Interview: Kasia Niewiadoma
Kasia Niewiadoma tells Owen Rogers about how she's found balance in the heart of the Worldtour peloton and how she'll capture that elusive Strade Bianche win.
Despite two years passing since the most recent edition of the Amstel Gold Race, the day still sticks in the memory.
Yes, there was Mathieu van der Poel’s breathless, jaw-dropping victory, but a couple of hours earlier Kasia Niewiadoma had set the Cauberg alight with a stunning win of her own.
Having tested the water on the previous lap, Niewiadoma dropped Marianne Vos the last time up the Dutch race’s signature climb, before the most nail-biting of final kilometres. Behind the Canyon-sr A M rider, Annemiek van Vleuten was closing in, metre by agonising metre, with each revolution of a massive gear.
But Niewiadoma gritted her teeth and summoned every ounce of strength. With 25m to go, she looked around for the first time, raised her arms, and won by the slimmest of margins and with the biggest of smiles.
That finish was a physical manifestation of how she describes her attitude to racing to Cycling Weekly. “There’s no mercy, there’s no giving anything away or trying to be polite, it’s about achieving something you really want,” she says.
Even before that day, the Polish rider had good memories from the hills of Limburg. She finished 11th on the same finish during the final stage of the 2013 Boels Ladies Tour, where she was 10th on GC and best young rider.
At 18 years old, riding as a trainee for Rabobank-liv Giant, she placed in the top 25 in each of the six stages, ahead of many more experienced competitors.
“She was a very good addition to the team,” says then team manager Koos Moerenhout, who worked with Niewiadoma until the end of 2016. “She was enthusiastic, willing to learn, and on the climbs you could tell she had something exceptional.
“You could tell she had something exceptional”
“She was a bit like an iron lady; if you told her to run through a concrete wall she would do it, she would never give in. That was her strength.”
Youth and experience
Katarzyna Niewiadoma grew up in a small village near Limanowa in the mountains of southern Poland,
halfway between Kraków and the Slovak border.
“As a young person you always want to go exploring the world and meeting people whose world is completely different to yours,” she tells us. Though she wanted to ride with her dad and older brother, as a child she had no clue cycling would allow her to explore the world. However, when she and her dad finally convinced her mother the sport was safe, there was no going back.
Her first road bike arrived aged 15 and she was competing immediately. She won first time, and was soon picked up by a coach and racing in and around Kraków. Two years later she finished 25th at the Junior Worlds, bettering that result the following year on her first visit to the Cauberg, before taking the big step into the elites in 2013, initially with the national squad.
“I was in my first year as an elite;
I did the European Championships and I got some good results and then Rabobank gave me the chance to race with them; it was a dream come true.”
Her performance as a trainee saw Niewiadoma join Rabobank full time, staying with the team through to the end of 2017 after it became WM3. Riding with women like Marianne Vos, Annemiek van Vleuten, Anna van der Breggen, Lucinda Brand and Pauline Ferrand-prévot, there was always a danger she might have got lost.
“It’s never easy, but although she didn’t have the experience and she was modest, she was also not afraid of showing herself,” says Moerenhout. “Of course every athlete has his or her doubts but she was never intimidated by them, she would always go for it.”
Her first win came halfway through that debut professional season, at GP Gippingen. She then finish third overall at the Ladies Tour of Norway and a remarkable 11th on GC at the Giro Rosa. The following year she was fifth overall and has never finished lower than seventh, with last year’s second place her best.
However, the promising start and incredible consistency have not led to regular victories. There have been some: in 2017 she expertly defended time gained on a stage-one solo break, to win the Women’s Tour, and two years later she took the gnarly stage four to a sodden Burton Dassett. She won the 2018 Trofeo Binda in similar conditions, and of course there was another victory in Limburg during the 2016 Boels Ladies Tour. Has she lived up to expectations? “Not yet,” says Moerenhout. “I have the impression that the gap with her and riders like Van der Breggen and Van Vleuten at Rabobank was smaller than it is now.”
It’s clear she and the two Dutch greats have similar talents and attributes, but as Moerenhout points out, she has been competing at the pointy end of the world’s biggest races for so long it’s easy to forget how young she is. By the time Niewiadoma reaches her 27th birthday this September, Van Vleuten will be a week from her 39th and Anna van der Breggen about to retire, aged 31. Her ex-boss believes she can still win the Giro Rosa.
Free spirit
“Freedom,” says Niewiadoma, when asked what she loves about cycling. “I am not a person who follows structure all the time and there are times when I can do my thing, feel my own sensations and go where I want to go, but there is a time when I strictly follow the plan, so I always look for this balance. But after so many years I understand my body and know what
I want, so it is easier to do both.”
It is perhaps this balance that gives Niewiadoma her air of calm; she possesses a cool serenity. She seems to glide around before and after races, apparently suffering those sometimes interminable waits behind podiums without a care in the world.
“I’m a religious person and I always feel protected and calm because I try to focus on my energy and the people that are surrounding me. I believe that everything is already written for us, so I just need to follow certain things carefully and other things will happen.
“The moment I start to attack, I feel like I’m going to do it”
“Before a race I will kind of close myself and stay in my head, have a little prayer and try to slay all those bad thoughts in my head. “When you really care about something, that’s when you have the biggest amount of doubt in your head. You know that you’re good, so you don’t want to waste the chance of achieving something big.
“It’s like a very weird mind game – you want to be best, but at the same time you’re so afraid of losing that you’re like, ‘I just want to get out of here’. You don’t want to race, you don’t want to be there because you’re so scared of actually making mistakes.”
Behind the conflicting aspects of coolness and doubt beats the heart of an ambitious, aggressive competitor. You only have to watch the footage of her winning Amstel Gold to understand that.
It’s a cliché, but for Niewiadoma everything comes from the heart, and she races as she lives. Whether that brings victory or not, you feel she cannot do it any other way, and she’s fine with that.
Her post-race interview after that victory on the Cauberg all but says as much.
“This is just my style, I need to be active, I need to feel I can do whatever I want and not to be waiting for the final, final, final, because that kills me inside. The moment I start to attack or be active in the front, I feel like I’m going to do it.”