On the 4th of July 2023, Antonia Niedermaier came to the conclusion that she would be a professional cyclist. It took what happened that day, on the queen stage of the Giro d’Italia Donne, for her to make this choice.
From Salassa to Ceres, the women’s peloton covered a gruelling 105-kilometres with 2500 metres of elevation gain through Italy's Emilia-Romagna region. Annemiek van Vleuten was the favourite to win that day – as she was in virtually every stage race of this era – and no one really knew what Canyon//SRAM’s plucky German climber could do. But Niedermaier was born to race in the mountains.
The then 20-year-old made her winning attack on stage five ahead of the final climb, with just over 30 kilometres to go until the finish. Finessing curves and switchbacks through the dappled evening light cast on the tarmac beneath her, Niedermaier put her head down and rode. Behind, they chased furiously, but the Canyon//SRAM rider would stay away. After over an hour solo in her debut Giro d’Italia Donne, she eventually took victory on the biggest stage, beating the best at their own game. Professional cycling had met Antonia Niedermaier – and she decided she wanted to stay.
“That was the moment I knew I could actually be a pro cyclist,” she recalls. “It was when I realised maybe I could be a good bike rider.”
Many cyclists who follow the well-trodden path to bike racing’s top table come to this realisation much earlier in their lives. It is not a choice which is normally made on the top step of the podium of a Grand Tour – it's a dream discovered after winning your first race as a teenager, or when you learn to ride a bike. But Niedermaier, clearly, is not like most cyclists.
She grew up in the Free State of Bavaria, in the southeast of Germany. The region’s alpine and forest landscapes set the stage for Niedermaier’s pathway in sport. In her formative years, she would head to the mountains however she could: first by horse, then through cross-country running and ski mountaineering.
It is Bavaria which will always have her heart. Head to Niedermaier’s social media channels and you won’t find her on the sunny roads of southern Spain when she’s not racing, but with two skis in hand heading up high to the hills. Her camera roll doesn’t consist of beachfront snaps or aesthetically-pleasing coffee stops, but of snow-capped peaks and the occasional selfie of her riding a traditional town bike and wearing dirndl and lederhosen clothing for the country’s annual Oktoberfest.
“I grew up always riding my horse. My Dad did mountain bike racing as a hobby and when I was 13, I saw him get a medal. I decided I wanted to try and win medals, so he took me to a running race,” she remembers.
“It all started with running, then I took up ski mountaineering. I was asked to join the national team and that’s when my career as an athlete started. Cycling was just something I did in the summer for training, but during Covid-19 all the ski runs were closed. Bike racing was still happening, though, so I gave it a go. I did well in my first race and it all went quite quickly from there because I joined a cycling team when I was 17 or 18.”
In 2022, Niedermaier caught the attention of Ronny Lauke, long-time team manager of Canyon//SRAM racing. He was starting a German development squad which would feed talent to the WorldTour outfit and offered Niedermaier a space as part of Canyon//SRAM Generation. She accepted his proposition and suddenly, almost by accident, Niedermaier was on the path to becoming a professional bike rider.
“In the beginning it was quite strange trying to ride in the peloton with so many girls around me. I think this is why I found time-trials to be quite easy, because I just had to push the power on my own. You can compare it to mountain running or ski mountaineering because it is just you against the clock,” she explains.
“That was actually my favourite discipline because I didn’t have anything interrupting my effort and I’m just able to suffer on my own. I don’t find it hard to suffer, I enjoy the feeling of pushing my limits and going all-in for a race. I love being on the edge and seeing that one-kilometre to go mark. You know you’ve done everything you can with the power you have.”
Growing up doing aerobic sports has undoubtedly given Niedermaier the engine needed to excel in races against the clock at the highest level. The German woman became under-23 individual time-trial world champion in both 2023 and 2024, finishing in fourth place in the elite category in 2024 too. The process of preparing and working hard towards a major event is something that Niedermaier relishes; long training rides are a pleasure, never a chore. Her strength of character helps her to maintain focus when it matters most.
