'I messaged every WorldTour team on Instagram' - How Imogen Wolff carved her path to cycling's top level

“You’ve not travelled up just for me, have you?” asks Imogen Wolff, mortified by the fuss being made around her inside the Manchester Velodrome.

To her left, among the blue seats, two light stands have been set up, ready for the photoshoot. A small huddle has formed around the makeshift studio. Instructed by Cycling Weekly's photographer to raise a finger, denoting she’s number one, Wolff demurs. “Really?” the teenager flashes an embarrassed smile. As she lifts her arm, the medals around her neck clang together. Her silverware is proof that she deserves the attention. She’s just not used to it yet.

This year, in her final season as a junior, the 18-year-old emerged as one of the most promising talents on the circuit. She won her opening race day, the Trofeo Alfredo Binda, with a 35km solo, became the junior national time trial champion, won two world titles on the track, and finished on the podium at the UCI Road World Championships.

Now, she’s poised to join WorldTour squad Visma-Lease a Bike on a three-year deal, a move she instigated. “I actually first spoke to them back in October [2023], after Worlds last year,” she explains.

“I messaged every single DS [directeur sportif] from every single WorldTour team on Instagram, which I wouldn’t recommend you do. It’s not very good for negotiating power. When I told my agent, he was like, ‘Why have you done that?’ But from then on, I started having conversations.”

Only 17 at the time, Wolff had long been a determined cyclist. She turned her first pedal strokes at two years old, raised in a village on the outskirts of Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Her mother represented GB in triathlon, while her father was a keen club cyclist.

“Cycling’s always been a big part of our lives as a family,” she says. The middle of three siblings, Wolff followed her mother’s path, competing as a child in triathlon and cyclocross. On the cusp of her teenage years, she decided to take up track cycling, despite living an hour from the nearest velodrome.

“My dad was like, ‘You might as well do deep-sea diving – the sea is pretty much as far’,” she laughs. A deal was struck with her parents whereby she could ride track provided she forfeited swimming and running. “I was like, ‘Easy choice – perfect’,” she adds with a smile.

The teenager reaped the rewards of that decision this August. At the junior Track World Championships in China, shortly after acing her A-levels in Biology, Chemistry and Maths, Wolff was instrumental in GB’s quartet’s winning the team pursuit title, breaking the world record in the final. She also claimed an individual title in the points race, despite feeling “rubbish” on the day.

“I’d not really slept the night before and I woke up with a chesty cough,” she says. “I can’t really remember the second half of the race. I was vomiting up blood and just in a mess.” There’s a pause. Blood? “Yes, you can sort of see it in the pictures, on my skinsuit and my legs.”

Having witnessed her excelling in cyclocross and winning the junior national title last year, Wolff’s coach suspected she might have a knack for time trialling, too. Wolff herself wasn’t convinced, but come June, she was national champion, winning by 25 seconds ahead of her Shibden Apex RT teammate and friend Cat Ferguson. “To win that, for me, was proof that I can do this discipline,” Wolff says. “From then onwards, Worlds was the target.”

Today, the World Championships time trial in Zurich, Switzerland, is a delicate subject. Wolff devoted hours to preparing for the race, regularly waking up at 5am to practise fuelling and pacing. When she set out on the day, her Garmin computer connected to her spare bike on the roof of the team car. She was forced to ride blind, without data.

“I just completely lost my head and panicked,” she remembers. And yet, the 18-year-old still set the third-fastest time, claiming bronze. “It’s difficult to speak about,” she says, letting off an exasperated groan. “It still gets my back up thinking about it. I’m still absolutely kicking myself.”

It’s perhaps testament to Wolff’s mentality that she holds such high standards of herself. Part of it, she explains, comes from her “Yorkshire grit” – a mindset she will rely on next season, when, riding at professional level, the races will be longer and tougher.

“I think it’s cliché, every single under-23 says this, but I just want to learn,” she says. “We [she and Visma-Lease a Bike] have mapped out a bit of a plan. I think the first year is going to be mainly lower-level races, then the second year stepping up to slightly higher-level races, and then the third year doing a Grand Tour. We go from doing 60km races to 140km.”

True to form, Wolff is already putting in the hard miles. At the start of this year, she shared a video on her YouTube channel of her and her teammates riding 200km in under six hours on a camp in Spain. “It was definitely a laugh,” she says, but deep down, it was a sign of her determination to succeed as a pro. The spotlight is waiting for her. In the meantime, though, "I need to get better at editing my videos,” she smiles. “That one took three hours to edit, which was too long. Tell your readers to subscribe – I’m planning to do more!”

This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 5th December 2024. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.