Alexis Magner (neé Ryan) and Heidi Franz will anchor the Continental girls’s staff Cynisca Biking for the 2025 season, with the US duo amongst six additions on the roster that returns simply 5 riders.
Absent from subsequent 12 months’s third season for the American staff are three riders who collected the vast majority of outcomes, together with multi-discipline veteran Lauren Stephens, who gained the Pan-American highway race and US gravel championships in 2024. Additionally absent from the roster are 4 different US riders and 5 worldwide riders, together with Irish nationwide highway and time trial champion Fiona Mangan and Canadian time trial champion Mara Roldan, who strikes to staff dsm-firmeninch PostNL.
Whereas the staff mentioned in a press launch that the main target for subsequent season is to develop North American expertise on a worldwide calendar of racing, Magner and Franz will carry speedy affect for the outcomes sheet in addition to function mentors for brand spanking new expertise.
“I am extraordinarily excited to begin a brand new chapter in my profession by becoming a member of Cynisca as a staff chief and captain. This staff is bursting with expertise, and I hope to play a giant half in ushering that expertise to the head of girls’s biking,” Magner mentioned in a staff assertion.
“Throughout my time as knowledgeable racer, I’ve had a couple of of the very best riders in girls’s biking historical past as my mentors. My largest purpose for this new chapter is to move alongside my data of the game to the following technology.”
Magner is likely one of the winningest girls from the US criterium circuit whereas racing for L39ION of Los Angeles the previous three seasons. In 2024 alone, the 30-year-old scored 21 high 10s out of 27 races, together with the Salt Lake Criterium in Provo and back-to-back wins on the Athens Twilight Criterium.
Coming into her twelfth season as a professional, Magner additionally spent six seasons with Canyon-SRAM. Her finest season with the German staff was in 2018 when she gained phases at Tour Cycliste Féminin de l’Ardèche and Drentse Acht van Westerveld whereas including podiums at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Ronde van Drenthe and a stage within the Giro d’Italia Ladies.
Franz additionally has a wealth of expertise from the worldwide racing, having success as an all-rounder on hilly terrain for 5 groups, together with Rally Biking, DNA Professional Biking. She was second within the GC at Joe Martin Stage Race in 2022 and the following 12 months she had high 10s at Ceratizit Competition Elsy Jacobs and Tour de Gatineau.
“I really feel assured that this can be a staff I can contribute to plus have enjoyable and proceed growing with. I’m nonetheless coming into my very own as a rider, and I’m actually grateful to have the assist of this staff to construct from energy to energy,” Franz mentioned about her transfer.
This previous season racing for Lifeplus Wahoo, Franz took fifth on a stage at Ladies’s Tour Down Underneath scored a pair of runner-ups at Rás na mBan in Eire, gained Nordic Gravel Collection- Jyväskylä and was seventeenth total on the UCI Gravel World Championships.
Among the many different new teammates are U23 Irish highway nationwide champion Caoimhe O’Brien, 24-year-old Febe Poppe of Belgium, and a pair of Canadians – Kaitlyn Rauwerda and Katja Verkerk.
Rauwerda, a 24-year-old who raced for DNA Professional Biking for 3 seasons, gained a stage on the 2023 Vuelta a Colombia Femenina. Verkerk, who turns 21 in December, gained the 2024 Canadian Gravel Nationwide Championships and on the highway she had high 5 finishes at Canadian criterium nationals and Gastown Grand Prix.
Returning to the squad are 5 US riders – Kayla Davis, Tess Edwards, Allison Mrugal, Chloe Patrick and Claire Windsor. Patrick is the reigning US U23 nationwide criterium champion and in 2024 she gained six elite and U23 nationwide monitor championships.
Cynisca Biking roster 2025
- Kayla Davis (USA)
- Tess Edwards (USA)
- Heidi Franz (USA)
- Alexis Magner (USA)
- Allison Mrugal (USA)
- Caoihme O’Brien (IRL)
- Chloe Patrick (USA)
- Febe Poppe (BEL)
- Kaitlyn Rauwerda (CAN)
- Katja Verkerk (CAN)
- Claire Windsor (USA)
