This article was first published in Rouleur Issue 142.
On her eighth birthday, Magdeleine Vallieres’ dad bought her a bike. It was a simple hybrid with a pannier rack and the plan was to use it to cycle Vallieres’ family’s house – a relatively normal activity for an eight-year-old. That is, unless your family is based one thousand kilometres away on the other side of the country.
“I had my little luggage fitted to the bike and we rode for nine days. I was either going to love it or hate it and in the end, I loved it,” Vallieres says with a grin. “That’s how I got the passion for cycling.”
So, here is where the story of cycling’s latest breakthrough superstar begins. Throughout those nine days, up and over the rolling green hills of Quebec, Canada, Vallieres stuck to the back wheel of her father for over a hundred kilometres each day, and a future world champion took shape.
“We weren’t going very fast. We were probably leaving at 7am and coming home at 7pm, so I was not suffering so much. My dad was probably suffering more than me, hearing me talk a lot the whole day,” she laughs.
Ever since that trip, momentum built. There was the school sports scholarship as a teenager which meant two hours of cycling every morning for Vallieres on all types of bikes – mountain, BMX, cyclocross – plus trips to Quebec in the summer holidays to try and get involved in a few road races. There were weekends on the sofa watching the Tour de France – “but it didn’t exist for women back then so I didn’t think I’d ever do it,” Vallieres points out – and an annual outing to watch how the best did it at Canada’s premier WorldTour races, GP Quebec and Montreal.
The dream of becoming a professional cyclist undoubtedly always existed for Vallieres, but turning that into a reality came with its challenges. Riders based in North America have fewer racing opportunities while developing as athletes compared to those in Europe, and there’s the obvious geographical limitations that come with overseas race trips.
“The sport is growing in Canada but it is still not like over here,” Vallieres explains. “We’re slowly getting more people on bikes but I remember doing the World Championships as a junior and I thought that being a professional wouldn’t be possible for me because it was so scary in the big bunch for the first time. A bunch of 15 riders to over 100 is so different and the level is so much higher. You also have to move your whole life, leaving your friends and family, to get here to race.”
Cycling’s governing body, the UCI, has systems in place for riders like Vallieres who come from countries where cycling is not yet a major sport, in the form of the World Cycling Centre (WCC) in Aigle, Switzerland. A multi-sport training centre with high-tech facilities for advanced level athletes, the WCC is a gateway to the professional ranks for those who need a stepping stone when it comes to racing in Europe. This was Vallieres’ lifeline.
“It was a way to get to the races and see if I liked it in the pro peloton and learn a lot. It was a good way to transition into pro cycling. I stayed in the residence there so I had a room with a roommate who I went to all the races and trained with.”
While her years living in Switzerland were all about learning for the Canadian, she showed promise for a rider with her experience in the few races she did as part of the WCC team. A top-ten finish in Watersley Women's Challenge, a stage race known as a hotbed for developing talent in the women’s peloton, plus impressive performances in hilly one-day races, caught the attention of American WorldTour team EF Education-Tibco-SVB.
(Image credit: Dario Bellingheri via Getty)
“I think by helping my teammates, I learned a lot of tricks of when we need to be in front in order for them to save the most energy, and the times that are the most important in the race
“I signed with them for two years and back then the team was quite different then to what it is now. When I signed that contract, that opened up more big races and a more professional set-up,” Vallieres says.
“When they signed me, we went over the calendar and they actually had no clue of what kind of rider I would be, so they put me in a bit of everything to try to figure it out. So I did the Classics, I did the Grand Tours, I ended up racing quite a lot that year and then I think they started to see that I could be a helpful member of the team, and they valued me a bit more.”
It was grit and determination that got Vallieres as far as a WorldTour contract, and it is this which helped her keep it, too. She finished almost every single race in her first season with EF Education, proving that she’s a fighter in the peloton, even if the odds haven’t always been in her favour.
