Former Canadian road champion Maggie Coles-Lyster has returned to action after iliac artery surgery with newfound confidence. The Human Powered Health rider bagged fourth place on Thursday's opening stage of the UAE Tour Women.
Coles-Lyster's 2025 season was almost a write-off. The 26-year-old from Vancouver was unable to win a race and managed only a handful of top-10 placings throughout the season. After being diagnosed with iliac artery endofibrosis - a condition which restricted blood flow in both of her legs - she underwent surgery last summer and returned to competition in October. Now fully recovered, Coles-Lyster has been on fire so far this season.
Though the lingering effects of surgery meant her ride at the Tour Down Under didn't go as she had hoped, just days after the finish, she had recovered well enough to take arguably the best win of her career at the 1.Pro Santos Tour Down Under Women's One Day Race. Now at the UAE Tour Women, she has continued where she left off, sprinting to fourth place on stage 1 against a much stronger sprinting field, missing the podium by a whisker.
"I'm really happy with that, I came here to fight for podiums each day, and I was just about there on the podium," a smiling Coles-Lyster said after changing out of her race kit at the team minibus. "I lost a bit of momentum with a push into the barrier in the last few hundred meters, but without that, I'm confident that would have been a podium."
While she was beaten by Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime), the result equals her best WorldTour results and beats the fifth place she scored in the opening stage of the 2024 UAE Tour Women. And though Thursday's result might not be a win, Coles-Lyster's results so far this year are a huge boost to her confidence.
It's all a far cry from last year, when the arterial problem was undiagnosed, leaving her unable to perform and at a mental lowpoint.
"That was the worst part, the few months before I got the surgery were honestly the worst," she explained. "Even after diagnosis, the first clinic I was with put me through conservative treatment management, which just didn't work. And that's when I sought out a second opinion, and he was confident to do surgery and operate on both. So once he said yes, then everything was easier. But those pretty much three, four months before were just brutal."
Last summer, Coles-Lyster said she hoped to return for the end-of-season Chinese races, which, although it was a late call-up, she managed, even if the results show how significant the comeback was.
"I hadn't really done any race intensity, because it was a last-minute call-up for China, so I'd pretty much only done endurance in my rehab at that point. So I knew it was going to be a bit of a shock to the system all around.
"I was still getting some symptoms too at that point, which is totally normal in the first few months after a surgery like that, for the nerves to kind of rewire and the blood flow to all properly return and get restored. So I knew the symptoms were normal, but I came out of it actually quite happy where I was, considering I had no race fitness and was still in rehab mode. I started to feel, hey, there's potential here, I can build on this."
However, even months after surgery, the long flight to Australia meant things still weren't quite right when she arrived in Adelaide for the Tour Down Under.
"It was a bit of a roller coaster, I was in quite a bit of pain, but no medical staff were actually too concerned. They said, this can happen, especially with a long flight, take some rest, ice a bit. And I did that, and then I won a race.
"Starting the year [like that] is huge," Coles-Lyster continued. "When I got the surgery, that was my dream; come into Australia and hit it hard. It's not often you actually get to back up your dreams and your goals like that. So I think it gives me a lot of confidence, and now I can fulfil the potential I always knew I had.
"Obviously, Australia was a very different sprint field, and these are the best sprinters with their best sprint trains in the world," she said of this week's opposition in the UAE. "So to be there and knowing I have more that I can give in that kind of sprint is a huge confidence boost."
On Thursday, she showed that a podium is certainly a possibility, but with Wiebes on such form, a win is another matter, though Coles-Lyster is bullish. "She hasn't been beaten in a sprint, but you know, it'll happen at some point, and I'm pretty fired up to try to make that happen."
