For a minute and 23 seconds on Sunday afternoon, Anna Flynn had the finish line of the British National Cyclo-cross Championships to herself. Breathless at the end of a five-lap race, the Scottish champion survived an early attack by Zoe Roche (Santini Cycling) to ride the final two laps solo, aboard her Pearson On&On Race bike.
“I knew I was feeling good, but I didn’t actually think I’d win,” Flynn confessed to Cycling Weekly, still in a state of disbelief, the week after. “It just went really well.”
Xan Crees (OGT p/b USE) and Grace Inglis (Team HUP) crossed the line in quick succession behind Flynn, separated by only twenty seconds. “I’m so proud of you!” ex-Spectra teammate and outgoing British champion, Crees, shouted.
“After a few laps, I had a decent lead, but with cross, you can’t know you’ve won until very close to the end,” Flynn explained. “Anything can happen. There were so many corners that people were slipping off on so it probably wasn’t until the last half lap where I was like, I’ve got this. I didn’t actually realise how far ahead I was. So maybe I could have taken it easier earlier… but that just feels wrong.”
While men’s champion Cameron Mason continues to focus on cyclo-cross, Flynn is tilting her training towards the upcoming road season, after self-coaching for the last year. She will ride for Handsling Alba this year.
“I started sort of doing a full road season this year, and really liked it,” she said. “I’ve felt like I missed that team aspect of the sport, which I don’t think you get as much of in mountain biking and cross. It was quite an easy decision to do a bit less cross and give that a really good go for next year.”
Flynn’s focus towards road racing is no surprise. Her brother, Sean, rides with Picnic-Post NL, and the two grew up watching the Tour de France on holidays abroad with their parents. But it wasn’t until her mid-teens that Flynn really got hooked on bikes.
“I was maybe 14/15? I just started loving it,” she recounted.
“I was on the Great Britain mountain bike team for seven years from a junior to under 23 and then had a few injuries and a bad concussion at the end of that, and then the last couple years have been a bit more like just doing what I want, figuring out what I really like.”
(Image credit: SWpix.com (t/a Photography Hub Ltd))
Her “few injuries” involved a year-long back injury and a concussion that saw her out of action for months, missing her chance to compete in a home mountain bike World Championships in Glentress.
“That was pretty awful at the time,” Flynn explained. “I think after the concussion, once I started feeling better, it was quite nice to not have the pressure of getting back racing really quickly. I was still with Spectra Racing at that point, and they were really supportive. They didn’t push me to get back racing quicker. They gave me time.”
And with that time, Flynn learnt to love cycling again. Self-coaching, her weeks would involve gravel rides and cross rides, road rides and mountain bike rides. If a friend asked her to go mountain biking once she had a cross session booked in – she’d go mountain biking instead.
“I think for a while when I was like a junior, I forgot that it was supposed to be fun. I think it’s quite easy to do when you’re so driven. Sometimes these injuries, or things that you think are really bad can help you in some way. Looking back, I think I needed that time.”
Now with a British national title to take her into 2026, Flynn has formed new goals for 2026. On her list is the CiCLE classic, “which is probably expected – it’s off road a bit,” and other one-day races: “I love really hard racing.”
“I’ve never raced abroad, so that’s going to be a massive learning curve for me this year,” she conceded.
“It does give me a lot of confidence,” Flynn said of her national title, though. “I’ve not had a big win in quite a long time. So yeah, it’s really a confidence boost.”
