The JGCC road race, a regional event in the west of Scotland, doesn’t tend to make headlines. Starting at a bowling club outside Kilmarnock, it loops eight times around a circuit, and costs £25 to enter. You won’t find any elite riders on the start list. Instead, the field consists of amateurs representing their local clubs, open to those with cat-two licenses down to cat-four. It was here that Lauren Dickson made her racing debut last year.
A former triathlete, the Scot turned up a total stranger to cycling events. She chose to enter the ‘open’ race, not realising it would be primarily male. “In triathlon, you’re never in a bunch of like 80 people travelling at 40kph. It was a big shock,” she says. “But the actual racing side of it I loved.”
She didn’t know it at the time, but her 44th place – out of 50 finishers – would mark the beginning of a meteoric trajectory through the ranks.
“The team’s style of racing and ambition really drew my attention, obviously as well as their impressive results on the world stage,” Dickson tells Cycling Weekly. “It’s really nice to know that people believe in you and see a purpose and development pathway for your strengths.”
Dickson’s strengths lay in other sports as a child. Raised in Edinburgh in an active family, she represented Great Britain in duathlon and mountain running as a junior. Her friends then turned her onto triathlon when she was 14, and two years later she began competing, dedicating herself to the sport while at university.
Her introduction to road cycling, she says, came courtesy of her partner, Picnic PostNL’s Sean Flynn, who she started dating in high school. “I think the first time I rode with him I would have been 17, and I couldn’t take a bottle out of the bottle cage,” Dickson laughs.
“There’s quite a famous climb [near where we live], and I did like the seventh best time on the all-time list. My boyfriend’s housemates asked what kind of power I’d done and how much I weighed. Then they worked it out, and they were like, ‘You should try some bike racing.’ I’d always been kind of nervous to try.”
Dickson made her WorldTour race debut at the Tour of Britain this June.
(Image credit: Olly Hassell/SWpix)
After her debut at the JGCC road race in April 2024, Dickson went searching for more. She signed up for four regional races the following month, winning two of them, and jumping from cat-four to cat-three, which allowed her to enter National A races. Come July, she was on the podium of a National Road Series round in Lancaster, her second place turning the heads of Britain’s Continental teams. She joined Handsling Alba Development Road Team three days later.
“Once Bob [Lyons, team boss] took me on after Lancaster GP – I’d tried to persuade him before to no avail – Alba took me straight to the Continent to give me an experience of European racing and see how I fared in a peloton of 150 riders,” Dickson says.
“Jumping in at the deep end straight away meant I knew what to expect this year and could focus my training appropriately over winter.”
2025 would end up being a breakthrough season for the Scot. She rode against WorldTour teams in Belgium in the spring, finished runner-up in a French one-day race, and then went to the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix, the UK scene’s flagship race, as her team’s leader.
“I was really lucky in that we had Kate Richardson on our team, and she’d won last year, so she told me where she’d attacked,” she remembers. This time, Dickson launched her own move on the steep finishing climb, and soloed to her first National Road Series win.
The Lincoln GP was a milestone victory for Dickson.
(Image credit: SWpix.com/Olly Hassell)
FDJ-SUEZ had already been monitoring the Scot by Lincoln, with team boss Stephen Delcourt “impressed right from the start of the season”. “She doesn’t fit the traditional profile,” Delcourt said, “and that’s what makes this challenge all the more exciting and inspiring.”
After Lincoln, Dickson’s form rolled on. Third at June’s Tour of Norway brought a milestone stage race podium. She then made her WorldTour event debut at the Tour of Britain, before going on to finish fifth at the British National Championships, as the highest placed Continental-level rider.
“If I think about how nervous I was to race abroad in Belgium for my first UCI race last year, and how much calmer I am now on the start line, it’s been pretty crazy to get so much experience in a short time,” Dickson says.
As she now reflects on the speed of that 16-month journey, she says it’s “hard to describe – I think because I’ve been in competitive sport for a long time, it feels natural yet exciting.”
Announcing her FDJ-SUEZ contract last week, Dickson was met with a flood of messages saying how “deserved” the move is. Already, she has met one of her future team-mates, Ally Wollaston, for coffee, and has received a race programme for her first season. “Getting experience in different WorldTour races will be important,” she says.
What’s she most looking forward to the most? “Everything,” she replies. “It’s tough to choose one aspect. I think just being part of an ambitious and supportive team where I can learn from riders with a lot of experience and push myself to step up further.”
The WorldTour, she knows, will be a far cry from the JGCC road race. But that bowling club outside Kilmarnock, the race HQ where she picked up her first bib numbers, will always be where it all started.
