Feature: Floren Villanueva Scrafton’s Amazing Cycling Season

Feature (Part 1): Back in March, VeloUK was introduced to cyclist Floren Villanueva Scrafton, a British-Bolivian athlete from Bristol, a convert from running (and other sports) with ambitious personal and team goals in cycling. Since then who life has exploded with awesome achievements around the world!

Feature: Floren Villanueva Scrafton’s Amazing Cycling Season
End of season review

Back in March, VeloUK was introduced to cyclist Floren Villanueva Scrafton, a British-Bolivian athlete from Bristol, a convert from running (and other sports) with ambitious personal and team goals in cycling. Floren started training as a cyclist 12 months ago with Dr Tom Kirk (Custom Cycle Coaching) after handing in her PhD thesis in Interdisciplinary Bioscience at the University of Oxford.

In her first full season, Floren split her time racing between the UK and Latin America. In the UK, she won or podiumed in many of her races, helping to attain her Category 1 race licence whilst also supporting her team FTP Racing to win the British Team Cup. In Latin America, Floren won a silver medal at Bolivia’s National Champs, a spot on Bolivia’s team for the Pan American and World Cycling Championships and made history for Bolivia at the Women’s Tour of Colombia with consistently high stage finishes and overall classifications.

Through her position as one of Bolivia’s fastest female cyclists, Floren is now using her performances, voice and other activities (including kit donations) to promote cycling in Bolivia, which is still an underfunded minority sport. Her ‘Bolivian on a Bike’ hashtag has since become ‘Bolivians on Bikes’ as she finally got the chance to travel with her race bike to Bolivia to meet, train and race against other Bolivian cyclists. In a series of articles, Floren will share her novel insights from her first season as an aspiring professional Bolivian cyclist.

Floren’s 2024 season results highlights:

• Making my World Champs debut and becoming the first Bolivian female to compete in both the Elite Individual Time Trial (ITT) and road race at the World Cycling Championships, Zurich 2024
• Finishing 45th in the World Cycling Champs ITT (and 4th Latin American rider!)
• Scoring Bolivia’s highest positions in the UCI 6-stage Women’s Vuelta Colombia, finishing 9th in the Mountains and Points Classifications and 11th in GC (missing the top 10 by an agonising 7 secs) with a top 15 in every stage (3rd, 6th, 6th, 11th, 13th and 15th)!
• Winning a silver medal at the Bolivian National Champs Individual Time Trial
• Being selected to represent the Bolivian cycling team for the first time at the 2024 Pan American Champs in Brazil in both the ITT and road race
• Finishing 10th in the Pan American Champs ITT (still using my TT- adapted road bike)
• Winning the National B British Team Cup London Dynamo Race for FTP Racing and helping us win the overall British Team Cup league!
• Winning the three-up National 25-mile TTT road bike category with my FTP teammates Josie Harcourt and Laura Pittard
• Earning my UK Category 1 License

VeloUK: At the start of the year, did you have even the smallest thoughts (dreams) about doing what you have done this year?
FLOREN: Admittedly, I did have (still have) big dreams for my future in cycling – bold expectations derived from a life’s worth of chasing international representation in my previous sports (football, running, triathlon). However, I never expected to realise so many of these dreams in my first full season, especially as the first three months of this year I was still struggling with fortnightly bouts of tonsillitis. I’d set out a list of naturally ambitious short-term and long-term cycling goals, which were only known to my coach Tom and bike-fitter Alec Leslie (Pannekoek Bike Fitting) until I documented them all in my first VeloUK article. Below I’ve copied and pasted these goals to view again, and it’s crazy seeing how many I’ve ticked off (in blue).

This season:
• Medal at Bolivia’s National Road Championships 3-5th May 2024, Santa Cruz, Bolivia
• Help win races for and with my current British team FTP Racing in Regional – National competitions
• Gain international large-peloton race experiences in the Spanish National Road series – Copa España
• Complete my first season of cycling-specific training and determine my strengths as a cyclist
• Gain a contract with a UCI Continental team for next season

Long-term:
• Become Bolivia’s fastest female road cyclist (I now realise this is hard to quantify given the different types of riders!)
• Race for a Women’s UCI World Pro team and help them win tour stages and classics races
• Medal for Bolivia in South American and Pan-American Championships
• Represent Bolivia at the World Championships and Olympics (life-long dream!)
• Use my experiences and results to promote Bolivian endurance athletes and improve the accessibility of cycling

VeloUK: What were the hardest things you have had to do to achieve what you have done this year travelling back home for the championships and then the Games and then the World Championships?

