STRAIGHT TO THE FRONT

Nineteen-year-old Scot Anna Shackley had never competed in a pro race until this year’s World Championship road race, but as Vern Pitt finds out, there’s no way it’ll be her last

- Vern Pitt

The excitement in the living rooms of cycling fans across Scotland was palpable as the 2020 women’s World Championship road race approached the final climb of the day. Dutchwoman Anna van der Breggen had already opened up a sizable gap and was soloing to victory, but there at the head of the chasing pack, leading former rainbow jersey wearer Lizzie Deignan into the final skirmish, was a Scot who was arguably putting in the best ride of the Championships.

“My phone was full of messages from friends and family saying ‘I saw you on TV!’” says Shackley. She had ridden the Worlds before, but that was the junior road race a year earlier in Harrogate. “The 2020 Worlds was the first pro race that I’d done,” says Shackley. “It was only my second race after lockdown, so I was a little bit nervous, but the other girls were so calm it was easy to be around them. They told me I had nothing to lose.”

Big race, top form

That didn’t make her day out in Imola, Italy, any less momentous. “On the last lap I was on the front going up the first climb and I thought, ‘Oh I’m still here’. Then I looked behind me and I had Annemiek van Vleuten chasing me.”

Earlier in the year, based almost entirely off her power numbers and a set of glowing reports from British Cycling coaches, Shackley had signed a contract with WorldTour powerhouse BoelsDolmans, set to be SD Worx, for 2021.