Kate Richardson interview: from despair to determination – a season reborn
After a year derailed by a hit-and-run crash, the collapse of her team and a winter spent battling self-doubt, Kate Richardson has emerged with a National Circuit Race title, a stage race win in Czechia and a renewed belief that the WorldTour – and even the Olympics – are within reach.
On a damp, overcast June evening, Kate Richardson finds herself riding around the narrow streets of Aberystwyth, locked in conversation with WorldTour powerhouse Izzy Sharp. The pair have just sprinted side by side in one of the closest finishes to a National Circuit Race Championship in memory, throwing their bikes to the line in a final bid for glory. They will only know the winner when they arrive back at the bustling seafront.
Realising I can be competitive with the WorldTour riders, I always believed it was possible, but it’s one thing to believe it, another to actually do it
“Izzy was pretty sure that I had it, but I kind of thought that she had it,” explains Richardson, recalling the conversation between them as they made their way round the course, her hands remaining firmly on the bars until the result was announced. “I didn’t want to celebrate too early, that would have been embarrassing!” she laughs.
Despite a national title on the line, Richardson declares, with an honesty that remains true throughout the interview, that she would have been happy with either outcome, having ridden a tactically astute race all the way to the line. “Obviously I wanted to win, but I couldn’t have done anything more,” she reflects, just being in that position a victory in itself for the 22-year-old.
Kate Richardson (Handsling Alba Development Road Team) wins the 2025 National Circuit Race Championship ahead of Isabel Sharp (Lidl – Trek). Image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
Just 12 months earlier, the Scot was left battered and bruised, not only physically but emotionally, following a well-publicised hit-and-run incident on the eve of the Tour of Britain. Now, in front of the television cameras, Richardson was back, competing with the best and, as she would hear over the PA system once the pair approached the promenade, beating them.
“Winning that race has given me a lot of confidence,” she declares, positive and upbeat about the sport and her future, as she chats to The British Continental – a far cry from the character she would describe only months earlier. “Realising I can be competitive with the WorldTour riders, I always believed it was possible, but it’s one thing to believe it, another to actually do it.
“Last season I had a feeling that was the sort of level I could compete at, which is why I was super disappointed when everything happened.”
Richardson is referring to the chain of events which marred her 2024 season, beginning with the hit-and-run incident in June and ending with her not having a team to ride for as she considered giving up the sport for good in January. “I was not in a good place,” she says bluntly.
To begin with I tried to bounce back like it was a normal scenario and I very quickly realised it was taking a massive toll on me mentally
While the immediate diagnosis back in June was a fractured scapula, road rash and bruising to her hip, the full scope of Richardson’s injuries was not so easily quantifiable as she attempted to mount a comeback as soon as possible.
Richardson, then at Lifeplus Wahoo, wins the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix in May 2024. Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
“I could never have foreseen the effects that was going to have on me. It’s more the nature of how that accident happened, how the guy behaved,” she explains, having been subjected to a torrent of abuse as she lay stationary on the ground, her dreams in tatters. “I had massive goals for the Tour of Britain, U23 Euros on the track, Nationals, and I really thought that could be my way of launching to a WorldTour team. To begin with I tried to bounce back like it was a normal scenario and I very quickly realised it was taking a massive toll on me mentally.”
I’d broken my collarbone and scapula, come back, then I got hit by the car, then the team folded
Her position was not helped by the news that her Lifeplus-Wahoo team had already raced their final event in August, their immediate closure leaving her without a ride for the following season. “I’d broken my collarbone and scapula, come back, then I got hit by the car, then the team folded,” she says, reeling off the issues she had faced in the space of just a few months in quick succession, as if to minimise their impact. “It was a massive shock,” she continues. “I’d been told they were looking to go Pro-Conti, and they offered me a two-year contract, so I thought I was safe, in with a team. I was kind of like, OK, I can take a bit of time to come back from [these injuries]. When that got taken away from me, I didn’t really have many results to show for the 2024 season, I was kind of panicked on what to do next.”
