Amy Bradley began planning for the 2025 UCI Gran Fondo World Championships the moment she discovered they would be hosted on home roads.
Eighteen months out, the Australian was organising logistics and looking at competing at an early qualifying event in Turkey to secure her spot on the start-line.
But then, disaster struck. The 41-year-old was cycling around Melbourne in March when “a guy on a Lime scooter ran a Stop sign on a blind corner and took me out,” she says.
Bradley injured her knee in the incident, four days before she was due to depart Australia for the UK, where she lives for several months of the year with her partner.
The Carnegie Caulfield Cycling Club member underwent rounds of physio, rehab, pain-relief injections, and even consulted with a sports doctor to try and rectify the problem.
“To be honest, it’s still not great,” she admits. “I’ve never had an injury like this. I thought it would get better, but it didn’t.”
Bradley could ride though only for a couple of hours at a time, and in July still hadn’t qualified for the 2025 UCI Gran Fondo World Championships in Lorne, Victoria, where more than 3,500 of the best amateur and recreational cyclists from around the globe will descend next month.
She never gave up though and found ways to stay not just active but competitive whilst managing the knee niggle, with a determined view to qualify for and be in Lorne come October.
“I did the AusCycling Esports Championships on MyWhoosh back in April, and that actually got me into racing on MyWhoosh,” she says. “They do a Sunday race, and I love crits in Melbourne, like, I’ve always raced Sunday crits, so it was actually a really good time for me to get into that.
“It gave me that competitiveness. It’s only an hour long, but it gave me an outlet to at least still get racing in.”
The difference between virtual simulations on an indoor bike to what came next, however, was stark. Bradley travelled from Manchester to Reggio Emilia in Italy last month for the Gran Fondo Matildica – the third last qualifying event in the UCI Gran Fondo World Series – conscious of the 2,100m of elevation gain that the 155km course there featured.
“It’s a big climbing one,” she says. “And it’s all-in as well, with the men and the Medio Fondo, so the peloton was 700 people. It was pretty crazy.”
Amy Bradley's qualification journey for Gran Fondo Worlds had unexpected turns. Photo: Supplied
Bradley has previously raced as a professional athlete. She had a stint as a guest rider at Rapha-Condor in 2010, competed across Europe with the Breast Cancer Care outfit in 2013, and represented the US-registered Louis Garneau Factory squad in 2014, so knows her way around a bunch. Racing in Italy though is notoriously hard and chaotic.
“There was no signage, but it split about 60km in, and I saw someone who was clearly on the wrong side of the road just immediately swerve right, and then I saw this bike cartwheel in the air 100m ahead of me,” Bradley recalls.
“That scared me a little bit, so I took my time getting to the junction to turn off and battled through.”
Bradley to qualify for the 2025 UCI Gran Fondo World Championships had to finish in the top 25 per cent of her age group, and the size of the peloton made it difficult to judge, on the road, how she was faring in that endeavour.
“I knew that I’d passed one woman on one of the early hills in my age group, so I just literally had to keep pushing and hope for the best,” she says.
Her best was notable.
“About 10 minutes after I got to the finish line the results finally came up, and I’d won my age group,” Bradley recalls.
The journey to the 2025 UCI Gran Fondo World Championships has been a tough and long one for Bradley, however, now back in Australia, she's showing no signs of slowing down as she eyes a rainbow jersey tilt in the women's 40-44 age category at Lorne.
Bradley competed at the Junior and Masters Road National Championships in Wagga Wagga last week, winning gold in the Masters Women 3 on Friday with an average speed of 33.6km/h.
Amy Bradley on the podium in Wagga Wagga. Photo: Supplied
So far, 254 women and 1313 men have qualified and registered for the 2025 UCI Gran Fondo World Championships – the youngest among them 19 and the oldest a Frenchman who will turn 85 during the October 15-19 tournament, which this year coincides with Amy’s Great Ocean Road Gran Fondo that more than 2,000 recreational riders, including Australian cricket great Peter Siddle and Olympic gold medallist Mack Horton, have signed-up for. Amy’s also advocates for improved safety between all road users, trying to ensure that accidents, like the one that impacted Bradley this year, and those sadly far more grave, are reduced to zero.
Bradley knows that competition at the 2025 UCI Gran Fondo World Championships will be fierce, with riders from over 60 nations to start. The 131km road race on October 19 commences with a punishing climb. Even Australian cycling legend Simon Gerrans has described the course as “honest”. But, as ever, Bradley is up for the challenge.
“Some women are just there to hang on. Some people will be out there to attack. And then you’ve got your strong climbers and rouleurs, so it’s trying to do the Strava stalk, or the Instagram stalk, to try and find out what your competition is like,” she quips.
“I’ve only been back in Australia for five days now and people who do the local bunches have said that every bunch ride is ridiculously fast. Everybody is peaking because they’re all racing in Lorne.
“To be really competitive in these you need to be able to race at a high A-Grade level, if you want to be top 10, top 20, in that pointy end,” Bradley continues.
“I know the strength of several of the women in my age group at this race in Lorne, so I’m definitely not going in thinking, ‘I’m going to win this.’ I definitely want to try.
“To be on the podium would be amazing. To win it would be, after the year I’ve had, a dream come true. But I’m just going to go and do my best and enjoy the fact that I’m here, and race as quickly as I can, so I can get back to The Bottle of Milk and get a burger for lunch!”
Main Image: Supplied