… but she doesn’t see herself that way. She’s just having fun racing her bike.
Cor Vos
It only takes one glance at Cat Ferguson’s results since her first international race in 2023, when she was 17, to know that she is one of those once-in-a-generation talents. Ferguson started on the UK circuit and was already winning national titles before the British national team brought her to Italy to race the Piccolo Trofeo Alfredo Binda, aka the Baby Binda. It is one of the few junior races on the UCI calendar, and Ferguson’s first foray into European racing.
She won that 74.4 km race, besting Julie Bego in a two-up sprint to take the victory. Bego had already had a season’s worth of international race days under her belt, and the two finished nearly a minute and a half in front of third.
Before the following year was even up, a year in which Ferguson only finished outside the top two twice, Movistar had already secured her on a three-year deal. She started racing for the Spanish team as a stagiaire in September, and in her first race with them, she finished second. Weeks later, after securing both the road race and time trial junior world titles, Ferguson won Binche-Chimay-Binche ahead of big WorldTour names, including two-time Tour de France stage winner Charlotte Kool.
Ferguson outsprinted Christina Schweinberger of Fenix-Deceuninck and Anniina Ahtosalo of Uno-X Mobility to win the Belgian one-day race.
Ferguson is now in her second season in the WorldTour, and already she is contesting major wins. Going into Milan-San Remo, she will be Movistar’s protected rider at just 19 years old. After finishing fourth at the Omloop Nieuwsblad in February, Ferguson is a favourite to win the one-day race, but she doesn’t let the pressure get to her. It’s one of the reasons she had such a smooth transition from juniors to elites.
“I don’t feel pressure,” Ferguson told Escape Collective. “I don’t feel I’m one of the big names in cycling or that, you know, that sort of thing.”
There is pressure, she said, but the team eased her into the elites at the tail end of the 2024 season, and then was selective about which races she did in 2025. She didn’t race the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, for example.
Ferguson’s first race as an official member of team Movistar was the Trofeo Alfredo Binda, the elite version of the junior race where she took her first international road win.
Last year, Ferguson finished third. In her first WorldTour race. It’s hard to stress just how impressive that is, and it further highlights the talent she has. There is always a risk when a WorldTour team signs someone fresh from the junior ranks that they will not be able to walk the fine line between racing the rider and holding them back for their own good. With the promise that Ferguson showed from day one, it would have been easy for Movistar to over-race her.
This post is for paying subscribers only
Subscribe now
Already have an account? Sign in
Did we do a good job with this story?
👍Yep
👎Nope