DOMINATING THE VIRTUAL ROAD

The pandemic has fast tracked the rise of e-racing ahead of its natural progression. Paul Knott asked British time triallist turned e-racing star, Alice Lethbridge, how her Team Heino has become one of the most dominant teams on the Zwift racing scene

- Paul Knott

The lure of some sort of competitive racing in 2020 saw the cycling world shift its talents off the road and onto Zwift. Where most mere mortals would be lagging behind front runners in awe, an elite batch of riders under the Team Heino banner crushed all in their way.

“I don’t know if I would have ever gone on it [Zwift] if we hadn’t had the whole pandemic and lockdown,” Alice Lethbridge admits.

The Heino superteam have come together from across the world and from modest backgrounds to beat their better-funded Canyon and Movistar competitors. Boasting a supreme cohesion as a racing unit, their domination has been near absolute, winning every race of season one and two of the Zwift Racing League as well as all but two of the season three series. It’s even more impressive given their formation during the Covid-era in locations across the world. This leads to team training sessions and bonding a tricky hurdle to negotiate.

“Some teams are more based in one country, but during the first series because everyone was in lockdown we were actually managing to always generally meet up on a Sunday evening European time which would be Monday morning for Vicki [Whitelaw, based in Australia]. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about Heino is the team spirit there.”

She adds that the team’s Facebook Messenger group is very active and not just with cycling chat. “We were joking just today that we think we’ve convinced another one of our team-mates to get a pet because we kept sending them our cute pet pictures,” she says.