For two years in a row, Grace Brown has finished second in the time trial at the World Championships. On Sunday she will take on the race against the clock to win a rainbow jersey for the last time in her career. Fresh off her victory at the Olympics, the Australian is feeling up to the challenge.
“I’ve actually been feeling quite good since the Tour,” Brown said the Thursday before the Worlds ITT. “I was really tired starting it and throughout the whole Tour but afterwards I took some time off. I spent four days with my parents in the French Alps and then back to Italy and started slowly getting back into some training.
“I’ve done a few key sessions, nothing super hard.”
Brown announced in June that she would be hanging up her wheels at the end of the season, just after taking the biggest win of her career to that point, Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Had she only won the Monument her 2024 season still would have been a notable one to go out on, but she wasn’t even close to done.
In July Brown powered her way to gold at the Paris Olympic time trial. She finished over a minute and a half ahead of Great Britain’s Anna Henderson in second. It was easily the biggest win of Brown’s cycling career, a dream that so many athletes hope to accomplish but so few realize.
Three weeks later Brown was in Rotterdam, no longer racing in the Australian colours but back with her FDJ-Suez teammates. The time trial is a selfish event in nature. There is no teamwork, no thinking of others; it’s a race against the clock and yourself, and if you fail you only have one person to blame. So for Brown, lining up at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift in support of Évita Muzic was a break from everything she’d put herself through leading into the Olympics.
“I enjoy having days and weeks when I am not thinking about myself as much,” Brown said of being a domestique for FDJ-Suez. “It’s a bit of a mental break in a way. There were some stages where people kept saying – like when we were finishing in Liege – [that] it was the stage for me, but I tried not to get sidetracked by that. I wanted to be here to help the team and not focus on my own ambitions.”
“In a way even though it was a hard week it’s been a bit of a mental break for me to not think about my own performance but everyone else’s.”
Prior to the 2024 season, Brown had set herself three major targets; the Classics, the Olympic ITT and the Worlds ITT. The Tour de France Femmes wasn’t on her early-season schedule, but after supporting Muzic at the Vuelta a España Femenina Brown called up her team and told them she’d like to do the Tour as well.
“At the start of the year I thought maybe doing the Tour wouldn’t be the best part of my program but as we got closer to it, and after the Vuelta, I really enjoyed working with Évita and setting her up for her success there, so thinking about the Tour and not being there I decided I didn’t want to miss out in my last year.”
Of course, the Tour came with its own opportunity for Brown. The stage 3 time trial was the perfect place to debut her new gold bike from Lapierre. Unfortunately, Brown suffered a flat during the stage and since the time trial was only 6.3 km long, any hope of taking the stage and yellow along with it would not come to pass.
But the missed opportunity had to be set aside with the rest of the race ahead of the team, and Muzic’s ambitions still within reach. Brown’s favourite thing about the Tour was watching her French teammate thrive, especially in the final two stages.
“Those first stages were so stressful and each day we’re just getting through, we knew these last two stages were going to be the stages for her,” Brown said after the Tour. “The mental strength as a GC rider to show up every day and do all the little things and keep pushing even when sometimes it feels like it’s all going to be for nothing, she’s really impressive with that. She took on a lot of pressure this week but she carried it super well and we’re proud of her.”
Muzic ended up finishing third on the final stage atop Alpe d’Huez, a result that left her fourth in the general classification. The result was a massive one for FDJ-Suez, even if they’d hoped to carry the yellow jersey at some point during the race or perhaps win it overall. Brown was the team’s present, and Muzic was their future.
Overall, Brown was happy with her contribution to Muzic’s results. She spent the week getting bottles for her teammates, acting as moral support on and off the bike and putting her considerable power to good use on the front of the peloton and, sometimes, at the back.
“Today Évita and I stopped for a nature break at probably not the best time, but there was no good time to stop,” Brown said after the final stage of the Tour. “Canyon-SRAM were on the front trying to chase down the break and the commissaire wouldn’t let us come back behind the car so it was my duty to bring Évita back to the peloton when they were going 50 km an hour so that was not ideal.”
Being at the Tour in and of itself is an honour for most riders, but being on a French team at the Tour de France Femmes is akin to being part of a football team playing in their hometown.
“It’s fun, I enjoy it,” the Australian said. “You really get the flavour of it. If I were on an Australian team I don’t think it would feel as special but for us, it’s a really big deal and it means a lot to the staff and so many fans of the team as well, I think we get to live it a little bit extra.”
“All the way up [Alpe d’Huez] people who don’t know me were cheering for me just because I am in an FDJ-Suez jersey so that was nice.”
Brown only signed her first professional contract in 2018. But despite spending only seven years in the professional peloton, Brown has witnessed some of the sport’s biggest changes.
“It’s been crazy,” Brown said of the growth in women’s racing. “The years I’ve been in the peloton are the years that have seen such exponential growth. Even next year, people are trying to tempt me to stay with money and stuff; there’s a lot more in women’s cycling now.”
“You can see at the Tour de France how many people watch it, how much excitement there is around it. It’s really cool and I would love to continue to be part of that growth; that’s what I’m sad about leaving. In the end, it’s always going to keep growing whether I am there or not – I can always watch on the sidelines and cheer.”
Brown hasn’t yet said what is next for her, but her career isn’t over yet and one massive goal still hangs over her head.
The rainbow jersey worn by the Time Trial World Champion has eluded Brown throughout her career. She has been Australia’s ITT National Champion four times, in 2019 and 2022-2024, but she’s never managed to snatch that coveted rainbow jersey. In 2022, at her home Worlds in Wollongong Brown lost out to Ellen van Dijk. Last year, it was Chloe Dygert who bested her.
After the Tour, and spending a week riding in the service of others, Brown turned her attention to the Worlds ITT, her final goal.
“My parents came and stayed after Tour de Romandie, which was super nice,” Brown said on Thursday. “I think I needed a little bit of a mixup with training and having some company. Before the Olympics, I was super focused, trying to do everything right, and now before World Champs I’ve been a lot more relaxed and trying to enjoy my last months in Europe before I head back to Australia.”
If she can clinch the rainbow jersey Brown will truly be leaving the sport while on top. Two days ahead of the race she is one of the top riders to watch, but she has some tough competition and the course is nothing like the flat, bumpy ride in Paris.
“I’ve ridden the course,” Brown said. “I did a recon early in the year but I’m in Zurich now, actually. It’s quite an interesting course; it starts out fast and then we do a long climb, a 10-minute effort that goes up in steps. Not a super-hard climb, but definitely going to be a bit of a make-or-break how hard you go up for your overall time. Then you get a bit of recovery up and down a bit before a steep descent to the lake. The descent is a little dodgy. I don’t think there’s any good way to do it; you just get down it, and then it’s going to be a matter of who has energy in the tank to go fast on the last flat 12 km.
“It’s not a pure time trialist’s course,” she said. “It could suit some more climber types, but you still need to be really strong on the flat. We might see [Demi] Vollering and [Elisa] Longo Borghini do better than they normally would in a World Championship time trial.”
Brown is a strong climber, it won her Tour Down Under in 2022, and she’s proved time and time again she is one of the best time trialists in the peloton right now.
“I am excited for the TT,” she said three days before the race. “My last World Champs. I’m just looking forward to having a week and a half with the Aussie crew, enjoy that time, and lap up each of the races at the moment.”
After racing the time trial Brown will line up in the road race the following weekend, where a lot more factors come into play. On Sunday, she will race against the clock representing Australia for the final time in her career, a career that has been noteworthy for multiple reasons, not least of which is Brown’s palmarès and what she has done for Australian cycling in her time in the peloton.
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