ANNA SHACKLEY'S CRUNCH YEAR

After two years at SD Worx, 2023 is the season the young Scot wants to push on. She tells Adam Becket how she's going to do it

- Adam Becket

The newly reopened Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp seems like an odd place for a season launch for a women’s cycling team, a neo-classical hulk of a building that seems like it belongs to another age.

Fittingly, though, the Belgian gallery was the setting for the grandest of Women’s WorldTour teams, the squad of such luminaries as Demi Vollering, Lotte Kopecky and Lorena Wiebes, the Dutch-speaking world’s hope of future domination all in one line-up.

The superteam, the number-one ranked outfit on the Women’s WorldTour for four of the last five years, is also home to 21-year-old Anna Shackley, who is entering her third season with the Dutch squad, and is ready to push on.

After two years of learning the ropes, having jumped to the best team in the world from the junior ranks, she finally feels like she is deserving of her space there; interestingly, only seven other riders are still on SD Worx from her opening year.

“I know the team so well,” she explains from a side room at the art gallery. “I feel at home as well, because I’m one of the older ones here now, maybe not by age, but by experience at the team. I feel good at the moment, and last season wasn’t such a good start, because I had quite a bad concussion at the start of the year. I still think I need more experience in racing, but it feels nice knowing all the stuff. It’s weird, everyone just feels so familiar. I was still learning last year, how to be around everything, and this year we seem close as a group.

“This is now my third year as a pro, so I’m coming in more sure of myself. Hopefully this year I can be a bit more there in the final.”