'It's a credit to women's cycling that nobody dominates' – 2025 Giro leader Anna Henderson analyses where she, Lidl-Trek and the sport are all heading in 2026

Even if it wasn't quite as much as she'd have liked, an awful lot went right for Anna Henderson in 2025.

At 27 and in her first year at Lidl-Trek, she clinched her first WorldTour wins, she took the lead in the Giro d'Italia for two days, she was part of the line-up that captured the opening team time trial in the Vuelta a España, she secured top threes in both her National Championships events, and took top tens or top fives in everything from Amstel Gold to the elite women's World Championships time trial.

So if Henderson has a lot of reasons to be optimistic about her own chances of success in 2026 and is, as she tells Cyclingnews, intrigued and hopeful about seeing what she can achieve - all of this at a time when both in her own team and beyond, there's a sense of widespread change and new opportunities also abounding.

Within Lidl-Trek, the retirement of two of the biggest figures in the sport, Lizzie Deignan and Ellen van Dijk in the same season, obviously both creates a sense of major loss of two points of reference, but are also, as she says, "two huge holes to fill."

Equally, in women's cycling in general, last year already saw a large number of major transfers, ensuring that rather than one rider or squad making the running, the whole scenario became much more unpredictable. Which, according to the British racer, is also a very positive thing.

Henderson herself was an example of why. Her breakthrough career victory in the Giro d'Italia, winning a mountain sprint duel against Dilyxine Miermont (Ceratizit) to take both stage and lead, was born out of individual initiative - staying away with her rival for more than 40 kilometres. But she and Miermont also outflanked the favourites' teams on a day that would not have been so easy to see materialize in that form in men's racing.

Not only that, seizing that kind of opportunity meant she could take another step away from being labelled, partly thanks to taking silver in the TT in the 2024 Olympics, as 'just' a gifted time triallist.

"I think because of all the results I've happened to have in time trials, they see me as more of a time triallist," Henderson told Cyclingnews over the winter.

"But I think I still have a lot of ambition in the Classics, too, and this year I really want to make a step in that direction, too. Last year, I had a lot of 'nearly' results, so to have a really good result in the Classics would be super nice."

Renewed motivation

Getting her win in the Giro and then in her very last event of 2025, the Tour of Guangxi one-day race, not only enabled her to go into the winter with renewed motivation. It also confirmed her feelings that the transition into Lidl-Trek from Visma-Lease a Bike the year before had gone well.

She'd had a tough 2024, with two collarbone breaks and three operations in the space of six months, leading to a "super intense" build-up to the Olympics, where she took silver behind Grace Brown and a "bit of burnout afterwards."

But after signing for Lidl-Trek, she turned the tables on the bad news and challenges that had hampered her with a vengeance.

"Sometimes it takes some time to find your feet in a new squad, and yeah, I had some of the biggest results in those WorldTour races, and that was really special," she says.

"I hope to just continue building on those wins and continue that upward trajectory, and yeah, I think with Lidl-Trek it's only just the start, and I think we've got a lot to give each other.

"This year, knowing everything, I'm guessing that's an extra sort of base because you, you know, your way around the machine, the system, and so it's a lot more straightforward to kind of move around.

"People think all teams are the same, and the roots and the core of bike racing are all the same, whether you're in one jersey or another.

"But actually, switching squads is like moving house or moving cities, you take time to find your roots, and you settle down. Then when you do, you feel like you know everything again and that extra kind of reassurance means you can then go ahead with your goals."

The events of actually taking the stage win and the lead in the Giro were like a miniature reflection of her career up to that point, in that she broke out of the time trialling 'label' to succeed in other areas last year.

Then at the Giro, after narrowly missing out on the top five despite doing a really good time trial on stage 1, she was poised to go for the lead on the very next stage. On top of that, she says, she'd already told her partner before the stage she won that she had nothing to lose.

"I was in complete shock, because we were really ambitious to win stages, but to do that on the first road stage - you couldn't ask for more. Then to take pink and keep for a few days was super, super special," she recalls.

The new direction for women's cycling

Yet if unexpected, breakout and breakthrough scenarios heavily feature in women's cycling in general in 2025 - one where from the memorably bizarre situation in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in later February with the top names all marking each other and letting the break get away, right the way through to the Worlds road race.

As the unexpected became the norm, as Henderson points out, barring in the sprinters where Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) rules supreme, it has had a lot of consequences. Arguably, the most important thing is that there are a lot more different winners, and cycling in general, as well as Henderson in particular, have reaped the benefits .

"I think it did change a lot because if you look at who actually won all the races last year, nobody was consistent," Henderson agrees.

