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  "description": "A Q&A with Australian champion Mackenzie Coupland after her first attempt at Flanders and Roubaix.",
  "path": "/what-its-like-to-race-the-spring-classics-for-the-first-time/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-29T02:20:37.000Z",
  "site": "https://escapecollective.com",
  "tags": [
    "winning the elite & U23 national road title",
    "speaking with Escape at the Tour Down Under",
    "Talia Appleton",
    "View this post on Instagram",
    "A post shared by Liv AlUla Jayco Women's Continental Team (@greenedgecontiw)",
    "Subscribe now"
  ],
  "textContent": "Most riders don’t get to race the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix in their first WorldTour season. But most WorldTour neo-pros don’t hit the ground running like Mackenzie Coupland (Liv AlUla Jayco) has.\n\nThe West Australian kickstarted her season by winning the elite & U23 national road title in her hometown of Perth, before a strong Australian campaign in the green and gold (including fourth at Cadel's Race). Her first race after landing in Europe was the UCI 2.1 Vuelta a Extremadura Femenina in Spain … where she won the final stage and claimed the race overall – her first European victory.\n\nSince then Coupland has raced a solid Classics campaign that included four WorldTour one-day races and some very encouraging results, including 36th on debut at the Tour of Flanders. The distinctive white, green, and gold of Australian champion was a regular sight near (or off) the front of the bunch.\n\nAfter speaking with Escape at the Tour Down Under back in January, Coupland again took time this week to share her experience as a WorldTour rookie. Dialling in from her European base in Girona during a post-Classics break, the 20-year-old explained how she was called up to the biggest Classics after impressing team management, what she learned from being thrown in the deep end, and what might come next.\n\nThe following interview has been lightly edited for fluency and clarity.\n\nCoupland at the start of the Tour of Flanders.\n\n* * *\n\n**Matt de Neef: Did it feel any different coming back to Girona this year, now that you're part of the WorldTour squad?**\n\nMackenzie Coupland: I think on the team side of things, it actually felt very similar _[Coupland was part of the Liv AlUla Jayco Continental team the past two seasons – ed.]_ I think they made the transition very easy for me. I did have a lot more sorted out coming back this time around, so I was a lot less stressed. I think everything was just a lot easier. Moving into this new place I'm in at the moment just took off so much stress.\n\n**MdN: Looking in from the outside, it seems like you've had a really good start to your WorldTour career. Is that how it feels to you? You seem right at home.**\n\nMC: I feel like it hasn't changed too much [stepping up to the WorldTour]. I think it's more the kind of attention that I'm getting. I'm just getting a little bit more attention and a lot more support from home now. And I'm doing bigger races now, so I think that, for myself, there was a lot more pressure, but I think it's a good kind of pressure. It's more excitement as well. It's very different in that way.\n\n**MdN: Do you have a sense of how being in the green and gold has changed things for you in Europe?**\n\nMC: [With] my racing, I really had to think about how to move a lot more sensibly. Usually I like to just go full gas; I like to be on the attacking side of things. And I think it's a little bit harder now that I'm wearing a national jersey. I can't quite hide in the bunch as much now, and I'm not so sneaky anymore.\n\nSo I think it has been a bit harder, but then it's also been nice. I'm getting a lot of respect in the bunch as well, but I think it's also now that I'm racing in the WorldTour there is a lot more respect and everyone respects everyone's space a lot more than in the Conti bunch. So it's a lot more comfortable.\n\nThere is a little bit more pressure having this jersey, and sometimes I even forget I'm wearing it, because I'm not really looking down at myself. But then I'm just riding with my team, and it just feels so normal – it's so nice to ride with them.\n\n**MdN: It certainly makes you stand out on TV …**\n\nMC: Yeah, it's definitely easier for my parents to spot me in the bunch. They always used to look for me because I'm a little bit taller than most of the girls in the peloton. But now it's a lot easier.\n\nCoupland in action at the Ronde van Brugge.\n\n**MdN: When we spoke at Tour Down Under, you were saying you were hoping to go to some of the lower-level races in Europe and really show yourself. Safe to say you did that really well in Spain. What are your memories of your win at the Vuelta Extremadura and how that all played out?**\n\nMC: I really didn't know how I was going to go in Europe after the Aussie block. I think it [Extremadura] was probably my hardest race to date.\n\nIt was really nice being back with the [Liv AlUla Jayco] Continental team and with the sport director I had for the previous two years. And I think I performed my best TT I ever had. Everything went to plan, I felt good – it was just, I think, a miracle TT. I had never felt as good as I did. And then the next few days, I had the girls really supporting me, and it was really nice being able to play more of a leader role, because I didn't really get to do that much in the past.\n\nThen that last stage – it was the hardest race I've ever done. But I think everyone was just ... it was just all good vibes, and we all knew what to do. We had a really strong team there. Everyone in the team could have won that. So it was just up to tactics. It was a pretty cool race.\n\n**MdN: Winning that final stage to win the overall must have felt pretty satisfying?**\n\nMC: Yeah. We were coming up to the finish, and there was four of us and I had another teammate with me [Talia Appleton]. I think we were gonna win GC anyway, but my sport director on the radio was like, 'We're not done yet.' And me and my teammate looked at each other, and we're both really tired, and we're just kind of just hanging on because we'd just done work for the last 10 km just to drag the gap out. And we were like, 'What is he gonna do?' And he was like, 'One of you needs to attack.' And we both look at each other like 'Oh no.' Like, 'Who's gonna do it?'\n\nSo then I ended up doing it, and then dragging another girl out _[Lauren Dickson of FDJ United-Suez –ed.]_ I was confident in the sprint after that, but in that moment [before attacking], I actually didn't know if I was capable of winning the stage as well. I knew we had the GC in the bag but I think just winning the stage after that was just another tick, and it was just another good feeling.\n\n>        View this post on Instagram            \n>\n> A post shared by Liv AlUla Jayco Women's Continental Team (@greenedgecontiw)\n\n**MdN: Did you gain a lot of confidence from that? You went to the Classics after that – did you learn a little bit about your own ability and what you were capable of that day in Spain?**\n\nMC: Yeah, I definitely gained a lot of confidence from that. But I think also the racing is very different from that race to the Classics. So I was also still very unsure how I'd go in the Classics. I had a lot of wiggle room and it was just kind of 'see how I go' in the Classics.\n\n**MdN: You ended up doing a pretty full calendar with the Classics, with Flanders and Roubaix in there too. Was it always the plan that you were going to do that many races, and those high-level races?**\n\nMC: No. So I got a little late calendar change just after my race in Spain. I had done my first race, Nokere Koerse, and the team saw potential in me after that, so then they put me in Gent Wevelgem [In Flanders Fields] and Flanders after that. And then I also did OK in those, and they saw I had a lot of potential.\n\n### This post is for subscribers only\n\nBecome a member to get access to all content\n\nSubscribe now",
  "title": "What it's like to race the Spring Classics for the first time",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-29T02:20:41.521Z"
}