'Don't make her angry, she can become a tiger': Inside Elisa Balsamo's rise to stardom

This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 13 October 2022. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.

Elisa Balsamo won Trofeo Alfredo Binda last Sunday, before doubling up at the Classic Brugge-De Panne on Thursday. Here's her story.

The first time many people became aware of Elisa Balsamo was when she emerged from her Italian team-mate’s wheel to win the World Championships in Belgium in September 2021. But Chiara Consonni remembers her friend winning another rainbow jersey five years earlier.

“We had new bikes; I had one in blue and she had one in white,” Consonni recalls of the 2016 Junior Worlds in Doha. “We knew that Elisa was super good in the sprint because she also won junior Ghent-Wevelgem. I was the last girl in Elisa’s train and she was just so scared because she thought that something was wrong. 

“I remember that she told me, ‘Chiara I am not ready, I don’t want to do the sprint!’ and I shouted at her ‘No! Now you do the sprint and you do what you are here to do!’ At 200m she started her sprint and as soon as she started I saw she would take the victory.” 

As Balsamo stood on the podium Consonni led her Azzurre team-mates singing 'Il Canto degli Italiani', tears streaming down their faces.

Five years later in Leuven Balsamo had matured. As her namesake, Elisa Longo Borghini’s bludgeoning leadout began to fade, it seemed as though the tyro would be forced into the wind too soon. But gone was the doubt of that Doha sprint, and as Longo Borghini looked back, Balsamo shook her head, she needed one last, desperate effort. 

“I remember the last 500m because I was dying!” Longo Borghini says. “I opened up the sprint and Elisa followed me. I asked her to pass and she said no, so I kept my speed for like 10 seconds more and then she went. I watched the sprint from far because I completely exploded.”

And just like 2016, when Balsamo sprinted, no one, not even all-time great Marianne Vos, was able to catch her. Over the line, the Italian was soon engulfed in a wave of disbelief, tears and happiness - azure blue turning to rainbows.

Balsamo’s parents were forced to stay in Italy for dad’s work organising bike tours in the north-western city of Cuneo, so they celebrated her win in the company of friends. “We watched on the phone and for us it was unbelievable because our daughter is a simple person” explained Sergio Balsamo, still in shock a year later.

That year had not gone well. With only one win on the road, 2021 had been built around the Olympics where she competed exclusively on the track but did not meet her own expectations, failing to medal in the omnium, Madison and team pursuit.

“She finished the Olympic Games and her mind was destroyed when she got home,” continues Sergio. “She told us she did not want to ride for one week and she didn’t touch the bike at all, and then she realised that the World Championships were good for her.” With four weeks to prepare, she re-focused both her mind and training, racing the Simac Ladies Tour and Ceratizit Challenge, before bagging 10th at the European Championships and second at GP d’Isbergues.

“For us it was unbelievable, her concentration and strength of mind. When she wants something she tries to arrive at that event in the very best condition, and four weeks to prepare was not easy because it was a 150km race and around 2,000m of elevation.” So when did the Balsamos get to speak to their daughter after she won the Worlds?

“We texted by WhatsApp and we talked to her in the evening. My wife and I cried, but she was happy. We didn’t have the words because it was so out of our world. It took us two or three days to understand that our daughter was world champion.”

Perhaps Sergio should not have been so surprised at his daughter’s achievement; after all, she inherited good cycling genes.

“My wife competed in some Gran Fondos and I started competing when I was 14. We have a UCI sporting director licence and for 12 years we coached a local junior team here in Cuneo, and when Elisa was one year old we would take her in the team car behind the race.”

Competition was a natural progression for her, though a crash in her competitive debut, aged six, put her off regular racing. While she would compete occasionally, living in Cuneo in north-western Italy, her sporting attentions were in the nearby Alps where she would ski, both downhill and cross-country. 

In summer she would swim, but aged 13 she told her parents she would like to race her bike more seriously. Given their experience, it was obvious that Sergio and mum Silvia would coach their daughter.

“Here in Italy we have a very big problem because parents and sporting directors they want young people to win and to compete. But for us it’s too early, you have to start around 17, 18, before you have to enjoy it and increase your technical ability on the bike. So until the age of 17 we tried not to do too much training,” says Sergio.

At 17 Balsamo headed to a new team, joining Valcar Travel and Service when it was still a national rather than a UCI squad, growing with them until she left for Trek-Segafredo as world champion at the end of 2021. “For her it’s like a second family, the president and sponsor loves cycling and for him the riders are like daughters, so for Elisa it was the best team for growing slowly, year by year,” Sergio explains.

