- To celebrate International Women's Day,
we're saluting 10 of the coolest,
toughest, and most inspirational women
that we think that you should know about.
And joining us on the GCN set today,
we have Mayalen, from GCN En Español,
who's arguably one of them.
- Ah, no no (laughs), I just like bikes.
Choosing only 10 riders is really difficult,
so if we missed something, just comment us below,
who do you think should make the list?
It's a list of diverse riders
that maybe you haven't heard about,
but we think they're the badasses of the sport.
(both laugh)
(funky mid tempo music)
- Let's start with the absolute boss of women's cycling,
and the most decorated cyclist of all time,
31-year old Dutch cyclist, Marianne Vos.
To this day, at only 31,
she has three World Championship titles in road,
seven in cyclo-cross, an Olympic gold medal,
as well as numerous mountian bike and track records.
Vos picked up cycling very early on
when she was inspired by her older brother,
but was only allowed to train with them.
It was really evident once she started racing
that she was very talented,
becoming a world champion by only 19,
so it's really no wonder why they call her The Cannibal.
(funky mid tempo music)
- Number two in our list, it's a new talent.
Arlenis Sierra, she's from Cuba, and she's racing
in the Astana Women's Team.
Arlenis has had to overcome politics, poverty,
and the separation to her family to follow her dream.
You have to watch for her, because she just won
the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Race.
She's one to watch this year.
(funky mid tempo music)
- Lael Wilcox burst onto the ultra-racing scene in 2016
when she completed the 4,400 mile Trans Am Bike Race.
She completed it in just 18 days,
so that's averaging 235 miles a day,
on less than 5-hours a day sleep.
She overtook the leader on the very last day,
powering past him to become the first woman
to win the race outright.
Lael first got inspired into ultra-racing
when she was in Israel, and learned at
the Holyland Challenge, and has since gone on
to take both the men's and women's records
at the Baja Divide, which she co-founded.
Besides racing, she also co-leads
the Anchorage GRIT in her hometown in Canada,
which aims to get more young girls into cycling.
(funky mid tempo music)
- Another woman that made it to our list,
it's the incredible Norwegian mountain biker,
Gunn-Rita Dahle.
She's just turned 46,
she just retired from cross country racing,
but she's gonna do some marathons,
but her palmares is incredible.
She has 30 World Cup wins,
and nine World Championship titles.
And I think she's an example for all cyclists out there,
because she had her son,
and then came back to winning some more.
She's just awesome.
- Amazing.
(funky mid tempo music)
- We really feared the worst when Annemiek
crashed out of the 2016 Rio Olympics,
but thanks to a miraculous recovery,
she went on to have one of her best seasons yet, last year.
She's utterly dominant in the time-trial,
and is the only rider, often, to choose a time trial bike
for the most technical, and uphill, courses.
That's not all though.
She's also an incredible GC rider,
taking the overall in the Giro Rosa last year,
as well as battling it out, right down to the line,
with Anna van der Breggan at last year's La Course,
which is, arguably, one of the best
race finishes of last season.
- It is.
And she also won the time trial
World Championships last year.
But in the road race, she crashed, but she still finished.
I think she broke her femur, and then
had a really long recovery, but of course,
she's a fighter, and we're gonna see her
earlier that what's expected,
so just look for her, she's amazing.
(funky mid tempo music)
- Okay, so this one is actually a bit of a cheat.
The Adventure Syndicate is actually a group of women,
who are not only incredibly talented
at ultra-distance cycling, but also work
with schools and young girls to get more people
out on bikes, and learning survival skills.
Just a few members include Emily Chappel,
who is a former London bike courier who went on
to win the Trans-Continental Race,
and Scot, Jenny Graham, who's recently circumnavigated
the globe, completely self-supported on a bike,
completely smashing the previous women's world record,
coming in at 125 days.
That's 20 days off the previous record.
- Wow.
(jazzy piano music)
The next one to make it to our list
is Dame Sarah Storey.
She's the most versatile British paralympic cyclist.
Sarah was a swimmer at four Paralympic Games
before switching to cycling in 2005.
Since making her career move,
she added nine more gold medals
to the already six that she had from swimming.
Sarah has also competed with able-bodied athletes,
making the team for England for the Commonwealth Games.
She also has UCI Track medals with the able-bodied squad.
She's incredible.
I raced with her in the Paralympic Games,
and she's so fast, you cannot imagine.
(jazzy music)
- Going back a little bit in time,
Eileen Sheridan is an absolutely incredible
time-trialist and road cyclist
who broke every single one of the records
in the Women's Road Records Association
in the 1940s and 50s.
Standing at only four foot 11,
she was known as the Pocket Rocket.
Sounds a little bit like someone we know, eh?
- Emma. (laughs)
(woman in red laughs)
- Now despite all of the advances in equipment,
in training, and nutrition, incredibly,
five of her records still stand to this day.
One of those is the London to Edinburgh record,
which she completed in just over 20 hours,
for 700 kilometers, which is just unbelievable.
(Myalen sighs)
(jazzy music)
- The next one to make it to our list
is Rachel Atherton.
She's the face of downhill mountain bike racing.
She's won five World Championship titles.
But she's making it to our list,
because of her encouraging to women's cycling
to make it in this incredible male dominant sport.
In 2016, she won 10 consecutive World Cup rounds,
and winning every race she participate on,
having the perfect season,
so she's clearly head-and-shoulders above the competition.
She so knows how to overcome so many falls,
and not being scared of what she does,
because what she does is incredible.
Going that fast between so many rocks,
and so many trees.
- I wouldn't like to do it. (laughs)
- I know, for me, it's just really scary.
(bouncy mid tempo music)
- Alfonsina Strada is the only woman
to have ever completed one of the three Grand Tours.
She started the Giro d'Italia in 1924,
after taking a newspaper entry from the Gazzetta,
and naming herself Alfonsin, rather than Alfonsina,
to appear male.
She started Giro d'Italia, and finished
as one of only 30 out of 90 starters,
due to the treacherous conditions, basic equipment,
and near-impassible roads.
And she actually finished some 20 hours
ahead of the lanterne rouge.
She must be one of the first, most impressive
female cyclists and still, continues to inspire us
to this day, some hundred years later.
- Incredible.
Choosing just 10 women out of the cycling world
is really tough, because there's loads
that we'd love to include.
So, let us know, which ones are your favorite,
or the ones that you think are the most inspiring to you,
in the comments below.
- Make sure you give us a big thumbs up
if you're feeling inspired from this video,
and if you'd like to check out
our women-specific kit designs,
head over to the GCN shop.
For another great video, here's Emma's climbing challenge,
where she tried to see how much climbing she could do,
in just one hour, just down here.