Gigante's brilliant 2025 brought to an end by broken femur suffered in training crash
Young Australian climbing talent Sarah Gigante has likely been ruled out of the remainder of the 2025 season after a training crash left her with a broken femur. This comes less than three months after her comeback after undergoing iliac artery surgery during the Aussie summer.
"My short but sweet stint as Sarah 3.0 was pretty good, so I figured the next step was to level up to Sarah 4.0," the AG Insurance-Soudal rider posted on Instagram on Saturday morning. "I’m super disappointed to have broken my femur in training on Thursday (ouch 😫), but the operation went very well and I’m already counting down until I can eventually ride again."
Gigante kicked off 2025 with a third-place finish on the opening stage of the Tour of Norway Women in late May, a positive sign of things to come. After a WorldTour season debut at the Tour de Suisse, the 24-year-old then headed to the Giro d'Italia, where two stage wins built the foundations to a GC podium finish and victory in the final mountains classification. Next came a call-up to the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift at which a runner-up finish on the Queen Stage, only beaten by overall winner Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, saw the Australian light up the biggest race of the year and positioned the climber among the favourites for this year's road World Championships, a major goal for Gigante.
"I was so looking forward to hopefully representing Australia at a hilly World Champs in Rwanda and to then finish off my season in Italy, but at least the four races I did this year were all great ones … and I sure know how to nail a comeback! For now, it’s time for some R & R and working on my mental resilience even more."
