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It’s been a difficult path for female riders from the Antipodes to reach the upper echelons of road cycling. For years the women’s development team, run in conjunction with then-Cycling Australia, was a staple on the resume of an Australian rider on the European scene, with the vast majority of Aussie riders having gained experience against elite competition.
The dissolution of the development team in 2018 saw privately-owned National Road Series and UCI teams having to fill the void, and now a new Italian-based program for Australian and New Zealand riders has already borne fruit for young riders in 2023, with 2024 set for a new wave of recruits.
Current Italian, adopted Australian professional Scandolara started up the Down Under Cycling Academy (DUCA) with the intention of providing community and support for young riders to live and thrive, with homesickness, culture shock and being unsettled major problems when a long way from home.
The academy setup was female-only for 2023, including two different intakes of riders in the European racing season with teams racing in national-level juniors racing as well as UCI racing in Eastern and Central Europe.
“These riders, you see them progressing and starting to believe in themselves, they go home wanting more,” Scandolara said. “For me, it’s a big satisfaction, knowing people from around the world and being able to share my experience in cycling has always been a pleasure for me, and to be able to create this program - which I’ve been told from some riders has changed their life - is very special.”
Coach Georgios Varverakis is someone Scandolara counts as central to the success of the project so far, the long-time Greek national coach helped oversee training for the riders involved.
“He’s a person that you talk to and you feel understood and seen,” Scandolara said. “I think, for young athletes, that is sometimes more important than having the right watts in your training, the right efforts.
"Plus, he’s very knowledgeable, with a Masters in Sport Science, and experienced, so it’s not that you have the one without the other.
“These things together I find are making the biggest differences in young athletes. They believe in themselves and their progress is amazing.
“At the end of the two months, you see another rider and another person. With the New Zealanders, they went from not finishing races, to winning races.”
One rider who was effusive about her time with the squad was 18-year-old New Zealander Lola Bryson Boe, who, thanks to the improvement during 2023 and due to the connections of the management, earned a pro contract with the development team for World Tour squad UAE-ADQ in 2024.
“In New Zealand, our races were nine people. Heading to Europe, some of them were 150 people,” Bryson Boe said. “It was almost a different sport at the end of the day. It required completely different qualities, it wasn’t always the strongest person who won, but also the one with the best tactics and positioning, something that I hadn’t had to think about before.”
“It was the perfect thing to help me grow in the sport, by the end, I felt that I’d found my style of racing, understood how European racing goes and how much I enjoyed it.”
That progress with a Women’s WorldTour-affiliated squad in 2024 was a coup for a set-up of DUCA’s stature in their first year.
“Through my time at DUCA, Valentina was able to get some testing done through her contacts with UAE-ADQ, all of us got that testing done,” Bryson Boe said.
“I did some good testing and I got an offer from the UAE development team. It’s made me so much more eager to come back and keep doing this for years, now I can do that as a professional cyclist.”
Key to the community integration for Scandolara was language and the inclusion within the family and local community. To that end, she arranged an introductory online course with a University of Melbourne tutor and PhD candidate (another friend of Scandolara’s, Elena Pirovano).
“The Italian push was important, it gives you some basis,” Scandolara said. “Lola and the others would go around the local markets looking for local produce to buy, and people would pick up on their accents and ask where they are from, because while the area is beautiful, it doesn’t get many tourists, so it was different for them as well."
That experience was a feature for Bryson Boe as well, different from the sometimes lonely existence of a team rental house that is more traditional for young cyclists making initial excursions to Europe.
“I was in a very supportive environment; I was brought into Valentina’s family,” Bryson Boe said. “It was almost a home away from home, going over to Valentina’s mum’s place for dinner at times.”
While Bryson Boe will move on in 2024, DUCA is planning to open new pathways with plenty of interest in the fledgling program.
“We’ve got a lot of contact on the men’s side of the sport, which I hadn’t thought much about as I’m a women cyclist and normally it’s the women who need the support, but they made a good case,” Scandolara said. “Boys are bigger in numbers and it’s harder for them to get into the UCI teams in Australia.
“Most of the already accomplished women are already in the UCI teams, so they’ll find spots if they can get some results. The boys don’t get the same chance to shine.
"And with our 2023 program, we showed that some girls just get overlooked from national teams, either because they’re new to the sport or because they didn’t find the right coach and preparation for them. With the right guidance, they’re raw diamonds that can really be polished and shine. That’s Georgios’ job, what he does best.
"For example, we had Stephanie Hibburt and Sharni Morley who came back to Australia and surprised more than a few people with their improvements and form in the recent Sunshine Coast and Tasmania Tours. These two are among other riders who will be coming back to Europe in 2024, either with UCI teams or with national club teams who noticed them during our camps and are willing to support them, as they saw their potential."
Showing how much appetite there is within rider development, there has been lots of interest, not just from riders, but from teams and agents looking for the eventual product of the development process.
“Also, I got interest from some men’s teams in Italy. Australians have a long history of being good juniors racers in Italy, so the idea from them was to do a collaboration where they take our best men’s young riders and give them a chance here," Scandolara said. "That, alongside with the aforementioned requests I got from Australia, convinced me to open the camps for the guys, too. There will be U19 and U23.
"Also following the success of the Academy and the efforts to find contacts and teams for our best-performing riders, I got an offer to collaborate with a riders’ agent company, which I am seriously considering and will be, I think, a further service we as DUCA can offer to the right people."
"We've had so much support from lots of people," she added. "But I'd love to mention Jordana Mullan and Cathy Peel, founders of Chicks Who Ride Bikes, who gave us the opportunity of offering scholarships to some athletes (Lola was one of the recipients!), the St Kilda Cycling Club with Alison Raaymaker and Tom Reynolds who helped out with the licences and documents, and Italian businesses SABAINI F.lli, TransService and SF Medical who covered some of camp's expenses - and will keep helping out in 2024!"
The progress of DUCA mirrors the progression of the athletes it seeks to inspire, and after a year finding their feet and getting some good initial results, the future looks bright for the Italian-based venture.
