Cat Ferguson was always likely to shine at the UCI World Road Championships in Zurich, but winning two junior world titles in the space of 48 hours was beyond even her greatest expectations. Ferguson, from North Yorkshire, has been winning British national titles and gold medals in the Youth Olympics since her early teens. In 2023, she won the junior Tour of Flanders and took silver in the road race at the world championships in Glasgow.
This season, she has won 12 races and her worst result is third. Gold medals in the junior women’s time trial and road race in Zurich have now fuelled expectations of a glittering career. Already flip comparisons with other dominant figures – the past world champion and Olympic gold medallist Nicole Cooke and the all-conquering Tadej Pogacar – are being made, but Ferguson, inspired as a child by watching Lizzie Deignan race in London 2012, is wary of getting carried away.
“It’s important to remember that I’m still only 18,” she tells the . “I’ve been given a lot of advice recently that I should take it slow. It’s important to not rush things.
” Confident, articulate and self-possessed, the teenager from Skipton who first rode up Alpe d’Huez as an eight-year-old has been the leading junior rider of the past two years and recently joined the Spanish World Tour team Movistar on a three-year contract. She is also the third British rider, after Nicole Cooke and Zoe Backstedt, to hold both the road and time trial titles. “I.