Gaia Realini walks into the room, laughs, points to the cast on her arm, and laughs again. “Teammate! You’re my teammate,” she points – and giggles – to the reporter’s own cast. A little while later, when discussing her English proficiency, she howls again, another successful delivery of self-deprecation. When the topic turns to her family, she chuckles once more, as she does when discussing her hobbies. Sat in her charming and engaging company, it would be easy to mistake the baby-faced Lidl-Trek rider as a playful joke, but that would be foolhardy: Gaia Realini has ambitions of being the best in the world.

At 23 and in her third year as a WorldTour rider, the diminutive climber from central Italy will be assuming ever greater responsibilities in 2025, now that her compatriot and confidant Elisa Longo Borghini has departed for UAE Team ADQ. But that pressure and expectation doesn’t faze Realini – she’s going to be the best; she’s sure of it. She wouldn’t have finished third in both the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España Femenina, as well as fifth in her maiden Tour de France Femmes, if she wasn’t blessed with talent.

“They have more experience and are older than me, but I think I need one or two more years, maybe three, and the gap is closed for sure,” she says when discussing Demi Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma, the standout GC riders at the moment. “I think this is my position.” She’s going to be a future champion of the sport? “Yes, yes,” she answers. “It might take three years to get more experience, but the Trek team believe in me, and I really have good teammates who also believe in me.” She’s pretty confident, comes the retort. “Yes,” she states, affirmatively.

This article was published on Rouleur in March 2025. You can read the full article here.