Mia Griffin has come out of a dramatic year and is now hoping for a big season. The last 12 months have seen her qualify, and ride, the Paris Olympics, but with a serious concussion in between, before ending with the first Irish overall victory for a decade at Rás na mBan.
In the year ahead, she competes for World Tour team Roland, which will ride the Tour de France and major classics like Paris-Roubaix. Griffin is very much counting herself in for selection for the biggest fixtures on the calendar.
"If I'm able to, that would be unreal," she told stickybottle of riding the Tour de France. "If I'm doing it, I'd want to be in good shape. And some of the stages look pretty nice.
"And it's the same with the Giro as well, there's a few flatter stages. Thinking about that, it's quite cool, because to get the opportunity to be in those races, it's pretty amazing really."
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Griffin gets her season underway tomorrow, Thursday, at UAE Tour, where compatriot and team pursuit team mate Lara Gillespie will also be in action, for UAE Team ADQ.
She said she has had plenty of time to prepare for the road season, with no track commitments over winter. And though she goes straight to the European Track Championships after UAE, 2025 is all about the road for Griffin.
She spent a month in Calpe, Spain, late last year before going home to Kilkenny at Christmas "for a lovely de-load week". More recently, she has taken in a period training in Mallorca, where her partner, Robin Froidevaux, was starting his season with Tudor Pro Cycling.
"We only have 11 riders on the team as it stands, so it's going to be a pretty packed schedule," Griffin said of riding with Roland on the road this year. "Obviously I'm a punchy rider, rather than a climber. So most of my races will be the ones that are more suited to me.
"But obviously you want to balance that out with making yourself better for the long-term by doing those hillier races as training. My main aim is just to get a full season on the road because I've not had an uninterrupted full season on the road. So that's going to be really nice."
After the track Europeans, Griffin will ride some one-day races in Belgium, with Gent Wevelgem and Paris-Roubaix in France then on her agenda. Looking ahead, any of the Grand Tours is possible and she could even ride two, though she says she has to be selected.
She is especially keen to throw herself into the road scene this year following her finish line crash, sprinting for victory, at Cyclis Classic (1.2) in Belgium on May 1st last season. She suffered a concussion, her second in two years after a crash on her Paris-Roubaix debut in 2023.
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Though her second concussion "was nowhere near as bad" as her first, it "was very frustrating, I was really angry with it". She first had to focus on resting and recovery and then training and getting back into top condition for the Olympics; a race against the clock to be on the line in Paris to race against the clock.
Being one of just five riders for the team pursuit at the Games brought an added pressure to her recovery and her efforts to regain her fitness.
However, though she did not race on the road at all between the crash in Belgium and the
OIympics, she lined up at the Paris Games with Kelly Murphy, Alice Sharpe and Gillespie. They smashed their national record on the way to 9th.
Looking back now, she says the Paris Olympics passed quickly but were an incredible experience.
"I think my family really enjoyed being in Paris as well and they have a great time watching all of these Olympics sports. It was lovely and we did a nice time. And then it was all over and I tried to focus on what was left of the season."
What was left was Rás na mBan, where she went and won two stages and the overall. She said she went there "hungry" but then, suddenly, the racing was all over for 2024.
"It's safe to say, I'm very keen to get going road racing this season. It's about getting that full season of road racing for me. I'm building that road racing engine. And what comes with that will come with that."
She is also very keen to see how she gets on at the track Europeans, saying both she and Gillespie are experimenting with riding a stage race immediately before a major track championships to see how it works for the future.
"I think it can work really nicely, because you come in and you're ready to go," she said. "It's harder for team pursuit, obviously, because it's such a shorter and punchy discipline. And it requires a bit of organisation for training for it.
"But with something like the madison or the bunch races… because me and Lara are coming in from UAE, it'll be nice to try it."
And once the Europeans are completed, road will remain the main focus.
"It's going to be nice this season coming into the races and targeting the races that I want to do, I'm trying to stay out of trouble as much as possible."