Unemployed and still injured, the predicament Richardson found herself in is a reminder of the tightrope a career in elite sport can balance on, her dreams teetering on the edge and seemingly beyond her control.
Richardson climbs Michaelgate in 2025. Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
Things, however, looked brighter as she signed for the now-defunct Hess Cycling Team at the beginning of December, only for rumours around their future and financial security to surface soon after, with the team not registered with the UCI until late March. “I was sold a great story by Hess,” she summarises, her situation, having cut ties with the squad, having not improved since August. “It kind of left me thinking, what am I going to do? That’s why it was so difficult because last year I was sure I put myself in the best position to maximise my chances of moving on to a bigger team, so to then be kicked back like that was really difficult to take.
It was just setback after setback. I had been training over the winter but my head was just not there. I was really emotional every day, just really struggling mentally
“I’m never normally one to throw the towel in, I’ve had plenty of setbacks and overcome them pretty well. I’d say I’m a very resilient person,” she outlines, emphasising the significance of her feelings as the New Year dawned and she slipped further into depression, eventually reaching for help. “It was just setback after setback. I had been training over the winter but my head was just not there. I was really emotional every day, just really struggling mentally.
“To turn it around the way I have, it’s a credit to the people I’m surrounded by who have got me through that. When I stopped believing in it, they never stopped believing in it, and that meant the world to me. I’m really glad I’m out the other side, but that was an incredibly tough time in my life.”
Handsling Alba Development Road Team celebrate winning best team at the 2025 Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix.. Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
Back on the bike, but still at a crossroads, Richardson rejoined the Handsling Alba Development Road Team in March, a move back to the team where her career started in 2022, having made the transition from triathlon to cycling. It is a move which has not only been paramount to lifting her spirits, but her palmarès too.
I’m not just saying this, I don’t say things I don’t mean, but Alba is without a doubt the most professional team I’ve ever come across
“I’m not just saying this, I don’t say things I don’t mean, but Alba is without a doubt the most professional team I’ve ever come across,” she notes, their elevation to UCI Continental status in 2024 adding an elevated race calendar to the formula that saw her impress during her initial spell, where she shone in the Tour Series and obliterated the field at Rás na mBan.
“I don’t think you need to have a massive budget and a fancy bus to be classed as professional, it’s more in your actions and how you behave,” she continues, the team’s transit van and marquee a staple of races both in the UK and abroad. “Bob and Elaine [Lyons], what they do, it’s like a family business, it’s a family-run team, and you know whatever they say they’ll deliver on, they create such a great environment. Every single girl on that team I get on with so well. I think Bob’s very good at picking good characters to come onto the team and that makes all the difference. Sometimes I go to a race and it’s not even the race that I’m focusing on, I’m excited to go away with my friends and see them.
“I think that was the perfect place to come back after the year I’d had and it was a massive blessing in disguise that everything happened and led me back to Alba because I’ve now had two of the best results of my career so far, so it’s definitely paid off.”
Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
The results Richardson refers to are her National Circuit Race title and overall victory in the Tour de Feminin, a UCI stage race in Czechia, where the support of her team was fundamental to her success. “Honestly, that first road stage was the hardest day I’ve ever had on the bike!” she says immediately, recalling the grim conditions that are permanently etched in her mind, Richardson and teammate Lauren Dickson battling the road and the elements to finish in a select leading group in a stage with over 2,000 m of elevation gain and barely a metre of flat. “I feel like none of us expected that, but we all looked like we’d come back from war when we got back to the team van!” she laughs.
Having survived the elements, Richardson would capitalise on her good form the following day, sprinting for the win in a two-up against Robyn Clay, and although that battle was lost, the Scot took a major step forward in the war, claiming an 18-second lead on GC ahead of the final 104 km stage.
The night before the fourth stage I just did not sleep at all, I was so nervous because I knew it would be a very big win for me
“The night before the fourth stage I just did not sleep at all, I was so nervous because I knew it would be a very big win for me,” she says, showing no signs of pressure when the race started, finishing safely in the leading group with support from her teammates throughout the stage.
