It has been a superb summer for Team GB cyclist Sophie Lewis (Upper Sixth), who claimed gold and silver medals at the U23 and Junior European Track Championships (9th-14th July) in Ghent, Belgium and silver and bronze medals at the UCI Track Junior World Championships (14th-18th August) in Frankfurt, Germany. 

We spoke to Sophie about her incredible cycling success, she said: “At the start of the summer I competed in the European Track Championships in Ghent, Belgium. This was a very tiring but successful week at my first major championships representing Team GB. I was delighted to kick-start the week with a silver medal in the team pursuit. On the final day, I competed in the madison race, and after taking an early lead, we managed to carry this on and take the European Title, which was probably one of the highlights of my racing so far.

“Later on in the summer after a week of track nationals and other national road races, I headed out to Frankfurt Oder, Germany for the UCI Track Junior World Championships. I did not expect to be going to this, so it was amazing to be there. After our team pursuit qualifying went horribly wrong, we were lucky to qualify. We managed to redeem ourselves in the first round, beating the national record to qualify for the ride off for bronze. In the final, we beat Russia, taking the bronze medal and five seconds off the national record, we couldn’t have been more pleased.

“To finish off two weeks of hard racing, I claimed a silver medal in the world madison championships, which was an incredibly hard and fast race. I was pretty shocked to get a silver and couldn’t quite believe it.”