Laura Stigger: From mountain bike to road - a new chapter for the Austrian

It's going faster than expected: top mountain biker Laura Stigger will start as a professional cyclist on the road for the first time on 13 February. The 24-year-old Austrian will make her debut in the jersey of top team SD Worx - Protime at the Setmana Valenciana (13 to 16 February). The tour covers four stages. "This year is the perfect time to try it out," says Stigger in an interview with TOUR about the change of discipline. Her new employer had already announced before the turn of the year that the Tyrolean would turn pro with the Dutch road team in the 2025 season. Now, in her own words, she has stepped in at short notice as a starter at the Tour of Valencia and is making a surprisingly early debut in road cycling at the highest level.

Van der Breggen brings Stigger into the team

Olympic champion Anna van der Breggen enquired last summer whether Stigger, who recently finished second overall in the Mountain Bike World Cup, would like to ride for her team in the future. The two have known each other since the Dutchwoman completed an altitude training camp near Stigger's home in Haiming a few years ago. "I'm looking forward to gaining experience," says the Olympic sixth-placed Stigger about racing on the road, which she describes as a "taster internship". In 2018, the mountain bike specialist surprisingly won gold in the junior road race at her home World Championships in Innsbruck. After that, she only competed in the road race at the U23 European Championships in Trento in 2021, where she finished fourth.

No farewell to mountain biking

However, switching to the road does not mean saying goodbye to mountain biking. "The focus is still mainly on mountain biking," emphasises the cyclist from Haiming in the Inn Valley: "I'll fit in a few road races when I can schedule them around the Mountain Bike World Cup." It is not yet officially known which other races she will contest on the road after her debut in Spain. Danny Stam, Head of Sport at SD Worx-Protime, believes that the mountain bike specialist will play a good role in races such as the Ardennes classics, i.e. Amstel Gold Race, Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, due to her climbing strength and explosiveness.

After the MTB World Cup to the one-day races

At the beginning of April, Stigger will compete in the Mountain Bike World Cup races in Brazil. After that, she can imagine competing in one-day races. The move to van der Breggen's racing team was an obvious one. As a mountain biker, Stigger competes for the Specialized Factory Racing team; the US manufacturer Specialized also supplies the material for the Dutch road team SD Worx. "The cooperation with Specialized is of course ideal for being on the road and on a mountain bike," emphasises Stigger, who, after finishing sixth at last year's Olympics, felt the time had come to try something new and ride on two tracks. This year, Stigger's compatriot Mona Mitterwallner (with Human Powered Health) and Australian Alan Hatherley (with Jayco-AlUla) will also try their hand at road cycling.