Cyclist
‘I’d love to win a Classic in the spring’: Pfeiffer Georgi profile
Pfeiffer Georgi is made of tough stuff. ‘I just love bad weather and cold, really dramatic races,’ chuckles the 23-year-old, who after a breakthrough 2023 season is now Britain’s most in-form female rider. ‘I’ve always loved training if there was sideways rain and wind, just because I felt like I was doing something different and dramatic. That has always excited me, so races like Flanders and Roubaix would be my dream races to win. They’re so iconic and so hard.’
Georgi’s natural grit, physical durability and emotional resilience give her an edge, but these qualities also explain how the DSM road captain achieved such an astonishing comeback, from lying in a ditch with a broken back following a horrific crash at Brugge-De Panne in 2020 to claiming her first WorldTour win at the same race last sesason.
She also won Binche-Chimay-Binche and Dwars door de Westhoek, secured top ten finishes at Paris-Roubaix (8th), Strade Bianche (9th), Amstel Gold (7th) and Omloop het Nieuwsblad (5th), and bagged her second national road race title on an attritional 132km course, with an explosive final climb in Saltburn-by-the-Sea.
‘Getting my first WorldTour win at De Panne was an unexpected day for me, and that gave me a lot of confidence that I can be one of the best in the races that suit me,’ says Georgi. ‘It’s really exciting to see where I could be, and what rider I can still develop into.’
Born on a bike
Pfeiffer Georgi is the kind of mellifluous name destined for stardom. She thinks her first name was chosen by her mum Louise after seeing the actress Michelle Pfeiffer on TV, while her surname evokes the Greek-Cypriot heritage of dad Peter. Certainly she was always going to cycle: it’s a passion shared by her dad, who raced for Great Britain in his youth and has won multiple national masters titles; her mum, who raced track, road and time-trials; her older brother Etienne, who rode for Team Wiggins before joining the Army; and her grandad Ronald.
But the resilience that powers her through wet rides and dark times is a quality Georgi has shown ever since, aged four, she took her first spin at Herne Hill, near her home in London.
‘I got really tired and stopped and I was flung over the handlebars,’ she says. ‘My arms were covered with blood. I remember saying, “I’m never coming back!” But the next week I was back on the track.’
The family moved to Berkeley, Gloucestershire when Pfeiffer was five, and she started racing on Thursday nights at the Castle Combe circuit.
‘I would be competitive and want to win, and then we’d go play football in the park and climb trees while our dads or mums would race the elite race,’ she says. ‘I didn’t have clip-in pedals, so I would just wear my pink trainers. Once I forgot my trainers so I wore my Crocs.’
She also enjoyed different pursuits, from ballet to cross-country running.
Initially Georgi enjoyed riding on and off-road until an incident made her rethink her priorities.
‘I was mountain biking with my brother and Tom and Joe Pidcock,’ she says. ‘I can’t have been more than ten, and I was just following all three boys down this hill when I hit a bump. I put both my hands on the ground and I broke both my wrists. Since then I stopped mountain biking and it was always just road and track.’
During her teenage years, her hunger for victories drew her deeper into the junior race circuit. ‘I’m quite a competitive person,’ she says. ‘I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I would want to get the best grades at school and be the best I could be in that as well as in cycling.’
Whether racing for Mid-Devon CC, Liv CC-Halo Films (an ambitious junior team set up by her dad, now a respected coach) or British Cycling, or competing in the European Junior Cycling Tour of Assen in the Netherlands, she loved the buzz of the race circuit.
‘I remember guys from VCL [VC Londres] like Fred Wright and Ethan Hayter, so quite a lot of youth that are now in the WorldTour. In Assen I did a couple of years racing the boys, but they were a year younger, so that was nice to be a girl beating the boys.’
Georgi’s breakthrough came aged 16 at the 70.8km Gent-Wevelgem junior race in 2017.
‘I was a first-year junior and hadn’t raced abroad much. I felt really out of my comfort zone and being in the peloton was scaring me, so I only attacked because I didn’t want to be there for the sprint. And then it ended up that I won. I thought, oh, maybe I’m good enough to do this.’
While doing her A levels, she would fly to a race in Belgium on Friday or Saturday night, race in the morning, fly home on Sunday and be back at school by 9am on Monday. But as her reputation grew, DSs from Team Sunweb (now DSM) were in regular contact, and her heart was set on turning pro.
Dangers and doubts
By this time Georgi knew she was happier on the road than in the velodrome. But when she turned pro in 2019, aged just 18, she was the youngest rider at Team Sunweb. Everything felt bewildering, from the pace and the length of races to the need to jostle for positions and deal with mechanicals.
‘I’d never even thought about feeding because we only did two-hour races as juniors,’ she says.
This tricky transition wasn’t helped by injuries and the Covid pandemic, which struck during what should have been crucial years of formative progress, leading to self-doubts.
‘I had a couple of years where I thought, “I don’t know if I’m actually good enough,”’ she says. Then came that traumatic crash at De Panne in October 2020, which left her with two broken vertebrae.
‘I remember hitting the pavement and getting flung into the road. There was a really sudden impact and I landed in the ditch. I couldn’t move and then I really started to panic. I was just in extreme pain for hours. My spine was broken, but luckily it was stable. They said I would make a full recovery as there was no nerve damage. But wondering what could have been scared me.
‘The mental aspect was like, “Oh, it could have been so much worse! What if this happens again? What if I crash?” The physical rehab took a few months. I was having to learn to sit up and walk and then ride again. But I did a lot of work with a mental coach about how to get back into the peloton and stop this train of thought that could divert to the worst case scenario at every brake or sudden movement in the peloton. And that took maybe six months longer than the actual physical recovery.’