"OK, Lorena, she's in another league, but when you look at the other types of stags and riders, it was really impressive to see so many different people dominating, and I think that was really a credit to women's cycling, the women's level stepping up as a whole."

It becomes even more remarkable given the comparative dearth of opportunities to shine on the biggest stage races, Henderson points out. Each Grand Tour in women's racing is only eight or nine stages long, compared to 21 stages long per Grand Tour - so there are 21 victory opportunities - in men's racing, well over twice the women's total.

Yet despite that, women's cycling has far more riders and teams winning than in men's racing, with the all-conquering Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG)

"There's a lot of unpredictability in the racing, because you really don't know who's going to win," Henderson says. "Of course, you know who's going well at a given moment, but I think it [the lack of a clear dominator] is nice, it makes the racing purer, because somebody can have a bad day, somebody can have a great day, and then you have a lot of different winners. That brings a lot to the sport."

It's not all ideal. The growing expense of the sport, too, is a concern for sponsors, she recognises, because as she puts it, "We're not [top football team] Manchester United with sell-out crowds of 70,000 on a Thursday night, and being free for spectators is part of the beauty of cycling." But that also makes her very grateful, she says to be in a team like Lidl-Trek that provides her with all the support she needs despite the changes.

That's particularly important in a women's cycling calendar, which she describes frankly as being "disjointed" with a very intense first part of the year, now culminating in two Grand Tours at the Giro and Vuelta, then "almost nothing happening" in July prior to the final double whammy of Tour de France Femmes and World Championships.

Henderson didn't know what Grand Tours she'd be doing, but the Classics are going to be a major target for sure, and after Britain failed to field a team for the elite women's World Championships road-race, she has some serious unfinished business at the Canada Worlds, too.

Back to the Worlds

Henderson rode the TT the the Rwanda World Championships, but not the road race, with Great Britain not entering any riders in the elite women's race, but she's hoping to make a return in 2026.

"I always have such a focus on the Classics, and I kind of forget about the second half of the season, so it's definitely a conversation due with the team to work out what we both want," Henderson says.

"I was on Veloviewer a few days back, and it's clear 2026 will be another hard Worlds, and something I would look towards is maybe being able to survive and try and do a good ride there.

"It definitely suits me a bit more than Kigali did, but unfortunately, we didn't have a British team in Kigali's road race, which was a shame, for women's cycling and British cycling, because they are such a powerhouse.

"I'd done every single Worlds from 2018 until 2024, too and last year Rwanda was the first road Worlds that I'd missed in my whole professional career.

"It was such a special Worlds and the race was super dynamic, too. You couldn't have predicted what happened - and that's part of the beauty of the Worlds."

Again, the uncertainty of how the elite women's road race played out, with the favourites marking each other out of contention and the breakaway making it to the finish, once again has echoes of the general unpredictability of the elite women's racing scene in general. That also stands in marked contrast to the way Pogačar, Evenepoel, and Vingegaard currently dominate men's racing.

But it's not just about how things look overall; in Lidl-Trek, too, the loss of Lizzie Deignan and Ellen van Dijk makes for a sudden dearth of reference points across the board and the absence of top leaders in Henderson's squad as well.

"There'll be two huge holes that need to be filled this year, and we'll miss them deeply," Henderson confirms. "They really are two beacons of the sport. They've done so much in women's cycling, and they've done so much for women's cycling as well."

"It not just things like Ellen's three World time trial titles, they were always people that you could turn to talk to and listen to with advice and also just a kind of presence in the races, as road captains and in team meetings."

Regarding Van Dijk in particular - who has moved over from riding to the Lidl-Trek coaching side - Henderson was particularly impressed with her work ethic.

"It was something I've never seen. She was super dialled, and her work ethic is to keep going and going.

"He ability to push herself within a time trial was something amazing - and nobody could beat her for three years. So I hope to keep her as a confidante.

"And it'll be interesting to see how our team kind of moulds into a new shape. I'm curious how that will change, and obviously different riders will take new roles, and for sure we will miss them."

"It was super special being teammates with them for that one year, and yeah, I will miss them greatly, but I hope we can keep on carrying their greatness and their pioneering."

The question of what Henderson can achieve has already partly been shown in last year's Giro d'Italia, of course. But probably the most important point is how she can do that in a women's WorldTour that is - barring Wiebes' crushing sprint domination, an area where Henderson had never hoped to compete anyway - a much more freewheeling, complex affair than it has been for years.

What's more, if 2025 already showed Henderson mirroring that open-ended kind of sport with her own progress, then there's no reason why 2026 shouldn't be another big step in that direction.

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