“Everyone says this, but I truly can’t explain how well those girls rode for me. I would not have done that without them. Like my legs were definitely hurting by the fourth stage, but you could just tell they had a lot of motivation to help me achieve my goal which was so nice to see and that just sums up the atmosphere we have in the team. The way they rode was phenomenal, just took control of the race all day, always in the front, always protecting me, if any moves went they chased them down. It was a huge team effort which makes it all the more rewarding.”
On a personal level, the win also resonated with Richardson, a welcome confidence boost after a difficult period in her life. “It gave me a lot of confidence,” she explains. “I always believed I could climb pretty well. A lot of people, just because I do track, think it’s just the flat Belgian races I can do, but I actually think I suit a very, very tough, attritional day out and that’s what every day in Czechia was like, it was always up and down, just wearing-down courses. It was definitely hilly, but a big confidence booster to do well in that terrain.”
In many ways Richardson’s success in Czechia is merely a continuation of the form she showed prior to last June, the product of a meteoric rise through the sport starting to come to fruition, having made her Paris-Roubaix debut as early as April 2023.
Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
The experience paid off, however, as 2024 dawned. An impressive start to the season at the Tour Down Under was followed firstly by the Individual Pursuit national title on the track, then by a remarkable solo win by almost four minutes at the GP Betesco in Belgium only days later.
“The season had been up and down anyway,” she says, looking back to the first half of 2024, where a crash in the Netherlands would see her break her scapula, undoing her hard work in the opening months in a split second. “I worked really, really hard to come back in great form which obviously showed in Lincoln,” she says, referring to her win in Britain’s cobbled classic, one that remains among her best, and most special, to date.
I was thinking about how I was going to win it about a month out, so to pull that off, to have a plan and commit to it perfectly and it to pay off as you hoped it would, there’s no better feeling than that
“No matter what level I get to, I’ll always hold the National [Road] Series in high regard,” she assures, talking through her domination of the race, ripping up the usual script by launching a bold solo attack on the penultimate ascent of the fearsome, cobbled climb of Michaelgate. “I knew I really wanted to win that race, and I knew I really wanted to win it in the way I did as well. I was thinking about how I was going to win it about a month out, so to pull that off, to have a plan and commit to it perfectly and it to pay off as you hoped it would, there’s no better feeling than that.
“There’s no guarantee, no matter how good a rider you are, that you’re going to come and win those races – the standard in the UK just gets better and better and now we have four UCI Continental teams the races are not easy by any means.”
Following the National Circuit Series this July, where Richardson was a key player across the rounds, despite narrowly missing out on a win in the coveted National Champion’s jersey, she has been spending time in Europe, preparing for her future goals – a block of races in Europe with her Handsling Alba Development RT immediately on the horizon. “We’ve got a few invites to 1.1 Belgian races and a 1.1 in France, the Tour de l’Ardèche in September, but obviously with us still being a new Conti team we haven’t got that many races left, but I just want to make sure that the opportunities I do have I’m maximising,” she explains, casting an ambitious eye to the future.
2024 British National Track Championships. Women’s individual pursuit winner Kate Richardson. Image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
“My goal is just to keep on progressing and carrying the momentum that I’ve built over the season forward. I definitely want to balance track and road going forward. My two big aims are getting a WorldTour contract and getting to LA [Olympic Games],” she explains, pausing for a second before adding, “And hopefully have a bit of a smoother run with it now to make them possible,” a gentle nod to the fact that her journey to this point has not been a straightforward one.
“I believe that I can do both and want to juggle them both,” she outlines, turning professional on the road and earning a place on the notoriously competitive Team GB track squad lofty ambitions in their own right. “People forget that 2022 was my first season and particularly across 2023 and 2024 I’ve had so many injuries that I’ve had pretty limited race days, so I’m actually still getting to grips with the level and getting into the rhythm. I’ve had a lot of exposure to racing this year and I just want to keep building on that.”
