Grit on wheels: A Utah woman’s ascent in the world of pro cycling

Utah native Natalie Quinn is grinding her way to the top of one of the most demanding sports in the world.

Professional road cycling requires years of dedication, training and perseverance to become an elite rider competing at the highest level of the sport. Think Tour de France. Think Olympics. Quinn has her wheels turning toward both.

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Since graduating from Weber High School in Pleasant View, the 23-year-old Quinn has dedicated her life to becoming the best bike rider she can be. That means eat, drink and sleep cycling, typically thousands of miles from home. Her coaches have described her as gutsy and relentless on the road, traits that will also serve her well off the bike as she navigates the twisty route to the top.

Quinn parlayed her victory in the under 23 or U23 category at the U.S. Pro Road National Championship in 2023 into a contract with one of the top American women’s cycling teams on the World Tour.

But her first season with EF-Oatly-Cannondale — the same squad that features surprise 2024 Olympic road race gold medalist Kristen Faulkner — didn’t go as planned. A concussion after a crash early in the year sidelined Quinn for much of the 2024 season.

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This year she signed on with Hess Cycling Team, a team established in 2023 with aspirations to become the first British women’s World Tour team, for 18,000 euros (just over $19,000) a year. But things didn’t go well there, either. Not on the road but everywhere else. Hess had issues with funding, didn’t hold a team camp, failed to pay riders, didn’t start the season on time and lacked registration with Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the sport’s governing body.

Quinn left the team, as did others. She landed with Cynisca Cycling, an American squad dedicated to development of female cyclists with invites to three World Tour races in Europe this year and goals to secure more in 2026, including the Tour de France Femmes.

Because she joined the team after the season started, it doesn’t have money in its budget to pay her. Fortunately, her parents continue to support her financially. Quinn spent the past few weeks living with a former teammate in Rhode Island to train — typically alone — for the upcoming 2025 USA Cycling National Championships this weekend in West Virginia.

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There’s no easy road to becoming a professional cyclist on the world’s biggest stage. It’s even bumpier for women given the constant financial uncertainty, teams folding, races being canceled, minimal pay, pressure for results and long, sometimes lonely days in the saddle. Every ride seems like a job interview. “That’s definitely how it feels in the women’s field,” Quinn said.

So why does she stick with it?

“Sometimes I ask myself that same question. I really do just love it. It’s hard to even contemplate letting it go, especially when I feel like I’m just so close,” Quinn said. “This part of the process from what I understand and what I’m hoping is true, that this is the hardest part. And if I can just get over this last little bit, maybe it’ll get a little easier. It’s a hard sport not to love once you become a part of it.”

Fighting for equity

Americans, though, haven’t fallen in love with professional road cycling, women’s or men’s. Other than the Tour de France, road racing doesn’t get much run on U.S. television. Some major races, including the Tour of California and Tour of Utah, which staged men’s and women’s races, fell by the wayside.

Women’s pro cycling, particularly, faces a number of challenges. There are fewer races for women compared to men and women’s events are traditionally shorter in distance. Salaries and prize money have been and continue to be lower for women.

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Lauren LeClaire, team director for Massachusetts-based CCB p/b Levine Law Group Women’s Cycling, a U23 developmental program, recalls that when she competed a decade ago, “the guys were racing for $1,000 and the girls for a prize pack of socks.”

It’s not that disparate now, but the wage gap still exists. Robin Farina, a former pro cyclist, U.S. road race champion and 2012 Olympian, called salary equity the biggest challenge in women’s cycling. Farina is the general manager of Cynisca Cycling, the team Quinn now rides for.

In 2022, the National Cycling League launched with some big-name backing, including NBA stars Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal. Its unique approach put men and women on the same team. Notably, the league offered equal pay and exposure for both genders and a headline-grabbing $1 million prize purse.

But the NCL ceased operations in 2024 with no apparent plans for revival.

