When EF Education-Cannondale announced plans for their new team in 2024, Veronica Ewers was the first big-time rider under contract. Racing with a US Continental licence, the squad has since added 13 more riders, including US Pro criterium champion Coryn Labecki, Pan-Am ITT winner Kristen Faulkner and Paris-Roubaix champion Alison Jackson.
Ewers has gone from “terrified, uncomfortable” to “excited, invigorated” in a condensed pro career of just two full seasons, taking a straight-line approach to a learning curve with overall top 10s at both the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and the Giro d’Italia Donne. Last year she was fourth overall at the eight-day Italian stage race, with a runner-up finish on stage 4 to Borgo Val di Taro.
“It was my first Giro, and it was absolutely memorable. That second place, in particular, being able to share a podium with the likes of Elisa Longo Borghini [stage winner] and Annemiek van Vlueten, in her retiring year, was incredible. It was an honour to be there,” Ewers told Cyclingnews from a pre-season training camp for her new EF Education-Cannondale squad.
“The day I managed to get second was very much a reward for taking risks, just really being aggressive. So that was an awesome reward. I think the whole Giro itself just really made me so proud to be on the team I was on because we came together. And even though at that time, we knew that the team [EF Education-TIBCO-SVB] would be folding.
“There was a bit of back and forth in the rest of the race between fourth and fifth, myself and Erica Magnaldi with UAE. My team just really did an amazing job on the last day for me to be able to snag fourth, by one second because of the bonus sprint. It was pretty incredible.”
Ewers is excited for a reboot for the EF Continental squad with new teammates and a role as a GC leader, something she never had on her bucket list just a few years ago. She has a two-year contract, good health - healed from a broken collarbone suffered just before the Tourmalet stage of the Tour de France Femmes - and fresh goals for 2024. She just needs the Continental squad to secure wildcard entries into the Grand Tours to check off more goals.
“Yeah, I think the first half of the season I'll be aiming for one of the Ardennes races, particularly Flèche Wallonne. And then yeah, I’m looking ahead to the Giro and the Tour, they are the big ones for me. And I definitely am very interested in Worlds this year as well, in Zurich. I think the course suits me quite well.
“I'm that much more excited for the Giro. It will be exciting to kick off with an individual time trial to set up the GC. There aren't too many flat stages, which I prefer. It looks like a brutal set of stages and I'm really hoping to have the opportunity to race in it if EF Cannondale is selected as one of the UCI Continental teams invited to it. It looks to be a solid preparatory race for the Tour but honestly it is itself a proper race I will target,” added the Moscow, Idaho native who now makes Girona, Spain her home.
After a collegiate Division III soccer career and graduating from Williamette University in Oregon, Ewers “over-exerted” herself with two years in the gym and with running. She made an abrupt change in 2019 by going “110% into cycling” when asked to ride for the Fount Cycling Team.
“Clearly, they saw some sort of potential, and so I was like, ‘why not’. I haven’t looked back since. I didn’t have any plans to go into it professionally. I never expected to be a professional athlete,” she told Cyclingnews.
At the age of 23, she competed only in regional races with the Giro d’Italia Women and Tour de France Femmes not even a blip on the radar. Instead, she won the Tour de Bloom, Taco Time Volunteer Park Criterium and Boston Harbor Circuit Race. But a win is a win, and valuable for development.
After a 2020 season absent of formal racing in the US due to the global pandemic, she began the 2021 season with her first-ever race outside the Pacific Northwest, winning the Davy Crockett Classic in Texas. Only Ewers and Fount took note of her top condition and drive headed to the US Pro Road National Championships in Knoxville, Tennessee a few months later, where she surprised with a bronze medal in the road race.
“The best part of winning that Texas race is that you got a Davy Crockett hat. It was the only reason I wanted to win,” Ewers said about the iconic fur cap worn by the US frontiersman that has a raccoon tail on the back.
“My teammates had faith in me, but it was definitely a surprise to me. I am my harshest critic,” Ewers admitted about her podium at US Pro Nationals. “I really see myself as an underdog and sometimes a bit too much. I don’t trust myself to capitalise on a win. That doesn’t mean I won’t give 100% in whatever situation. But once I got third at nationals, then Linda’s [Jackson] ears sort of perked up."
She was a guest rider for Jackson’s EF Education-TIBCO-SVB squad that fall and rode for the first time in Europe.
“Nationals was actually the first big race I've ever done. Wow, the first race I've done with more than 20 women in the peloton. So I was pretty shocked at nationals to be in that big of a bunch and then coming over to Europe was even more of a shock to have triple that amount on a third of the size of the road.”
Now she’s a veteran in the peloton, and a leader on the road at some of the biggest events.
“I have a lot of potential to be a decent stage racer. I do well on fatigue. The later the stages get going the more people are fatigued and that’s generally when I do a pretty solid job,” she said.
“I'm really, really excited about being on this team, the professionalism and organisation already at the highest level. And I really love the ladies on the team, and I'm excited to see what we can do next year.”