FLOREN: 
1) Develop as a cyclist and race competitively in high level international competitions whilst facing significant personal (and National Team) financial limitations. I started with minus money after completing my PhD back in January and trying to fund an extremely expensive, time-intensive new sport with an increasingly international race calendar has been very stressful and almost impossible at times.

Everything has had to be done on the tightest budget, demanding constant networking and logistical acrobatics in order to find cheap, free or borrowed cycling kit and when organising, often at short-notice, complex travel itineraries and suitable accommodation in distant cities for both me and my bike (+/- massive bike box). I’ve had to crowdfund twice to help me self-fund several transatlantic flights and related week-long participation costs whilst representing my country at the Pan American and World Championships.
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Contact details for Floren for those wish to help fund her awesome challenges:
Email (cycling comms): floren.cycling@gmail.com
Instagram: @florenvs
Facebook: Floren Villanueva Scrafton
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Even still, I am down a significant amount of money which I haven’t had time to recover yet. To give an idea, being UK-based and then flying to participate at Bolivian Nationals, the Pan American Champs in Brazil, Vuelta Colombia and then the World Championships in extortionately priced Zurich has cost me over £7,000. I’m extremely grateful to all the people who’ve contributed towards this, it’s meant the world to me (and Bolivian cycling) and the opportunities to race these events have been paying off!

2) Living out of a suitcase (bike-box) for 10 months, moving between six countries (England, Spain, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Switzerland), 13 cities/towns (Bristol, Oxford, Madrid, Calpe, Orgiva, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, São Paulo, Asturias, Osa de La Vega, Cartagena, La Paz and Zurich) and 25(+) different unique accommodations for races, training and bike-fits.

3) Adjusting to different time-zones, many distinct climates (most notably: 0 – 40 degrees, dry air to high humidity and 0 – 4260 m altitude), new cuisine, differing terrain and cycling cultures, all whilst trying not to get sick, lost or mugged. Learning how to plan and complete productive training sessions and to race competitively in all of these new environments – shout out to my coach Tom for being totally amazing and equally flexible here!

Perks from these varied, novel experiences include:

  • hitting 1 L / hour hydration rates in Santa Cruz (Bolivia) and along the Caribbean coast of Colombia;
  • contracting motorbike bodyguard support in Cartagena after getting mugged two mins into my 5 min ride to the nearest cycling shop (losing thankfully just my bike tools);
  • catching cable cars and taxis to avoid the chaotic, unrespectful, densest traffic in La Paz;
  • accepting pushing 30+ watts less when pedalling along the Bolivian Altiplano (4000 m altitude) or whilst completing hard hypoxic reps around the highest outdoor velodrome in Alto Irpavi (3500 m altitude);
  • trying to keep calm whilst sharpening my reaction speeds and practising explosive sprints when being chased by stray (potentially rabid) dogs in Latin America;
  • doing reps up high whilst at the same time wearing a face mask or buff to protect against smoke pollution from nearby land clearance activities;
  • managing to not give up pedalling ascending from 3400 m up to 4100 m in La Paz along seemingly impossible switch-back sections of up to 20 % whilst breathing in increasingly thinner air with cars brushing passed you emitting clouds of thick black fumes which you try to avoid sampling.

VeloUK: Creating such great memories for yourself that no-one can ever take away, has that made you even more determined to chase such goals in the sport again?
FLOREN: Life’s been so fast and dynamic, it’s been hard to find the space and time to reflect on the many new wonderful experiences and friendships from this year. From my past sports, I knew how enriching the traveling ‘athlete’s life’ can be, but you certainly cover more ground and reach deeper extremes in cycling and this sport takes many more people and resources to make happen. Therefore, it’s an even bigger team effort, which I love, and I’m totally hooked on; I can’t wait for the 2025 season to kick-off!

My three most enriching experiences were at the Pan American Champs, Vuelta Colombia and of course, the recent World Champs in Zurich.

In summary, debuting for Bolivia at the Pan American Champs and being part of Bolivia’s biggest ever (16-cyclist-strong) delegation was so immensely rewarding and inspiring. Guesting for Liro Sport’s Colombian race team Quici Sport Escarabajos alongside Bolivian teammate Nicky Torrico in my first multi-day UCI stage race was incredible and a huge learning curve, both in and out the races. For example, battling the high heat and humidity and cumulative fatigue or fighting for positions and acceptance in a huge foreign peloton.

The excitement (and surprise) at becoming our team’s leader after holding my own in both the early bunch sprint and mountain finish stages and nearly getting a stage win!

Then the World Championships was a whole other learning experience, a nerve and sanity testing rollercoaster trying to get us all to the start-line.

What an amazing story that is from Floren – just one season for all that!  Look forward to more from Floren … 

The fabulous photos sent to me by Floren

 

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