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“People really try to do things in America to make cycling more appealing,” Quinn said. “Maybe people aren’t very good at it but I felt with NCL somebody was at least trying.”

Internationally, UCI has made some progress for World Tour riders, the top tier of professional road cycling.

In 2020, it introduced a minimum salary for women’s World Tour teams, which has gradually increased in the past five years. Standard contracts now allow maternity leave for up to three months at full salary. But those rules don’t apply to lower level pro teams.

Making of a World Tour rider

Coming from an admittedly biased mom’s point of view, Julie Quinn says her daughter — the oldest of two girls in the family — was always protective and loyal. She described her as “super smart” with an “old spirit.” She got along with adults at a young age. Some of her best friends from elementary through high school were teachers.

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Quinn grew up in Ogden Valley ski racing but decided to give it up when she got to high school because of the travel it would require as well as having to do online school. She and her dad noticed the high school mountain biking trailer in a grocery store parking lot one day. They waited until someone came back and asked how Quinn could join the team. She made the podium in her first race as a sophomore. She excelled throughout high school and moved to Boulder, Colorado, after graduation in 2020 to continue developing. She really didn’t start road racing until she got to Fort Lewis College, which has a varsity cycling program, a year later.

She has been on skinny tires ever since.

In 2023, Quinn joined CCB p/b Levine Law Group Women’s Cycling, a longstanding U.S. program dedicated to a women’s U23 development team. In addition to cycling, it requires every athlete to pursue or complete a post-secondary education. The team sends riders to dozens of competitions, including European UCI races and Belgian “kermesses,” 90km to 140km lap races in villages and narrow farm roads where young riders cut their teeth.

“It really teaches you how to bike race because you can’t just fix mistakes you make in the race by your athleticism,” Quinn said. “I can’t think of many top pros who didn’t spend at least a fair amount of time kermesse racing before they moved up to the World Tour races.”

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It was while riding for CCB that Quinn won the U23 U.S. road championship, a victory that helped launch her pro career. She’s now training for the U.S. championships coming up this week in Charleston, West Virginia. She rides mostly on her own with prescribed workouts from her coach that put her on the bike around four hours a day.

“The honest part of it is it’s not for everybody. If you can’t handle long hours by yourself, then this isn’t the sport for you. I enjoy it for the most part. Most people that do it, the solitude of training is often actually a benefit less than a detriment,” Quinn said.

Only one person can win a bike race. But in road racing it takes a team to get that rider to the finish line. Typically, four to six teammates help the leader, including drafting, shielding from other riders, delivering water bottles and nutrition while sacrificing their own chance to win.

Quinn loves the team aspect of the sport. She enjoys having and executing a plan where everyone does their job. It’s those protective and loyal instincts that her mother described in action.

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“It’s a really good feeling to work towards a goal. People have their individual roles in a race but all together it means that a result happens,” she said. “It’s a really beautiful part of the sport.”

Tapping the potential

Farina said she’d been scouting Quinn for a couple of years before she joined Cynsica — the only UCI development team left in the U.S. — this season.

“I think she’s a talent,” Farina said. Quinn, she said, is young and maturing in the sport but is smart and a rider who understands tactics and reads races well and has the potential to be a leader.

LeClaire, her team manager when Quinn rode for CCB, said she’s filled with grit and toughness, “absolute fearlessness” and is “unrelenting” in her efforts. There’s no doubt she’s going places, LeClaire said.

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Quinn said it’s hard to not believe she can make it when others around her believe she can.

“I’m an athlete at heart. It would be a bit of a lie if I said I don’t enjoy being good at something,” Quinn said. “I enjoy the specific challenges of cycling, especially road racing. Road racing is so dynamic. There’s so many variables that can lead to somebody winning or losing that aren’t just related to how hard they can pedal.”

Looking for exposure

Named for a Spartan chariot racehorse trainer who became the first female Olympic champion in 396 B.C., Cynisca Cycling aims to help U.S. women compete not only in the U.S. but at the toughest races in Europe.

