![\"Antonia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-06-24-at-16.52.24.jpeg\")
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News & Racing<\/a><\/p>\n The Canyon-SRAM all-arounder talks with Escape about skimo, stoic suffer faces and how her horse Hugo helps her handle the stress of being a rising star in pro cycling.<\/p>\n Antonia Niedermaier, Cor Vos<\/p>\n Women’s cycling is on the rise. The salaries are up, especially for a rider with the potential and palmar\u00e8s of Antonia Niedermaier. And what would a top rider, winner of a Giro d’Italia stage, second overall at the Giro in 2026, and potential future winner of a Grand Tour do with their first big paycheck? Buy a horse. Of course. <\/p>\n “I always said when I’m a grown-up woman, and I have the money to buy a horse, I will buy a horse,” Niedermaier told the Wheel Talk Podcast.<\/p>\n “I was always horseback riding; I was sitting on a horse even before I could walk. My mother is a horseback rider, and it was part of my childhood. I always had a horse.”<\/p>\n Hugo, Niedermaier’s horse, is her therapy. After hard training sessions, and when the pressure gets to be heavy, Hugo is there. “When I go to see Hugo, it calms me down,” Niedermaier said. This year, Canyon-SRAM tapped Niedermaier to be the team leader at the Giro d’Italia, a responsibility that came with a significant boost in pressure. <\/p>\n Performance under pressure<\/p>\n “My biggest goal was this Giro,” she explained. “I had a lot of pressure, but in a good way. I really feel like the team was giving me the trust and believed in me to have a great result in the Giro, and I showed that [I could perform].”<\/p>\n Niedermaier walked away from the Giro second overall behind Vollering after some consistent performances. But her jump from third to second, past four-time Giro winner and then-race leader Anna van der Breggen, was largely due to a gutsy final stage where the German rider attacked a group of favourites and, together with Elisa Longo Borghini and Niamh Fisher-Black, shook the stage up. <\/p>\n “For sure, we just wanted to defend the podium, but I was also telling them I really don’t have anything to lose, you know. I expected a really hard race because I knew that for sure Demi wanted to have a hard race to somehow try to get into the pink jersey, and I knew that it’s gonna be really hard and there would be a lot of attacks.”<\/p>\n As the trio gained time on the pink jersey of Van der Breggen and their biggest rival Demi Vollering, Niedermaier started to sense she could walk away with something massive: second place at a Grand Tour.<\/p>\n This post is for paying subscribers only Already have an account? Sign in<\/a><\/p>\n Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n \n \ud83d\udc4dYep![\"Abby](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Abby-Mickey-150x150.jpg\")
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Antonia Neidermaier’s superb climbing and time trial performances at the Giro made her the only rider within a minute of Demi Vollering in the final classification.<\/p>\n
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