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News & Racing<\/a><\/p>\n Petra Stiasny\u2019s breakthrough win on the Angliru was built from a doomed solo breakaway in Australia, a crisis of confidence, and a lesson in finding the space where she could thrive.<\/p>\n At the start of the season, Petra Stiasny\u2019s career had reached a low ebb. The Swiss rider had come to cycling during the pandemic, rose swiftly through the ranks, spent four seasons bouncing between Fenix-Deceuninck and the Roland teams, and in Australia \u2013 her first races with her new team, Human Powered Health\u00a0\u2013\u00a0everything had gone to shit.<\/p>\n She\u2019d been sick, and then she\u2019d DNFed out of the Tour Down Under on stage 2. A few days later at the Tour Down Under crit, same story. \u201cI had some pretty bad days [that week],\u201d Stiasny told me at Cadel\u2019s Road Race. \u201cI didn\u2019t have the sensation.\u201d She was, her sports director Clark Sheehan said, \u201crigid with nervous anxiety \u2026 she had a lot of things going on in her head.\u201d<\/p>\n Her mission, and her team\u2019s mission, was to turn that around. This past Saturday, Stiasny won the queen stage of the Vuelta a Espana Femenina<\/a>, dancing her way up the outrageous gradients of the Angliru to take her first ever WorldTour win.<\/p>\n The ways that cycling often contextualises such performances is in statistics\u00a0\u2013\u00a0watts per kilo, percentages of gradient \u2013\u00a0but that tells an imperfect picture of Stiasny\u2019s Saturday, because it narrows the focus too far. This win was built on an arc that stretches from January to May, a period in which she went from DNFing to winning the most spectacular mountain stage the season has offered yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n Terrain plays a part in that, of course. In Sheehan’s words, Stiasny’s a climber \u2013 \u201cpurest of the pure\u201d \u2013 and there are few climbs that better cater for riders of those characteristics than the Angliru. But a ride like this is only produced by the body and brain working in harmony. It requires physical preparation paired with self-understanding, the ability to see tarmac rearing up at 20% ahead of you and think \u2018yes, I can do that\u2019, and an environment in which Stiasny was given both the trust and space to deliver the outcome that she did.\u00a0<\/p>\n The beginning of the transition into the rider we saw on the weekend began two days before Cadel\u2019s Road Race in late January. A frustrated and emotional Stiasny pulled out of a warm-up criterium, and, Sheehan explained, \u201cshe came over to the car and she was a bit weepy\u00a0\u2026 she wants to do well, she wants to be part of the team, and you can see that.\u201d For the petite Swiss rider, a fast, flat criterium was a long way from her preferred terrain, but Sheehan worked out a plan with her: cater for her strengths, accept her limitations, and work through visualisation to be in the right headspace. Mentally, she needed to be in her \u2018happy place\u2019\u00a0\u2013 a long climb, specifically the two and a half hour climb on Gran Canaria, from the bottom of the island to the top.\u00a0<\/p>\n Geelong does not have such a climb, but the team worked out a plan that would allow her to build some confidence even in the unfavourable terrain. Stiasny can lack some confidence riding in the bunch, so Sheehan\u2019s thinking was to place her in the breakaway: a place where she had the best chance of finding her \u2018happy place\u2019, even on flat roads, with a long controlled effort. Stiasny spent 106 km off the front, solo, holding the peloton off for most of the day\u2019s duration and only getting caught when the race entered the finishing circuits. She finished dead last, but that doesn\u2019t tell the full story: she won the combativity award, and most importantly, regained some self-belief.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A not-so-doomed solo breakaway<\/p>\n After 106 km off the front alone, Petra Stiasny was the last finisher at Cadel\u2019s Road Race. But, for the Swiss rider, that was a win in itself.<\/p>\n As wildly different as the terrain and result was, this was the start of her journey to the Angliru. \u201cIt\u2019s been really amazing to see her progress over the year since starting out in Australia,\u201d Sheehan told me yesterday. \u201cShe really gained a lot of confidence there \u2026 that was the start.\u201d<\/p>\n With Stiasny starting to back herself again, the team kept its eyes open for opportunities to back her, too. She was slated to ride the Ardennes Classics, but Magnus B\u00e4ckstedt\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Human Powered Health\u2019s head of sport\u00a0\u2013\u00a0backed her for the Vuelta instead; as soon as the Angliru was announced on the route, the team had Stiasny in mind for it. And Stiasny had her eye on it, too: \u201cWhen they announced that the Angliru would be part of the Vuelta, for me, I had only one thing in my head, every day \u2026 it was a dream to win this stage.\u201d<\/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![\"Iain](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Iain-Treloar-150x150.jpg\")
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