Three months after winning the national road race championships, Alice Sharpe will continue to make strides in her cycling career when she lines out in the Elite women’s race at the world road championships in Yorkshire on Saturday. The 25-year-old has been competing with the UCI’s World Cycling Centre team in 2019 and Sharpe is hoping to draw on the experience she has amassed and the fitness she has built up to perform strongly.
“I am excited, the circuit looks really good,” she told The Irish Times. “Especially the three loops of the finishing circuit. It is quite technical, so it should make for really good racing. We raced over the main climb, the Cote de Lofthouse a few years ago in the Tour de Yorkshire, so it is good to have ridden it a few times and at race pace. It should make for an exciting race.”
Sharpe has had the chance to ride many UCI-ranked events this year. She was eighth in the SwissEver GP Cham-Hagendorn in May, won the Irish road race championships at the end of June and then went on to finish seventh overall, second in the mountains classification and fourth in the points classification in the Tour de Belle Isle en Terre in France in August.
“I’ve definitely made progress this year,” she said. “It was my first year racing at UCI level. Of course that makes a difference. When you come to a championship like this, you are used to racing with the [top] girls. You know the wheels to follow. You are just more experienced, and that makes for better racing at a competition like this.”
Sharpe rode four UCI-ranked races in August, including the European Continental Championships, and believes her form is good in advance of Saturday’s big race. “It has been a long season, but I had a bit of a break and started to prepare for the track season because we go to the Euros in two weeks,” she said. “So I am feeling more fresh than I did a month or so ago. Hopefully it will go well.”
She will be the sole Irish contestant in the event, and points out that this brings advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, she can complete totally for herself, with no questions about leadership and no obligation to put her own aspirations on hold to help another rider. Conversely, though, she will also be without support and won’t have other Irish riders to help chase down breakaway groups and to keep things together.
Because of that, she said she will need to race with intelligence. “I need to just follow the moves, be smart, use my head before my legs. It is a long race. Definitely a mind game first, and use your legs for the finish.
“I can’t really have too many tactics. I am just following the wheels, really, and seeing what moves look good.”
Sharpe is still building experience and knows that next season she should move up another level again. She isn’t yet sure if she will remain with the UCI World Cycling Centre team, although she does have an offer to do so. “I haven’t yet decided,” she says. “I will see how the track goes…we are focussing on the Madison, on qualifying a space for Tokyo. For the minute my focus after this will go onto the track. So try and get the job done there first…”
Olympic ambitions aside, she is also aiming to draw on the motivation she got as a result of becoming national champion. She felt a lot of pressure on her shoulders heading into that race, not least in justifying her place on Irish teams, and to triumph on the day in question was a big boost to her morale.
Taking that title means she is entitled to wear the Irish champion’s jersey for a year. “It’s super-special to get to wear that, to race around Europe and to show it off,” she says.
“I have also done some solid results in other UCI races this year. So it is about building on that for next year and learning how to finish off the races well.
“I am finishing in the front bunches now but I need more confidence to go for the win.”
A good ride in Saturday’s world championships will help with that confidence, of course, and also build foundations for what she hopes will be a strong performance in the 2020 Olympic Games.
