{"id":230753,"date":"2025-07-02T01:28:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T01:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/230753\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T01:28:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T01:28:14","slug":"two-time-olympic-triathlete-joins-top-pro-cycling-team-and-is-set-to-race-in-giro-ditalia-elite-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/230753\/","title":{"rendered":"Two-time Olympic triathlete joins top pro cycling team – and is set to race in Giro d’Italia – Elite News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leading Dutch triathlete Maya Kingma<\/strong>, a two-time Olympian, has become a professional cyclist at the top level of the sport.<\/p>\n

She was 11th at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and was seventh behind Cassandre Beaugrand<\/a> in Paris last summer.<\/p>\n

Her biggest win triathlon came at WTCS Leeds in 2021<\/a> when she got the better of home favourite Jess Learmonth<\/a>, with her most recent success last September at the World Triathlon Cup Karlovy Vary.<\/p>\n

But now EF Education-Oatly have announced that the 29-year-old has joined the team \u2013 and will make her debut at the Giro d\u2019Italia which starts this Saturday (6 July).<\/p>\n

Changing dynamics<\/p>\n

In a press release from EF Education-Oatly, Kingma said: \u201cI\u2019ve been doing triathlon for quite a long time now. Moving to road cycling has always been in the back of my mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to have more hills and changing dynamics. In road cycling, there are so many different types of races and tactics play a much bigger role. Those are the parts of racing that I really love.\u201d<\/p>\n

And she won\u2019t have to wait long to get a taste of hills and tactics as her first race with EF Education-Oatly will be the Giro d\u2019Italia Women, an eight-stage grand tour that rarely strays from the mountains this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no pressure,\u201d she said about making her professional road cycling debut at the Giro. \u201cExecute. Just go into it. I\u2019m used to big events; I\u2019ve been to two Olympic Games. Having the trust of the team is a big boost. And that makes me really excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Maya[Photo credit: World Triathlon]<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s Georgia Taylor-Brown<\/a>, the most decorated female Olympic triathlete, joined EF Education-Oatly for a training camp earlier this year while former Olympic champion Kristian Blummenfelt<\/a> was long rumoured to be switching to pro cycling but Kingma has been the first in recent times to actually make the leap.<\/p>\n

\u2018A big adventure\u2019<\/p>\n

And it sounds like she has already made a big impression at her new team.<\/p>\n

EF Education-Oatly general manager Esra Tromp explained: \u201cI invited her to attend our training camp in January, and she immediately made a really great impression on me. I got a clear picture of who she is, what her mentality is, and what she can bring to the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a young squad and we have riders that can learn a lot about being a professional from an athlete like Maya, even though she comes from a different sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond that, I think this year will be a big adventure for both of us. Her level of fitness is super high and I\u2019m really curious what we can discover in each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team added that at that camp in Mallorca, Kingma participated in a series of race simulations which included a team time trial, lead out sprints, and an uphill finish \u2013 and won the series.<\/p>\n

Since then they say she\u2019s continued to work on key skills by competing in road races in the Netherlands, where she\u2019s focused on tactics, cornering, and racing in a larger peloton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leading Dutch triathlete Maya Kingma, a two-time Olympian, has become a professional cyclist at the top level of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,90674,79,16,15,63671],"class_list":{"0":"post-230753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-olympic-games-triathlon","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-wtcs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}