Skylar Schneider has been racing on the road for 13 years and her objective headed into the USA Cycling Pro Road National Championships remains simple and consistent - “The goals are always the same, and that's to win, of course”.
Last year, before diving into a criterium-heavy second half of the season, Schneider finished third in the elite women’s road race on familiar roads at US Pro’s sixth and final outing in Knoxville, Tennessee, the sprint won by Chloe Dygert (Canyon-SRAM) and second place taken by Coryn Labecki (then with Jumbo-Visma). She was on top form for US Nationals, having won the road race title at the Pan-American Championships, plus three stages between Redlands Bicycle Classic and Joe Martin Stage Race.
“Nationals is always a really big goal. I think this year it's bigger than ever. And yeah, I definitely have a big target on both the crit and road race,” the 25-year-old now riding for the Miami Blazers told Cyclingnews. “Having such a good road race last year gave me a lot of confidence that one day I could possibly win it. So, yeah, trying to work up to that.”
This year was a revival of sorts for the Wisconsin rider, now on a new team and heading to the new surroundings of Charleston, West Virginia, for the US Pro Championships, which started a five-year run this week, May 14-19.
“After so many years of the same courses in Knoxville, it's exciting to have new courses that will require new strategies and less predictability. The crit course is a bit longer than most crits in the US, but seems more technical than Knoxville's course, which I like,” Schneider noted about the 1-mile, six-corner course in downtown Charleston and no major elevation gain like Knoxville.
“I'm eager to see the climbs in the road race in person as they look super challenging on paper. We only just arrived to Charleston [Wednesday], so we haven't had time to recon the courses yet.”
Schneider won her first set of road nationals as a 12-year-old, taking victories in the road race and criterium. That pattern repeated itself three more times and she last took the double wins in 2016 in the junior women 17-18 events. Her best finishes at nationals since then were a silver in the pro criterium in 2022 and a silver in last year’s road race, both outings with L39ION of Los Angeles. In 2022 Schneider was part of the L39ION podium sweep in the crit, won by Kendall Ryan and Alexis Ryan (now Magner) taking third.
This time with the Blazers, the criterium on Friday night and the road race on Sunday morning, Skylar Schneider will only have one teammate, older sister Samantha Schneider. Both raced at Redlands and had high finishes in three rounds of USA Speed Week, including a third at Spartanburg Criterium and fourth at Athens Twilight for Skylar, but the Ryan sisters outdueled the Schneider sisters in those outings.
“It's just my sister and I out here representing the Blazer's women as our two other teammates are not American. Sometimes, you can use the lack of numbers to your advantage, as it shouldn't be up to us to control or chase when there are bigger teams to do that, but then again, sometimes, others race to lose. It's actually impossible to predict every scenario, so it comes down to reading the race as it unfolds,” Skylar Schneider said.
Other teams with few riders and unpredictability include L39ION of Los Angeles with Magner and Ryan and Human Powered Health with Ruth Edwards and Lily Williams. Larger teams which are on form this season include DNA Pro Cycling with five riders and Fount Cycling Guild with seven riders, while EF Education-Cannondale will bring two riders to support Labecki in the road race.
“It's really amazing to see the spread of talent across many teams in women's cycling, and I think it makes it really exciting. It was really interesting to see the different dynamics and how that would play out. I know I made mistakes at Speed Week, but I also just got beat. I don't have any excuses, if anything the experience provided extra motivation and assurance that it's going to be a highly competitive year of crit racing with strong talent spread out on more teams.
“I think our biggest lesson at Speed Week was to trust each other and race our own race, not the race that the other teams want. So, we'll race our own race and trust each other 100%.“
