From local crits to the WorldTour in two years: Lauren Dickson's huge step up to the world's best team

This time last year, if you’d asked Lauren Dickson whether she could imagine herself riding for the world’s best team in 2026, she probably would have laughed. She was only just starting her first full season on a Continental team, she hadn't done a single stage race in Europe, and by her own admission, she was still very much learning about the ins and outs of road cycling.

Now, though, the 26-year-old Scot isn’t just racing for FDJ United-Suez – the undisputed best team in the bunch so far in 2026 – she’s already rewarding the faith the French team showed by signing her when she was still so fresh to the sport.

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Like most people who go on to become professional athletes, Dickson’s competitive streak started to emerge at an early age. One clear childhood memory stands out in that regard.

“I was with my cousins and my little brother at my grandparents' house [and] they have a long strip of concrete in front of the horse stable, and we did a race, all of us, and I won,” Dickson told Escape Collective’s Abby Mickey. “At the end [of the concrete] there was a single-wire fence, and because I got to the end first, it was me who, like, garotted myself basically, on this fence, because nobody had seen it. It just shows that I've always been competitive since I was a kid, because obviously I wanted to beat them.”

In primary school, she played “a lot of tennis” and while that didn’t work out, it did set her on a more promising path.

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