People forget that 2022 was my first season and particularly across 2023 and 2024 I’ve had so many injuries that I’ve had pretty limited race days, so I’m actually still getting to grips with the level
With one eye on Olympic selection in a little less than three years’ time, Richardson’s attention will be on boards much closer to home next summer – something of a dress rehearsal for her Olympic dream – as Glasgow hosts the Commonwealth Games, an experience she is relishing. “When it was in Glasgow in 2014, I was watching every race, I was glued to the TV. That’s where I first got my love for sport. The prospect of a home Commonwealth Games, there’s nothing more motivating than that.”
For Richardson, the past year has been a bruising reminder of how fragile a sporting career can be – but also of the resilience required to endure it. From lying on the tarmac in despair to standing on the top step in Aberystwyth and Czechia, she has turned setbacks into fresh momentum. With a National Circuit title in her pocket and her sights set on the WorldTour and the Olympics, the Scot is no longer just proving she belongs – she is beginning to show she can lead.
On a damp, overcast June evening, Kate Richardson finds herself riding around the narrow streets of Aberystwyth, locked in conversation with WorldTour powerhouse Izzy Sharp. The pair have just sprinted side by side in one of the closest finishes to a National Circuit Race Championship in memory, throwing their bikes to the line in a final bid for glory. They will only know the winner when they arrive back at the bustling seafront.
“Izzy was pretty sure that I had it, but I kind of thought that she had it,” explains Richardson, recalling the conversation between them as they made their way round the course, her hands remaining firmly on the bars until the result was announced. “I didn’t want to celebrate too early, that would have been embarrassing!” she laughs.
Despite a national title on the line, Richardson declares, with an honesty that remains true throughout the interview, that she would have been happy with either outcome, having ridden a tactically astute race all the way to the line. “Obviously I wanted to win, but I couldn’t have done anything more,” she reflects, just being in that position a victory in itself for the 22-year-old.
Just 12 months earlier, the Scot was left battered and bruised, not only physically but emotionally, following a well-publicised hit-and-run incident on the eve of the Tour of Britain. Now, in front of the television cameras, Richardson was back, competing with the best and, as she would hear over the PA system once the pair approached the promenade, beating them.
“Winning that race has given me a lot of confidence,” she declares, positive and upbeat about the sport and her future, as she chats to The British Continental – a far cry from the character she would describe only months earlier. “Realising I can be competitive with the WorldTour riders, I always believed it was possible, but it’s one thing to believe it, another to actually do it.
“Last season I had a feeling that was the sort of level I could compete at, which is why I was super disappointed when everything happened.”
Richardson is referring to the chain of events which marred her 2024 season, beginning with the hit-and-run incident in June and ending with her not having a team to ride for as she considered giving up the sport for good in January. “I was not in a good place,” she says bluntly.
While the immediate diagnosis back in June was a fractured scapula, road rash and bruising to her hip, the full scope of Richardson’s injuries was not so easily quantifiable as she attempted to mount a comeback as soon as possible.
“I could never have foreseen the effects that was going to have on me. It’s more the nature of how that accident happened, how the guy behaved,” she explains, having been subjected to a torrent of abuse as she lay stationary on the ground, her dreams in tatters. “I had massive goals for the Tour of Britain, U23 Euros on the track, Nationals, and I really thought that could be my way of launching to a WorldTour team. To begin with I tried to bounce back like it was a normal scenario and I very quickly realised it was taking a massive toll on me mentally.”
Her position was not helped by the news that her Lifeplus-Wahoo team had already raced their final event in August, their immediate closure leaving her without a ride for the following season. “I’d broken my collarbone and scapula, come back, then I got hit by the car, then the team folded,” she says, reeling off the issues she had faced in the space of just a few months in quick succession, as if to minimise their impact. “It was a massive shock,” she continues. “I’d been told they were looking to go Pro-Conti, and they offered me a two-year contract, so I thought I was safe, in with a team. I was kind of like, OK, I can take a bit of time to come back from [these injuries]. When that got taken away from me, I didn’t really have many results to show for the 2024 season, I was kind of panicked on what to do next.”
