Noah Ramsay, the winner of the male Zwift Academy, says winning an Alpecin-Deceuninck contract for this year is a “massive weight” off his shoulders.
The 21-year old Canadian has spent several years competing in UCI mountain biking events in his home country, but he will now transition to the road as part of the Belgian WorldTour team’s development setup.
Speaking to Cycling Weekly at the event in Dénia, Spain, at the end of 2024, Ramsay said that after spending a long time organising his own events as a privateer, knowing that he would be part of the Alpecin setup had come as a huge relief.
"I don’t even know how to describe it," he said. "It’s a massive weight off my shoulders, I don’t think I’ve even fully processed it yet. So I know I’m super happy, but it has not fully hit me yet. I don’t fully know what it means for me for next year, but I think it’ll mean less stress on me for having to sort my own plans out, which will be nice for a change. I’m really excited for the challenge that this brings for me now."
Playing down his own success, Ramsay was quick to highlight the strengths of his fellow competitors, including Scotland’s Elliot Bain, saying that he felt any one of them could have earned the lucrative contract at the end of the process.
"Once we were chosen, everything was very smooth, but the testing was very hard," he said. "I think it was clear who the best riders were, I don’t think I will have stood out particularly, I think a few of us all stood out."
The Toronto-born rider spent much of his youth playing ice hockey, only transitioning into cycling in 2018 when he first took up mountain biking.
"My cycling career started when I was 16 years old, after playing competitive hockey for all of my childhood," he explained. "I started racing a mountain bike in 2018, my second year of junior did not happen as it was 2020 and Covid-19 cancelled all racing in Canada so I spent the next 16 months training to get myself to a competitive level for international races when they returned."
Working closely with his coach, Ramsay eventually forced his way into the Canadian under 23 XCO World Championships team in 2021. He explained to CW that his MTB results have improved year on year, culminating in finishing fifth at the recent short track World Cup on the Monte Sainte Anne course in Canada.
Ramsay said he had taken a lot from his experiences on the Zwift Academy, with his favourite event being one in which he showed he had a cutting edge.
He said: "I personally really enjoyed the sprint workout drills that I had to compete against my fellow competitors, where it was kind of like a one on one race between the four of us. I could play it tactically there, I could think about how I was going to win, and afterwards I had a lot of feedback on my strengths and weaknesses and how I could use it all to my advantage."
