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Sarah Gigante was racing around on wheels before she could walk.
Key points:
- Sarah Gigante recovered from a horror crash to win silver at the junior worlds
- She earned a perfect ATAR score and won a university scholarship
- At just 18, Gigante became the 2019 national women's road cycling champion
Gifted a $20 op shop two-wheeler, the trainers were off within a week, her little legs pedalling furiously around the family deck-turned-track.
"I used to race around there like a mini-velodrome as fast as I could and sometimes I'd get Mum to stand there with a stop watch and time me. That's before I even knew cycling was a real sport," Gigante said.
At the age of just seven, Gigante told her mother she was sick of riding tag-along and tandem and wanted to tackle the 500-kilometre Great Victorian Bike Ride alone.
So Kerry Gigante took her youngest child to the Brunswick Cycling Club, where onlookers warned she would need a crow bar to prise her determined daughter off her bike.
In her first season out of junior ranks, Gigante upstaged the biggest names in Australian cycling by winning both the under-23 and women's national championship titles on the hills of Victoria's Mount Buninyong.
At just 18, Gigante finished 50 seconds ahead of Olympian and world championship silver medallist Amanda Spratt in this month's 104-kilometre race.
So astonished was she about breaking away from her "idols" to challenge Spratt's Michelton-Scott supremacy, Gigante wondered on the cusp of the finish line if she still had a lap to go.
"It's more than a dream — I wouldn't even dream this big," she gushed after her shock solo win, before a tearful mid-interview hug from her mum.
Gigante even went to sleep in her champagne-soaked national championship jersey.
"It didn't feel real at all on the Sunday, but when I woke up I looked down and I was wearing the green and gold stripes — I was like, wow, it's true. It's amazing," she said.
Gigante's success is even more remarkable because it came just eight months after a club race crash that left her hospitalised with a broken elbow, wrist and shoulder.
She had to be spoon-fed like a baby for weeks.
"She was eating a teaspoon at a time because of the stitches in and outside of her mouth, and she had the appetite of a road athlete — not the appetite of a baby," Gigante's mother said.
When doctors doubted she would be fit to compete at the junior track world championships in Switzerland last August, Gigante was typically determined to prove them wrong.
With the help of her mother she bought an abseiling harness and roped herself to a tree in the backyard for twice-daily sessions on her stationary training bike.
"Never say never to Sarah. She knows how to overcome obstacles," Kerry Gigante said.
Unable to write, Sarah also relied on her mum to transcribe her Year 12 homework for months, and her hard work juggling the books and the bike paid off.
Gigante won silver in the women's points race at the junior track worlds, represented Australia at the road world championships in Austria, and aced her final exams to earn a perfect ATAR score of 99.95.
This year Gigante will take up a prestigious chancellor's scholarship to study science and a language at the University of Melbourne, and race domestically and overseas with amateur team Roxsolt-Attaquer.
Photo:
Sarah Gigante proved wrong doctors who doubted she would be fit to compete after an accident.After finishing second to Gigante in the road nationals, Amanda Spratt is in awe of her achievements.
"She's got amazing potential. She's proven that if she puts her mind to something, then she can achieve anything," Spratt said.
Brunswick Cycling Club president Ag Giramondo is similarly full of admiration for Gigante's strength, stamina and tactical smarts, which have helped her outclass more experienced, professional cyclists like Spratt — without a coach.
"She's got such a work ethic, it's phenomenal, it's inspirational," he said.
"The more people find out about what Sarah has done, the more they're in awe, and totally captivated by her story."
Looking ahead to Paris
Commentators argue Gigante's performance in Buninyong puts her in contention for next year's Tokyo Olympics, but Cycling Australia's Donna Rae-Szalinski believes the 2024 Paris Games are a more realistic goal, as Gigante steps up to international racing and finishes her degree.
"I would hate to see that kind of pressure put on a young girl," she said.
"For a first-year senior it's a dream to go to the Olympics, but to go from a beginner level to an Olympic medallist level, it's a 10 or 12-year journey."
While Gigante is already wearing green and gold, riding for the national team in Australia Day's Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, she is characteristically modest about her future.
"I like to focus on the now rather than looking too much into the future and putting a lot of pressure on myself, but I do want to take cycling as far as I can," she said.
But for all her brilliance in Buninyong, Gigante's podium cork-popping fizzer showed this talented teen still struggles with some things.
"I can't open champagne bottles," she laughed.
Topics: cycling, sport, buninyong-3357, vic
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