Wandering around the streets of the small town of Buninyong at the Road National Championships back in January 2018, it was clear that much of the attention was on the WorldTour riders returning home to the heat of the Australian summer for the races. But outside of the top professionals in pursuit of a national champion's green and gold jersey, one name kept cutting through: Sarah Gigante, who at 17 was already showing signs of being a Giro d’Italia Women stage winner in the making.
A dominant clean sweep of the U19 Australian women’s titles that year was too hard to ignore, particularly when it started with a criterium where she lapped the field and ended with an emphatic solo win in the road race - and where her mum, grandmother and extended clan of aunts and uncles were cheering proudly roadside.