“When I want to achieve something, I am very structured and keen to achieve this goal. I always enjoy training and that I can do it as my job. When it’s raining in winter then sure, some days it is hard and you wish you could just lay on the couch, but in general it isn’t a struggle for me to get out,” she says.
“On the bike, it is always about focus, especially in the races when they are getting more technical and longer. Sometimes we have to keep our focus and concentrate for so long that it’s as exhausting as the riding itself.”
Niedermaier remembers the World Championships in Zurich as one of the best days she has had on two wheels so far: “It was epic. I’ve never felt as good as I did that day. I was happy with my numbers, happy with how I was riding and this was so satisfying for me. Fighting like that is what made it so good.”
If she wasn’t immediately comfortable with the chaos and close-calls in the WorldTour peloton, Niedermaier spent the early years of her career creating scenarios in road races that would help her to win – when you are alone off the front, a long effort to the finish line is as close as it gets to the sensation of doing a time-trial. Her first professional victory came at the 2022 edition of the Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l'Ardèche when she won the final stage by over one minute to take the overall general classification too. Her solo breakaway that day spanned over 80 kilometres.
“That was actually my first ever stage race,” Niedermaier laughs. “It was a hard race with so much climbing every day and at one point I just decided I wanted to try something. I was not expecting to be solo for long and I thought that surely someone would catch me. I don’t know how I did it in the end but I was actually enjoying it – it was like a really long ITT. It was a strange feeling because I was like ‘I actually never wanted to be a cyclist, and now I’m here.’”
While her journey to the top of the sport has largely been a whirlwind success story, it has also come with challenges. Niedermaier has had to use the mental strength that has got her this far to return from severe setbacks too.
She points to the day after her famous, career-defining stage victory at the Giro Donne in 2023 as an example of this. Just 24 hours after the high she got from out-climbing the likes of Van Vleuten, she suffered a crash which could have been career-ending. It was a turn of events which caused the cruel heartbreak that only a sport as unpredictable as professional bike racing can muster.
“The day after the biggest win of my career, I had that terrible crash. I lost two teeth and it was a miracle I didn’t break anything else. I went in a helicopter to the hospital and had so many appointments with doctors,” she remembers.
“I wanted to get back on the bike just five days after because I didn’t want to let any fear build up. I learned from horseback riding that it is always important to get back on the horse when you fall down and it’s the same for me with the bike. I couldn’t use my road bike because I’d injured my wrist so I trained mostly on the time-trial bike. In the end, that was good for me as I won my first world title in Glasgow in the under-23 time-trial just a few months later.”
Although she is adamant that professional bike racing was never the path she dreamed of, it's fair to say that Niedermaier has all the necessary traits to be one of the best cyclists in the world. Her physical talent allows her to produce the watts per kilo ratio needed to win rainbow jerseys, and her mindset ensures she can withstand the challenges and demands that come with the psychological side of elite sport. She has achieved plenty in her four years as a cyclist so far, but Niedermaier is keen to stress that this is only the beginning.
“This season I want to be better in the one-day races and support my team there. Then for sure, another goal is the Giro as I want to get on the podium overall there one day. World and European Championships are always a focus for me too, so there’s a lot of work to do there,” she comments.
“I feel like the mental part, I have to work on too, because that’s the point I struggle with the most. I need to gain confidence and believe in myself more.”
She believes that Canyon//SRAM-zondacrypto, where it all began, is the perfect place where she can continue to grow: “This team is really special for me because Ronny, my boss, saw me and he was always believing in me, even though I had no experience on the bike.
“Everybody was calling him crazy to sign me, and he was always like ‘I believe that she can be a good bike rider’. It's really special for me, that he trusted me so much. This team feels like a second family to me.”
Despite her lofty ambitions in the sport, Niedermeier doesn’t dream of stardom or fame. Flashy cars or swanky apartments don’t do much for the Bavarian mountaineer, and victories in the crazy sport of professional cycling she has found herself in are only a small part of what she dreams of for the future. She’ll never forget where she has come from and, for Niedermeier, home is always where the heart is.
“I am so happy with the life I choose. Every time I ride at home with my father and my boyfriend, I don’t need anything else. I’m just happy with that. Once I first stepped in those mountains, I was addicted to them. They are my identity.”