Unemployed and still injured, the predicament Richardson found herself in is a reminder of the tightrope a career in elite sport can balance on, her dreams teetering on the edge and seemingly beyond her control.
Things, however, looked brighter as she signed for the now-defunct Hess Cycling Team at the beginning of December, only for rumours around their future and financial security to surface soon after, with the team not registered with the UCI until late March. “I was sold a great story by Hess,” she summarises, her situation, having cut ties with the squad, having not improved since August. “It kind of left me thinking, what am I going to do? That’s why it was so difficult because last year I was sure I put myself in the best position to maximise my chances of moving on to a bigger team, so to then be kicked back like that was really difficult to take.
“I’m never normally one to throw the towel in, I’ve had plenty of setbacks and overcome them pretty well. I’d say I’m a very resilient person,” she outlines, emphasising the significance of her feelings as the New Year dawned and she slipped further into depression, eventually reaching for help. “It was just setback after setback. I had been training over the winter but my head was just not there. I was really emotional every day, just really struggling mentally.
“To turn it around the way I have, it’s a credit to the people I’m surrounded by who have got me through that. When I stopped believing in it, they never stopped believing in it, and that meant the world to me. I’m really glad I’m out the other side, but that was an incredibly tough time in my life.”
Back on the bike, but still at a crossroads, Richardson rejoined the Handsling Alba Development Road Team in March, a move back to the team where her career started in 2022, having made the transition from triathlon to cycling. It is a move which has not only been paramount to lifting her spirits, but her palmarès too.
“I’m not just saying this, I don’t say things I don’t mean, but Alba is without a doubt the most professional team I’ve ever come across,” she notes, their elevation to UCI Continental status in 2024 adding an elevated race calendar to the formula that saw her impress during her initial spell, where she shone in the Tour Series and obliterated the field at Rás na mBan.
“I don’t think you need to have a massive budget and a fancy bus to be classed as professional, it’s more in your actions and how you behave,” she continues, the team’s transit van and marquee a staple of races both in the UK and abroad. “Bob and Elaine [Lyons], what they do, it’s like a family business, it’s a family-run team, and you know whatever they say they’ll deliver on, they create such a great environment. Every single girl on that team I get on with so well. I think Bob’s very good at picking good characters to come onto the team and that makes all the difference. Sometimes I go to a race and it’s not even the race that I’m focusing on, I’m excited to go away with my friends and see them.
“I think that was the perfect place to come back after the year I’d had and it was a massive blessing in disguise that everything happened and led me back to Alba because I’ve now had two of the best results of my career so far, so it’s definitely paid off.”
The results Richardson refers to are her National Circuit Race title and overall victory in the Tour de Feminin, a UCI stage race in Czechia, where the support of her team was fundamental to her success. “Honestly, that first road stage was the hardest day I’ve ever had on the bike!” she says immediately, recalling the grim conditions that are permanently etched in her mind, Richardson and teammate Lauren Dickson battling the road and the elements to finish in a select leading group in a stage with over 2,000 m of elevation gain and barely a metre of flat. “I feel like none of us expected that, but we all looked like we’d come back from war when we got back to the team van!” she laughs.
Having survived the elements, Richardson would capitalise on her good form the following day, sprinting for the win in a two-up against Robyn Clay, and although that battle was lost, the Scot took a major step forward in the war, claiming an 18-second lead on GC ahead of the final 104 km stage.
“The night before the fourth stage I just did not sleep at all, I was so nervous because I knew it would be a very big win for me,” she says, showing no signs of pressure when the race started, finishing safely in the leading group with support from her teammates throughout the stage.
“Everyone says this, but I truly can’t explain how well those girls rode for me. I would not have done that without them. Like my legs were definitely hurting by the fourth stage, but you could just tell they had a lot of motivation to help me achieve my goal which was so nice to see and that just sums up the atmosphere we have in the team. The way they rode was phenomenal, just took control of the race all day, always in the front, always protecting me, if any moves went they chased them down. It was a huge team effort which makes it all the more rewarding.”
