‘Make your opportunity’: Lauretta Hanson’s path to Paris

If there’s someone you want on your cycling team, it’s a rider like Lauretta Hanson.

The 29-year-old from the Macedon Ranges in central Victoria has built a reputation as one of the most reliable domestiques in the peloton.

While she’s rarely on top of the podium herself, the role she plays in her team Lidl-Trek is a crucial one.

Her job? To sacrifice herself, working tirelessly and selflessly to give her team leader the best chance of winning.

You’ll see her chasing down breakaways, hauling bottles or towing her teammates to the front of the race: Hanson is the ultimate team player.

It’s a role she’ll relish when she makes her Olympic debut in Paris for the women’s road race on August 4.

“I enjoy helping my teammates win as much as getting my own results, and it's something where I know I can really make a difference and help in a lot of different race scenarios. Maybe it's just my personality to help people, like it's just something I enjoy, on and off the bike,” Hanson says.

“It is difficult to explain to people when they ask, ‘Oh, how did you go?’ And I'm like, ‘Oh, I finished in 100th place, but my teammate won, and that’s the important part.’

“Even though in cycling only one person stands on the podium and it looks like an individual sport, it really is a team sport.”

Despite her usual support role, this year Hanson has shown she can also get results of her own. She finished second behind her Olympic teammate Ruby Roseman-Gannon in the road national championship. She was also runner-up at the Dwars door de Westhoek one-day race in Belgium.

“I do get opportunities and I enjoy that challenge as well. It keeps me sharp, too,” Hanson says.

“I still have to think about how I might win a race. It's certainly a different level of pressure. Working for yourself and working for a teammate is totally different. So, I do admire my leaders who take on that pressure every single race and I'm quite happy to work for them.”

Forging her own path

Although her mother, Heather, was a national champion herself (she won the road race title in 1981), Hanson says she wasn’t surrounded by cycling when she was younger.

With limited opportunities for women to make a career of racing in the 80s, Heather studied to become a nurse.

And when Hanson was just five years old, her grandfather was struck and killed by a vehicle while riding his bike.

“I guess that really kind of pushed my family away from cycling a little bit,” Hanson recalls.

Instead, like many kids growing up, Hanson tried her hand at a bunch of different sports from dancing to taekwondo – but ultimately, it was cycling that stuck.

“When I was eight, my local club kind of had a bit of a rejuvenation and my cousins started racing. So, I started racing as well,” Hanson says.

“I wasn't really serious about it, probably, until I was 15.

“I just kind of raced at my local club, then built into state-level racing, and then made my first state team and raced nationally and then went into international racing when I was 18.”

That’s when Hanson packed her bags and headed to America. Her plan was to race criteriums for a month before having a holiday in Europe and returning back to Australia.

That one month turned into six years after she was offered an athletic scholarship at Milligan College in Tennessee in 2014. In 2016 she signed with her first UCI team Colavita-Bianchi, then, in 2019, she landed a contract with one of the world’s biggest teams: Trek-Segafredo, now Lidl-Trek, where she has been since.

“It's certainly been an interesting journey. I've taken a different pathway to a lot of other athletes and a lot of my colleagues,” Hanson explains.

“A lot went from racing nationally within Australia to then being part of the AIS programs, straight to Europe.”

“But I love the opportunities that it's given me, and I wouldn't change it, to be honest. I have a lot of friends and networks all over the world and I think, if anything, I'm more resilient for the challenges that I had to face.”

The next milestone on Hanson’s journey was selection to the Australian Cycling Team, which she earned at the 2021 UCI Road World Championships and again last year in Glasgow.

The Olympics: the biggest stage

Hanson says the significance of her Olympic selection won’t fully sink in until she arrives in Paris.

“When I was a junior, I never really expected that cycling would take me so far. Cycling has taken me on quite the journey, and I never really expected that it would ever take me to the Olympics,” Hanson said.

“It's only been in the last few years that I really believed that that was possible and really worked towards it and had a lot of people in my corner. To actually achieve that was a pretty incredible feeling. I think I'm still sort of processing it and maybe I won't really believe it until I'm there on that start line.”

Cheering at that start line will be Hanson’s parents who are already in Europe, visiting her for the first time.

“My parents have always been a part of my journey, and my mum used to race as well. So, for them to see where I'm at now, it's pretty special to have them here.”

Hanson has just finished one of the biggest races on the Women’s WorldTour calendar, the Giro d’Italia Women, where she supported her team mate and overall winner Elisa Longo-Borghini.

She expects the Olympics will be a classics-style race suited to puncheurs.

“There's lots of steep little climbs that eventually accumulate and build on you. It's kind of like a Flanders classic; lots of short little climbs that just accumulate,” Hanson said of the 158-kilometre course, which has 1,700 metres of elevation gain.

“The climb in Paris itself, the Montmartre, [has] quite narrow cobbles, so that will also be quite selective there and quite tough. So even though it's not like it's a 3,000-metre climbing stage, it's definitely going to hurt.”

The Lauretta Hanson-PSS Quiet Achiever Scholarship

When she’s not supporting her teammates on the bike or chasing her own Olympic dreams, off the bike Hanson is helping the next generation of female cyclists achieve their own goals.

Earlier this year, she launched a scholarship to help junior female cyclists pursue a career on the road: the Lauretta Hanson-PSS Quiet Achiever Scholarship.

“When I was a junior, I was awarded a scholarship in honour of Scott Peoples, who is also a fellow Victorian cyclist who was killed back in 2006,” Hanson says.

“It was through that help and generosity of others that I actually found a pathway in cycling and was able to progress, and it helped me find that footing.

“It was something that I realised is a bit of a challenge in cycling, especially for juniors. There's a quite a lot of riders who just sit on that cusp that need a little bit of help.”

At the heart of the scholarship is the mantra, “don’t be afraid to make your opportunity,” Hanson says.

“The recipient at the moment is Mia Williams [winner of last year’s NJRS], and she has done exactly that. She reached out to a whole lot of French teams on her own and is currently over here racing in France.

“And that’s my biggest message to younger riders, that if the direct pathway isn't possible, don't be afraid to go and find your own opportunity to get where you want to go.”

It’s sound advice, and if Hanson’s path is any example, it might just take you all the way to the Olympic Games.