Sarah Gigante and Movistar have mutually agreed to part ways effective December 31.
The Australian rider signed a three-year deal with the team, meant to last from 2022 until the end of 2024, but she has barely raced in blue due to a series of injuries and illnesses.
Gigante first turned heads when she won the Australian National Championships road race in 2019 at the age of 18 while racing for Aussie team Roxsalt Attaquer. She was then picked up by the UCI Continental team Tibco-SVB on a two-year deal. With the American team, she won the Australian ITT national champion title in 2020 and raced the Aussie Summer with the Tour Down Under, Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race and Herald Sun Tour, the last of which she managed to notch a few podiums.
But the COVID-19 season ended for Gigante after Le Samyn des Dames in March. After that, she focused on Zwift and virtual racing where her pure power came in handy. In 2021 she again claimed the Aussie ITT title and was selected to race in the Olympic Games road race and ITT in Toyko, but she didn’t do much racing in Europe.
The lack of experience didn’t do much to dissuade Movistar who saw a lot of potential in the then 21-year-old. After all, the team loves a good climber. In 2022, her first year with the team, she won Emakumeen Nafarroako in May but the only WorldTour races the team put her in were Trofeo Alfredo Binda, Vårgårda WestSweden TTT and the Tour of Scandinavia. One year later, Gigante only got to race in Scandinavia with the team.
In the hours after Movistar’s announcement, Gigante has yet to announce where she will call home for the 2024 season. She recently raced the Tour of Bright on home soil where she won two of three stages and the overall, so clearly she’s not ready to hang up her wheels.
In August earlier this year Gigante told Lukas Knöfler of CyclingNews: “I don’t need good luck, just hopefully a year without bad luck.” Let’s hope things start to turn around for the young talent and she finds a new team to back her goals.
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