1faa esports\" rel=\"tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Esports<\/a><br \/>\n                        <a href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/tag\/kate-mccarthy\/\" title=\"Kate McCarthy\" class=\"tag tag-68a619e16cdd84d5af16dcc0 kate-mccarthy\" rel=\"tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kate McCarthy<\/a><br \/>\n                        <a href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/tag\/news-and-racing\/\" title=\"News &amp; Racing\" class=\"tag tag-67a677ae0c7ad49bf4f293b3 news-and-racing\" rel=\"tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">News &amp; Racing<\/a>\n                <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Esports Kate McCarthy won the most races and money in the sport\u2019s history in 2025, but there are&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-452696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}