Through her teens Balsamo’s education was as important as cycling and the Balsamo family moved from the small town of Peveragno to nearby Cuneo, so she was closer to school. She would ride there each day.

One day a week her parents would drive her to training at the Montechiari Velodrome, a round trip approaching 700km. “We would leave here around noon, Elisa would have lunch in the car and take three hours to reach Montechiari, then come back here by 11. That was life for Elisa.”

Her studies did not suffer though, and she is currently nearing the end of a five-year Italian Literature degree [Ed. Balsamo graduated in March 2023]. “She is super-intelligent,” says Consonni. “She studies a lot, but that is her character, no? Because she is not only good at sport, she does four or five hours of training and in the afternoon she studies. I sleep in the afternoon!”

While her studies have continued, Balsamo's passion for the piano has suffered, and while she dabbles there isn’t the time to play every day, though Sergio tells us his daughter will return to it once her cycling career is over.

Davide Arzeni joined Valcar as manager and sports director, and remains Balsamo’s coach to this day, despite her leaving the team last year. Though he arrived at the team in late 2015, some months after Balsamo, Arzeni’s memories go further back.

“I was president of a small team of males and I think she was 13 or 14 years old and she beat our young promise, Alessandro Covi [now UAE Emirates] who recently won the stage on the Marmolada at the Giro [stage 20]. He was the jewel of our little team and she beat him in the sprint. I thought that maybe Alessandro was not a good athlete because he had been beaten by a woman!” Arzeni laughs. 

“Even then she had the characteristics of now, very fast and good on short climbs; she was a complete athlete. I knew she was a very talented girl in cycling, but also she was a very simple and quite serious in every day life. She’s always very kind and polite, but don’t make her angry – she can become a tiger!”

Balsamo’s first junior season had not gone as well as she had expected, but under Arzeni’s guidance she blossomed. “I earned her trust and in 2016 we won everything that was possible, the Road Worlds in Doha, silver at the European Road Championships, two World Championships on the track, the Italian Road Championships and many others.”

A year younger, Consonni also has long memories of her friend, having raced against and then with her since they 12 and 13. As teenagers, when Balsamo moved up an age group, Consonni would win more. Both sprinters, not only were the pair team-mates on the junior Italian squad in 2016, they rode together at Valcar until the end of 2021 and would occasionally take turns leading each other out. So how do they differ?

“Maybe Elisa is more complete because she is also stronger on the sharp climbs, and maybe I am more explosive than her, so I have a shorter sprint and she has a longer one,” explains Consonni.

“She’s a funny girl, we are good friends, but maybe sometimes she is,” she pauses, smiles, then bangs her fists together, “testarda! [stubborn] And for this reason sometimes we don’t agree, because I am too, sometimes I am worse! 

“What I want to have is her head, because when she makes some goals she always tries everything to do it, and maybe I’m not like her. I love this in Elisa. She is so ambitious when she has a goal, when she wants to do something – that also gives us motivation and the strength.”

Fittingly, Balsamo’s first win in rainbows came with Valcar. A few days after that success in Leuven, she led out Consonni on stage four of the Women’s Tour before reversing roles the next day, but both times they were bested by Dutch powerhouse Lorena Wiebes of DSM. However, on the final stage in Felixstowe, the Valcar leadout was perfect, Consonni the last woman and Balsamo winning. Though they would both race the Track World Championships a few weeks later, it was their final road race together. 

“I cried a lot that last race,” Consonni says. “It was super emotional because we had grown together and maybe this race was the end of the story. We have a different character and sometimes we don’t agree, but I will always remember this race because I know that win in the Women’s Tour in the rainbow jersey was a cherry on the cake, the best thing to end this work.”

The work has not ended for Balsamo, her year in rainbows might now be over, but it was the best of her career to date. Not only did she win her final race with Valcar, she won her first with Trek-Segafredo at Setmana Valenciana in February this year. Since then she has bagged a further eight victories. And there will be more, especially with another Valcar graduate, Ilaria Sanguinetti joining the American squad, boosting Balsamo’s leadout. 

But despite success past, present and future, don’t expect Elisa Balsamo’s place at the top of the sport to go to her head. “She is a very simple person,” asserts her dad. “We try to educate her in a good way, and we say, ‘OK, you are a good cyclist, you are a world champion, but you have to live a normal life. It’s very important for you that you don’t act like a queen.’”

Sage advice for a rider with a solid claim to being cycling royalty. 

This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 13 October 2022. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.