The penultimate day of competition of the 2025 UCI Road World Championships in Kigali (Rwanda), saw two rainbow jerseys awarded: in the Women Junior and Women Elite road races.
Magdeleine Vallières Mill delivered a thrilling performance in the “land of a thousand hills” to become the first Canadian Elite road race UCI World Champion. The 24-year-old followed the right move and dropped her rivals on the final ascent to take the rainbow jersey ahead of New Zealand’s Niamh Fisher-Black and Spain’s Mavi García.
In the morning, Paula Ostiz made history as she claimed Spain’s first Women Junior UCI world title on the road. Silver medallist last year in Zurich (Switzerland), the 18-year-old rider from Navarra stepped up to the rainbow jersey as she got the better of Italy’s Chantal Pegolo (winner of the elimination race in the 2025 UCI Junior Track World Championships) and Switzerland’s Anja Grossmann (bronze medallist before turning 17 next month).
Vallières Mill rules a rollercoaster
The Women Elite rainbow jersey was awarded after 11 laps on the 15.1km local circuit, climbing the Côte de Kigali Golf and Côte de Kimihurura, for a total distance of 164.6km with 3,350 metres of elevation.
Austria’s Carina Schrempf made the early break on the second lap and opened up a gap of three minutes. The chase gradually heated up, with Dutch and Spanish attackers trying to shake up the field. Elisa Longo Borghini’s Squadra Azzurra covered their move while Hungary’s Blanka Vas also showed her will to attack.
Eventually, it was Belgium’s Julie Van de Velde who got back to Schrempf on the cobbles of Kimihurura, with 77km to go. Shirin van Anrooij also bridged the gap to ensure Dutch presence at the front. The battle for glory was intensifying.
On the fifth lap, Van Anrooij went solo at the front, only to be caught on the seventh lap, with 57km remaining. Another move immediately ignited, with Spain’s Mireia Benito accelerating and Switzerland’s Noemi Rüegg joining her at the front.
The intensity increased again with three laps to go, and a spectacular chase group emerged. Longo Borghini accelerated from the bunch as the chasers got back to the lead duo into the last two laps, but it seemed too little, too late, for the Italian leader and the other contenders still in the group.
The ten leaders became three on the penultimate ascent of the Côte de Kigali Golf, with Spain’s Mavi García, New Zealand’s Niamh Fisher-Black and Canada’s Magdeleine Vallières Mill, a former trainee at the UCI World Cycling Centre in Aigle, Switzerland, powering to the front. Germany’s Antonia Niedermaier and the Netherlands’ Riejanne Markus joined them ahead of the final lap.
The race exploded at every echelon in the final lap, with Switzerland’s Marlen Reusser and Elise Chabbey, as well as France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, putting the hammer down. But nobody was in a position to react to Vallières Mill’s acceleration at the bottom of the final ascent of Kimihurura. She eventually took victory 23’’ ahead of Fisher-Black, with García rounding out the podium (+27’’) and Chabbey settling for fourth (+41’’).
Your Women Elite Road Race podium at #Kigali2025 🏆
— UCI (@UCI_cycling) September 27, 2025
🥇 Magdeleine Vallieres 🇨🇦
🥈 Niamh Fisher-Black 🇳🇿
🥉 Mavi García 🇪🇸
📸 SWpix pic.twitter.com/iFQbBVfcDQ
“The girls believed in me, so I believed in myself and I really committed to going for it,” Vallières Mills said. “I prepared well, so I knew I was in good form. I just tried and told myself I didn’t want to have any regrets… I don’t! It’s great to do it here, and with the [UCI] Worlds next year in Montréal, it’s perfect.”
Ostiz, a Spanish rainbow
The 72 riders representing 34 nations in the Women Junior road race faced five laps of the 15.1km circuit, for a total of 74 kilometres and 1,520 metres of elevation.
Czechia’s Antonie Cermanová was the first attacker to make it stick at the front when the race entered the second lap, but her move was nullified after a handful of kilometres as Ethiopia’s Tsige Kiros - part of the UCI World Cycling Centre’s Africa 2025 project to prepare for the event -accelerated on the ascent of Kigali Golf.
Onto the next lap, it was Spain’s Leyre Almena who broke away, before being reeled in on the cobbles up the Côte de Kimihurura. Her countrywomen kept pushing the pace, alongside British, Swiss and German riders, all willing to sap their rivals’ legs ahead of the finale.
New moves unfolded on the final lap, with the Netherlands’ Roos Müller attacking a couple of times, and Greece’s Eirini Papadimitriou Stampori going on the move with five kilometres to go. Anja Grossmann covered their accelerations and it all came down to the final ascent of Kimihurura, with a group of five rising stars battling for gold. Silver medallist in the time trial on Tuesday, Paula Ostiz eventually proved to be the strongest, getting the better of Chantal Pegolo and Grossmann.
"It's a dream come true,” Ostiz reacted. “I’m speechless. My family is watching me now, the whole country, Imanol [Etxarri, her trainer], the person who is with me every day, his family... I am so happy and I just want to enjoy it with the people around me. I knew I had to wait until the end because I've seen all the previous races. Sometimes I struggled a bit on the toughest climbs, and I knew I could be fast in the sprint, but in the end I got a little cramp. I won and I can't believe it."