“In my head, I knew my teammates had more experience and were stronger, so for me, it was about what can I do so that we can make the team get the best result possible? That was more my goal: how do we get the team where we want to be? I think by helping my teammates, I learned a lot of tricks of when we need to be in front in order for them to save the most energy, and the times that are the most important in the race. I can take this with me into every race. I found the harder the race, the better it is,” Vallieres states.
“I had a lot of mentors through the year, and they were always showing me ‘now you need to ride the front, now you need to be in that breakaway, follow that move now, bring us to this point in front’, and how to manage everything else around it. I remember Alison [Jackson, 2023 Paris-Roubaix Femmes winner] said to ‘embrace the chaos and go for it.”
As Vallieres has evolved as a bike rider, so has the team she has spent her career with. EF Education-Tibco-SVB merged with the men’s equivalent WorldTour team and changed management three years ago which allowed bigger budgets and more access to resources.
“It’s nice to see throughout the last four years with EF how we’re now a lot more respected in the bunch, it’s easier to position than it used to be. We’re one team with the men’s squad now,” the 24-year-old says.
It is the support from her team that Vallieres puts a lot of her success down to. She pinpoints her first professional victory, at the Trofeo Palma Femenina in 2024, as a breakthrough moment in her career and the moment in which she realised that she was not just destined to be a domestique, but had the qualities of a winner too.
“It was a really special moment, because also my teammate Noemi [Rüegg] won the day before, and then to win, we had two wins back to back. Also for me, it showed me that maybe I can do a different role in the team, so it opened my eyes a lot,” she states. “It gave me a lot more confidence, that’s for sure.”
Just like when she rode over a thousand kilometres with her father as an 8-year-old, Vallieres begins to thrive when the tough gets going. She relishes the hilly one-day Classics and stage races, coming into her own when everyone else starts suffering: “I like when people get tired and when it all gets harder.
(Image credit: Zac Williams)
“It’s about how you prepare and make the best out of yourself. I just wanted to have nothing to regret in the end.”
This is why, then, the Canadian rider was a quiet underdog for the 2025 World Championships in Rwanda. Avid watchers of women’s cycling might have known about Vallieres’ punchy climbing prowess, but she was far from a pre-race favourite to win the rainbow jersey. Yet she had an inkling that her form was building earlier in the year.
“In the Tour [de France Femmes], I saw that I wasn't so far off. We were riding for Cédrine [Kerbaol] and we actually had a really good Tour. Sadly, she crashed on the last mountain stage, but that gave me a lot of confidence for what was next and I knew my form would keep getting better, so I really focused on Worlds, because my coach had told me the course was perfect for me, like it was made for me. I went all in for it and the one thing that was really important was I didn’t want to have any regrets on that day. So that’s how I prepared myself for it,” she remembers.
The Worlds had been a goal for Vallieres since the start of the season and she admits that she and her coach “pushed the limits” in training with brutally challenging sessions leading up to the big day: “Sometimes I would come back from training and say ‘I don’t know why we did this.’ Normally, it’s rare I cannot finish a training session. If I can’t, I’m really disappointed. But sometimes I would finish really on the limit and say ‘is that normal?’ Then he made me do ten minutes of torque training ten times and then after he laughed and said ‘I didn’t think you were going to be able to do it.’”
Training at altitude was a key ingredient to Vallieres’ success, aware that the Worlds would be high up in the African heat. The combination of weather conditions, thin air and the repeated, punchy climbs on the course in Rwanda was going to mean a lot of suffering for all riders. Luckily, this is what Vallieres enjoys most.
“I remember when I got to Rwanda, it was really, really hard. The days before the race, I had interval training over there and it was one of the rare times that I could not do the training, and I was really demoralised after,” she recalls.
“Then my coach said ‘you can either take it as a positive or as a negative. It depends how you see it, everyone’s suffering, so it’s positive, or your suffering, it’s negative.’ So then I chose to use it in a positive way. But the conditions were really, really hard, but we also had such a nice welcome. People were dancing the whole time we were racing. I think they were also doing something crazy, dancing for I don’t know how many hours without stopping and singing. It was impressive.”
