Sophie Alisch is not the first rider to declare their intentions to win the biggest bike races of all. But she is the first professional cyclist to have switched sports from boxing. Just over a year after her last fight – her 10th win in 10 professional featherweight bouts, maintaining an unbeaten record – Alisch has joined Canyon Sram zondacrypto’s development team.
Even accounting for Alisch’s big social media presence that dwarfs that of every other professional female road cyclist except Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, this was a bold signing from the German team – Alisch has only been riding a bike for one year and has never raced. But the raw data files indicate exceptional talent, and Alisch is aiming for the very top in her new sport, one that is very, very different from life inside the ring.
“My ambitions are always pretty high because you need high ambitions to succeed,” the 24-year-old tells Rouleur from her home in Mallorca. “It’s a dream of mine to eventually win the Tour de France Femmes, the Giro d’Italia Donne and of course to become world champion. These are big goals, I know, and first I need to get experience, but my mindset from boxing gives me a good advantage. If you don’t have the mental strength you don’t achieve anything. It’s in my DNA to always want to win.”
Alisch (left) throws a punch at her opponent in her last fight as a professional boxer in November 2024 before she took up cycling. Image: George Wood/Getty Images.
Many athletes have taken up and excelled in cycling after a previous sporting career in the likes of running, triathlon, skiing and speed skating, but no one has ever made the crossover from boxing to cycling. Until Alisch. But boxing wasn’t the German’s first sport. Aged 8, she and her family (she has two younger sisters) moved from Berlin – the German capital where she was born – to Kitzbühel in Austria. Within two years she took up tennis, and before long she was representing Austria in national tournaments.
When the Alischs moved back to Berlin after five years, a tennis coach of Alisch recommended her to find a sport alongside tennis “to free up my mind”. “I had the option of dancing, boxing and something else,” the chatty, energetic Alisch recalls. She chose boxing – and ditched the tennis racquet forever. “After just a couple of times I was so fascinated. I thought tennis was going to be my sport, but then boxing came along.”
It was the raw, pure nature of boxing that Alisch was attracted to. “You’re in the ring, one against one, fighting two or three minute rounds to find out who’s the best,” she says, enthusiastically. “20 to 30 minutes in the red zone only, having to focus on the fight and not getting punched in the face. It’s so compulsive. Measuring myself against others, competing against the best, it made me so happy. I had the feeling I was born for this.”
In no time Alisch made her mark on the sport. “I competed in the U19 German nationals when I was 14, and beat a really talented boxer in the final. No one saw it coming. I was the youngest ever champion in the U19 category.” A year later she defended her crown. “No one younger than me has ever done that since and no one can take it away from me.”
Her ascent continued to be rapid. “I was dreaming of being the best in the world,” she says, “and the big goal was definitely the Olympics.” One boxing website says that “as an amateur she was virtually unstoppable,” noting her 38 wins out of 42 amateur fights. Aged 16 – just three years after throwing her first punch – she was part of Germany’s Olympic team, the youngest of the squad. “I was so happy I was crying,” she remembers of the moment she was called up. A place at Tokyo 2020 beckoned, but the twin threat of the Covid pandemic and boxing having its Olympic licence stripped from it due to finance, governance and ethics issues (the sport eventually avoided this punishment) meant that Alisch’s dream was at risk of never being fulfilled. “We were unsure if we were going to go or not.”
That’s when one of boxing’s best promoters approached her with the offer of turning professional. “I was 17, it was a good offer, and I couldn’t really say no to it. I might never have been offered something like that again,” she says. Until 2016, only amateurs could fight at the Olympics, and though professionals now can, it’s difficult to do so due to a competing calendar and professional commitments. “I put my Olympic dream aside and signed a pro boxing contract,” she says. Five wins in her first year as a professional continued her march through the sport.
The German will make her cycling debut in March in Belgium. Image: Pohlmann
In 2022, Alisch moved to the Spanish island of Mallorca. “For boxing I trained in zone 2, and had always just gone out running. I’d go out on a Saturday and run 20km.” While in the Balearic Islands she noticed that Mallorca was also a haven for cyclists. “I saw that everyone had a bike, and I wanted one too to start training my zone 2.”
In early 2025, a few months after what would turn out to be her last boxing fight, she bought her first road bike and quickly became hooked. “I love to be outside in nature, and I loved seeing the island more. I began watching races, watched the Tour de France Netflix series, and got to know more cyclists, including professionals.”
There was also another thing about cycling that was tempting her. “In boxing we don’t have a season, and there are long lay-offs between fights, sometimes over a year." As if to illustrate this point, 19 months separated her penultimate and last professional bout. "Mentally that was really tough as I was training to compete but never actually fighting. And I'm competitive. I had a feeling that my career was not moving forward, I was on the same pedestal the whole time, and I wasn’t happy about that. I still loved boxing, but I could also see that women’s boxing was going backwards instead of progressing. I realised if I continued I would be wasting my time. I was so much happier on the bike and the fire wasn't burning for boxing anymore.”
Mulling over the decision to hang up her gloves or not, Alisch began to investigate how feasible a career in cycling would be. “I did a lab test [in April 2025 in Barcelona] and they said that for someone who had just trained and competed in the red zone – 30 minutes of intensity – and didn’t come from an endurance sport, the data was pretty good. They were impressed. ‘We can work with it,’ they told me. That was my sign to stop boxing and throw myself into the unknown.”
Alisch partnered with Canyon bikes, and in June 2025 they informed her of the WorldTour team’s development team, known as Generation. One conversation led to another, and in October 2025 she was given a contract for the 2026 season. She’ll be the oldest, but least experienced, of 10 riders on the roster. “I’m just so excited,” she smiles. “My first races will be in March [at a kermesse on March 21 and then the Midwest Cycling Classic a day later] and at first it’s most important to gain experience and show myself, and then of course it’s a dream to step up into the WorldTour team. I still need to figure out what kind of rider I am and they’ll put me into all types of races – mountain, hilly, flat. I’ll throw everything into every day, give my absolute best, and bring the work ethic and mindset with me from boxing.”
Only time will tell if Alisch’s move from the ring to the road will be a successful one. But the German is clear on one thing – cycling is about to be introduced to its newest fighter. “When we lost as a team in any sport at school, who was the girl who was down for the rest of the day? It was me. Whenever we had sports lessons I took it so seriously. That’s still the same today. That’s never changed. I’m so competitive. I’ll end my career as a cyclist – I’m not going back to boxing.”
Cover image: Pohlmann