Seeing how Annemiek van Vleuten returned from her shocking crash at Rio 2016 to win pretty much every title going gave Georgi a fine example to follow.
‘I had tricks to work on, like visualisation and relaxation, so sitting at home, just putting myself in the race and “walking” my way through a situation,’ she says. ‘Also when I’m in a race I’ve learned to relax my body physically, like by wiggling my fingers. It isn’t going to fix you overnight, but time has passed since the crash so you just get a bit of confidence every time.’
Winning her first national road race in Lincoln in 2021, after powering up the slippery cobbles of Michaelgate in hazardously wet conditions, was a seismic moment. It represented both an arrival and a return.
‘The nationals was one of the big moments in my career,’ she says. ‘That gave me a lot of confidence. It is something that I didn’t expect.’
Supporting her ‘hero’ Lizzie Deignan at the 2021 Worlds in Flanders was another confidence-booster. ‘I was really nervous to meet her,’ she says. ‘She had always been my idol. At the Worlds, she was saying that I’d done a really good job and helped her a lot in the race. And that really meant a lot to me.’
Classics dreams
Undoubtedly 2023 was her annus mirabilis so far – a year she says ‘exceeded my expectations’ and gave her ‘a lot of confidence’ for 2024. Georgi sees herself as a Classics specialist, albeit one who could also win a road World or Olympic title.
‘I’d love to win a Classic in the spring,’ she says. ‘Flanders and Roubaix will be my target races. Then obviously there’s the Olympics – an Olympic gold would be massive and change your life completely. But I always put Worlds above it in my head, just because I think it is valued more in the cycling world.’
Georgi is a bona fide cycling fan, and it shows. ‘In Flanders and Roubaix, in certain sections on the cobbles, you feel how iconic it is. The first time I did Roubaix I had an awful day and crashed two or three times, but when you come to the velodrome it’s still pretty special. With Flanders or a Belgian Classic it’s just the whole atmosphere – the roads, the climbs, the cobbles, the fans, the tractors, the big party tents and the whole atmosphere. It feels very exciting and very special to me.’
How can she turn those top tens into victories? ‘I think it’s partly getting a few more years of racing and experience. I’ve only done Flanders once or twice, so just the knowledge of the course inside out and the practice of going full-gas on those climbs will help. And I think just developing physically. A lot of the best women in the world are late twenties, early thirties, so I still have some time to develop.’
The life of a pro cyclist can be intense, and Georgi seeks ways to switch off, whether watching Gossip Girl or listening to a retro 1980s playlist. She enjoys the occasional Chinese takeaway with her boyfriend, Ineos rider Ben Turner. She also harnesses her talent for art.
‘I like drawing faces and animals and details like eyes – really detailed drawings that require all my focus,’ she says. ‘It is a little outlet from cycling. I’ve just started doing a few different mediums, like painting. I did a big painting for my boyfriend’s Christmas present.’
Staying calm off the bike seems to help her on it. As race captain, she has shown real composure when making decisions during races. She believes her instinctive race-craft stems from years of studious observation.
‘I’ve always watched racing. My dad would put it on TV from a very young age, so I picked up race knowledge from that,’ she says.
Georgi is poised at an exciting moment in her career. But whatever she wins next, she hopes to do it in style – after all, that’s what racing is all about.
‘My dad always taught me that you’re better off attacking and losing than never trying at all, and I think that has become my racing style. If you try things, they can turn out better than expected. If you don’t try, you’ll never know.’
Rising star
The highlights of Pfeiffer Georgi’s career so far
2000
Born on 27th September in Herne Hill, London
2017
Wins junior Gent-Wevelgem in just her second competitive race on the Continent
2017
Places 7th in the time-trial and 6th on the road in her debut Junior World Championships
2019
Turns pro with Team Sunweb and takes several top ten finishes but no wins
2020
A heavy crash in Belgian race De Panne results in two broken vertebrae
2021
A breakthrough season culminates in victory in the National Championships Road Race in October
2022
A strong spring Classics run includes top tens at Dwars Door Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix
2022
Finishes 7th in the young rider classification at the first Tour de France Femmes
2023
Another impressive Classics campaign, headlined by a first major win at De Panne
2023
Wins a second national road race title after a solo attack on the final climb in Saltburn
2024
Makes the podium at Paris-Roubaix after sprinting to third in the Roubaix velodrome
Georgi on…
…race day nerves
‘I would always get nervous at races – and I still do now. I don’t know why. Other riders don’t get nervous, whereas I will just get nervous at anything. But I always want to win or be the best that I can be, so I think that’s where that comes from.’
…her hero
‘Lizzie Deignan was my hero. I remember watching her win silver at the London Olympics. I was in Assen for a race, watching in a big barn with the Dutch fans, so they were cheering when Marianne Vos won. We were the only Brits there. Now I’ve been her teammate at the Worlds for a couple of years so it’s special.’
…2024 Tour de France Femmes
‘The Tour, especially as it’s coming to Holland this year, is a really big one for our team. The first couple of days are a sprint possibility for Charlotte Kool and I think that’ll be our big goal. I’d like to get a stage win and yellow jersey with her. I think potentially there’s a chance for me for a stage win.’
…women’s cycling
‘I think I’m in the sport at a really exciting time. With the introduction of the minimum salary, maternity leave and higher-profile races like the Tour de France Femmes and Roubaix, it’s definitely growing. And I’m hoping it’s going to keep going for the rest of my career and beyond.’
• This article originally appeared in issue 151 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
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