Vallieres explains that in the pre-race meeting, the night before the most important day of her career, she was granted team leadership from her Canadian teammates, something that gave her a lot of confidence – especially riding alongside the likes of Jackson who she had been teammates with on EF Education too.
(Image credit: Zac Williams)
Patience was key throughout the 164.6-kilometre race in Rwanda. The difficulty of the day is not something that Vallieres or her coaches underestimated: “I knew I needed to be patient for the first half, that was for sure. I didn’t do any hard efforts, because with the heat and the altitude, when you go too much into the red, it’s hard to come back,” she remembers.
“The girls really helped me to save as much energy as possible. Then, it was more of an instinct. I was in a good place when the break went and I said ‘oh, then I’ll go.’ Our team DS, Carmen Small, told me: ‘When you go, commit!’ So then I just committed all in and I said ‘no regrets.’”
The breakaway group was formed and Vallieres found herself out front of the biggest bike race in the world. The dynamics in the group were complicated. It was a game of chess, a fine balance between following moves, waiting for the next one, and picking the moment to make your own.
“Most girls were just sitting on, so I was a bit frustrated. But, it’s cycling. I was thinking ‘I’m doing a lot, maybe it’s not so smart if we get caught back,’ but as I said, I just committed. I thought ‘this is my best chance. This is the chance.’ I just continued, I felt good, so I just kept pressing on.”
Vallieres knew that, with her physical characteristics, waiting for the final sprint was not her best play. Once she had enough belief that she and her breakaway companions would stay away from the peloton, it was time for her to think about playing her trump card. That came on the final climb, on the last lap.
“I thought if I don’t go, then it’s a sprint, and I don’t want to wait for the sprint. I know my three to four minute power is good, so I just tried something. Like I said, no regrets, so I just went. A few metres later, I thought maybe this was a mistake, but in the end, it wasn’t.
“I felt pain, so much pain. But I was like, ‘you have to keep on pushing, you’re almost there. It’s the World Championships. What is happening? It’s not possible. Don’t care about the pain. Just continue.’ Then I was taking in the crowds and just trying to get to the line.”
When the moment of release came, Vallieres brought her hand to her mouth in shock and disbelief at what she’d done. The moments straight after the race ended are a blur of tears, embraces and noise. Talking to me three months later, she still believes she hasn’t really processed it.
“I know it’s real, but it’s still a bit unreal to me,” she says with a shake of the head. “All my family, my friends and everyone through my journey contacted me to say congratulations. It’s been super special. I’ve received so much love.”
It’s fair to say that life has changed in immeasurable ways for the new world champion: “I’m just going with the flow. For sure, it’s really different from what I’m used to. I’m used to a quiet life: training, resting, training, resting, sleeping. But I’m going with the flow.”
No longer is Vallieres the plucky underdog from Canada, but instead she now goes to races with the rainbow jersey on her back, watched and under scrutiny for her performances. “It’s maybe a bit more pressure, but also a lot of motivation. I mean, it’s an honour to be able to wear this jersey, so every time I get to wear it, it’s special. I’m going to keep on continuing my training and progression I’ve been making through the last few years, trying to get better. With the team, I’m going to get more opportunities to go for it, so I’m excited to see how it turns out.”
The Ardennes Classics are where Vallieres has her sights set for 2026 with the repeated efforts being well-suited to her strengths. In the long term future, she wants to target Grand Tours, perhaps even pivoting to a general classification contender as she evolves. Above all, enjoying every second of her time in the rainbows, revelling in the highest reward in her sport, is always going to be in Vallieres’ mind.
What would she say now to the eight-year-old girl on her hybrid bike with dreams of making it across the pond to the big time?
“Trust the process. There’s going to be highs and lows, but don’t get too disappointed in the lows, just keep on trusting that the highs will come. They happened. It happened.”
