Multi-discipline sprinter Maggie Coles-Lyster started 2022 where she ended her inaugural season on a continental women’s road team, DNA Pro Cycling Team, earning podium places and wins. In the final days of team camp in March, the 23-year-old Canadian, nicknamed ‘Magnum’, released another big bottle of sparkling wine with a victory in Stage 3 of the Tucson Bicycle Classic, then she picked up the points take the lead in the American Criterium Cup with a second-place finish at the Sunny King Criterium last week.

A year ago, she entered her first full season of road cycling and finished second in the overall individual standings in the USA Cycling Pro Road Tour and USA Crits series and won top prizes at the Armed Forces Cycling Classic and Winston-Salem. Cycling Classic.

After racking up 10 podiums in criteriums across the United States, she skipped the offseason and hit the track in Europe as one of 72 elite riders in the inaugural UCI Track Champions League. in November and December. Her love for the track started when she was in elementary school in western Canada. She won a world junior track title in the points race in 2017 and considers the track her path to the Olympics.

“Since I started running at 8 years old, I dreamed of being an Olympic gold medalist, so I will shoot hard for Paris 2024 in the Omnium, the Madison and the team pursuit,” said Coles- Lyster. Cycling news from Scotland, where she arrived last week to compete in the Glasgow UCI Track Nations Cup, April 21-24.

“It will be the only Nations Cup I will be competing in this year, with the Commonwealth Games and the Track World Championships being my other goal races on the track. In Glasgow, I will participate in the Omnium and the Elimination, two events on which I have worked a lot over the past four years. We [Canada] We have a very new and young team pursuit team and finished fourth at Worlds last year, so we will have a few key events that we will be working to prepare for.

Last year in the Champions League series, Coles-Lyster finished three points off the podium in the Women’s Endurance Division after four rounds of competition across Spain, Lithuania and Great Britain. She will be one of the athletes to make an appearance later this summer in the league’s documentary series, Back on Track, airing April 4 via GCN+ and Eurosport.

Between track events, Coles-Lyster will switch from the red maple leaf national kit to the hot pink colors of DNA Pro Cycling, for his quest to lead the American Criterium Cup Series team and a return to stage racing. . His team is currently competing in the Redlands Bicycle Classic in California, a five-day USA Cycling Pro Road Tour race that returned after a two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our team is focused on the series, but we also have plans for the classic North American stage races that are back (Redlands, Gila, Joe Martin). I believe we will be really strong in the stage races and on the gravel, but I will focus on winning critics and a supporting role, chasing sprint points in the stage races,” said Coles-Lyster.

Just before her 19th birthday in February 2018, Coles-Lyster was hospitalized following a serious accident during the final omnium scratch race at the Six Day Copenhagen track event. She suffered multiple facial and rib fractures, a punctured lung and a concussion. She was back on a bike within weeks, but it took her months to fully recover from post-concussive symptoms.

She said she was looking forward to “calling herself a stage race again”. She’s still an U23 runner as well, so she has big plans to sweep that category with teammates Kaitlyn Rauwerda of Canada and Kira Payer of the United States.

“After a few nasty falls and concussions in 2018, I lost a lot of confidence in road running when I lost fitness during my recovery. Going from that to working hard during the pandemic, to top 10 in the GC at Joe Martin Stage Race last year and qualifying as a stage racer again is huge for me.

His commitment to the UCI 2.2 Joe Martin Stage Race, from May 19 to 22, will take him away from the Rochester Twilight Criterium on May 21, the second stage of the new American Criterium Cup. However, all eight races on the series schedule are in the bullseye for a share of the $100,000 purse, split evenly between elite men and elite women at the end of the season.

“Having a streak with points is cool, having a streak with money is epic!” It adds another motivation for the teams to show up to all the events, fill the fields and race hard – all of this makes criterium racing great for the runners, the fans and the communities in which we race,” a- she declared. “Reviews are such a fun discipline for the riders and the fans – it’s one of the reasons I love racing in the United States.

With a huge effort down the home stretch of the Sunny King Criterium, Coles-Lyster chased the rear wheel of Skylar Schneider (L39ION from Los Angeles), but ran out of pavement for the win. The effort over the hour-long race gave her the lead in sprint points and tied her for the overall lead with Skylar Schneider. She was not afraid of missing one of the races.

“What motivates me to put on a DNA kit every day is to get stronger and win more races because I like to win. I like to win for my teammates who trust me. However, more importantly , to win for a team that has supported and given opportunities and devoted all of its time and effort to women’s cyclists for the past 10 years.I put on the kit every day because it’s in my DNA.