On a personal level, the win also resonated with Richardson, a welcome confidence boost after a difficult period in her life. “It gave me a lot of confidence,” she explains. “I always believed I could climb pretty well. A lot of people, just because I do track, think it’s just the flat Belgian races I can do, but I actually think I suit a very, very tough, attritional day out and that’s what every day in Czechia was like, it was always up and down, just wearing-down courses. It was definitely hilly, but a big confidence booster to do well in that terrain.”
In many ways Richardson’s success in Czechia is merely a continuation of the form she showed prior to last June, the product of a meteoric rise through the sport starting to come to fruition, having made her Paris-Roubaix debut as early as April 2023.
The experience paid off, however, as 2024 dawned. An impressive start to the season at the Tour Down Under was followed firstly by the Individual Pursuit national title on the track, then by a remarkable solo win by almost four minutes at the GP Betesco in Belgium only days later.
“The season had been up and down anyway,” she says, looking back to the first half of 2024, where a crash in the Netherlands would see her break her scapula, undoing her hard work in the opening months in a split second. “I worked really, really hard to come back in great form which obviously showed in Lincoln,” she says, referring to her win in Britain’s cobbled classic, one that remains among her best, and most special, to date.
“No matter what level I get to, I’ll always hold the National [Road] Series in high regard,” she assures, talking through her domination of the race, ripping up the usual script by launching a bold solo attack on the penultimate ascent of the fearsome, cobbled climb of Michaelgate. “I knew I really wanted to win that race, and I knew I really wanted to win it in the way I did as well. I was thinking about how I was going to win it about a month out, so to pull that off, to have a plan and commit to it perfectly and it to pay off as you hoped it would, there’s no better feeling than that.
“There’s no guarantee, no matter how good a rider you are, that you’re going to come and win those races – the standard in the UK just gets better and better and now we have four UCI Continental teams the races are not easy by any means.”
Following the National Circuit Series this July, where Richardson was a key player across the rounds, despite narrowly missing out on a win in the coveted National Champion’s jersey, she has been spending time in Europe, preparing for her future goals – a block of races in Europe with her Handsling Alba Development RT immediately on the horizon. “We’ve got a few invites to 1.1 Belgian races and a 1.1 in France, the Tour de l’Ardèche in September, but obviously with us still being a new Conti team we haven’t got that many races left, but I just want to make sure that the opportunities I do have I’m maximising,” she explains, casting an ambitious eye to the future.
“My goal is just to keep on progressing and carrying the momentum that I’ve built over the season forward. I definitely want to balance track and road going forward. My two big aims are getting a WorldTour contract and getting to LA [Olympic Games],” she explains, pausing for a second before adding, “And hopefully have a bit of a smoother run with it now to make them possible,” a gentle nod to the fact that her journey to this point has not been a straightforward one.
“I believe that I can do both and want to juggle them both,” she outlines, turning professional on the road and earning a place on the notoriously competitive Team GB track squad lofty ambitions in their own right. “People forget that 2022 was my first season and particularly across 2023 and 2024 I’ve had so many injuries that I’ve had pretty limited race days, so I’m actually still getting to grips with the level and getting into the rhythm. I’ve had a lot of exposure to racing this year and I just want to keep building on that.”
With one eye on Olympic selection in a little less than three years’ time, Richardson’s attention will be on boards much closer to home next summer – something of a dress rehearsal for her Olympic dream – as Glasgow hosts the Commonwealth Games, an experience she is relishing. “When it was in Glasgow in 2014, I was watching every race, I was glued to the TV. That’s where I first got my love for sport. The prospect of a home Commonwealth Games, there’s nothing more motivating than that.”
For Richardson, the past year has been a bruising reminder of how fragile a sporting career can be – but also of the resilience required to endure it. From lying on the tarmac in despair to standing on the top step in Aberystwyth and Czechia, she has turned setbacks into fresh momentum. With a National Circuit title in her pocket and her sights set on the WorldTour and the Olympics, the Scot is no longer just proving she belongs – she is beginning to show she can lead.
Featured image: SWpix.com
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