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“Our goal is really to bring young Americans on, nurture them and give them support so they can flourish,” Farina said.

Farina and several other women riders were on the forefront of trying to bring equity to the sport when they created the Women’s Cycling Association in 2012. They urged race promoters to offer equal prize purses and pushed for more television time. While the organization no longer exists, she said it set the foundation for the changes happening today. It’s hard to put a percentage on it, she said, but the gap is closing.

“Are we where we should be? Maybe,” Farina said. “It’s a tough question because all it takes is a couple of sponsors to come in and we could be in the same place with men’s cycling.”

Perhaps the areas where the women’s peloton struggles the most is with sponsorship dollars and media coverage.

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“We need more exposure. We need to tell the story a little more. We need our riders to be out in the media. So that people can go, ‘Wow, that’s a really cool story. I want to follow her and I want to be a fan,’” Farina said.

Faulkner’s unexpected win in Paris last summer and then joining Chloe Dygert, Jennifer Valente and Lily Williams for the first-ever U.S. gold in women’s team pursuit a few days later momentarily created excitement around American cycling. But did it give the sport a major shot in the arm in the U.S.?

“I should hope so,” LeClaire said, before adding “maybe, maybe not.”

“Anything that gets strong female athletes into the spotlight is a positive thing for us. The more Americans that are in the spotlight in sport the better for us. That’s all upward momentum,” she said.

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The gold medals, she said, were the product of hard work and USA Cycling’s strong support of top level riders. The next question, though, is how to get that momentum to trickle down to fuel the pipeline for the next generation of riders, LeClaire said.

Last November, the Hellman Foundation, a longtime contributor to American cycling, donated $2.5 million to the USA Cycling Foundation to boost resources and support for women. The grant includes a $1.5 million endowment to establish the Women’s Cycling Fund, aimed at sustaining women’s high-performance programs through 2043. That includes developing cyclists for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics in Los Angeles and beyond.

LeClaire said women’s racing is at a difficult point in the U.S. While women’s races have had their biggest fields the past couple years, there are fewer events for them to compete in. “We’re short races,” she said.

Attracting sponsors

Also, LeClaire said the logistics of running an American team is more complicated and expensive than a European team based on geography. U.S. teams have to criss-cross the country, paying for everything from gas to hotels to entry fees. As a result, there are fewer and fewer larger, well-supported teams based in the U.S. It’s actually cheaper for teams to compete in Europe.

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Funding is a constant challenge for U.S. cycling teams. LeClaire said it’s a 24/7 battle, causing sleepless nights and stressed out phone calls about retaining and recruiting sponsors. Nowadays, she said companies often back one or two riders instead of a team. “It’s a lighter lift,” LeClaire said.

Cynisca has attracted big-name cycling industry partners Specialized, Shimano and Pearl iZumi. And one of its selling points is its chateau in the south of France with a course for training and promoting cycling in the region. It also serves as a place for its sponsors to hold corporate getaways and team-building retreats.

Farina reasons that a business could pay a mint for a short TV ad during the Summer Games or back a team for the next three years, building brand awareness and integrity with “massive” exposure in Europe.

“Even a midsize company could come in and own women’s cycling for not a lot of money and then run it all the way through the L.A. Olympics and have the exposure through the Olympics,” she said.

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The fight for equal media coverage, including live broadcasts of entire women’s races — not just the last few kilometers — is crucial to the sport.

“That’s the piece that teams can go back to our sponsors and go, ‘Look, here’s what we did, here’s the value we created,” LeClaire said.

Cynisca is a UCI continental team, meaning it’s a tier below a World Tour team that competes at the biggest races such as the Tour de France. Farina wants to make the leap to the top level next year. She has a simple formula to make it happen: “I’d like to find a $5 million sponsor. That’s really it.”

Of course, she said the team needs talent, too. And Quinn just might be one of those talented riders to help lift American cycling.