Article produced in association with MAAP
The last time I spoke to Grace Brown was on a rainy afternoon in Zurich, sitting inside a cafe next door to her race hotel on the dreary outskirts of the Swiss city. She had just won a rainbow jersey in both the Mixed Team Relay and the Individual Time Trial events, to add to the Olympic gold medal she took home from Paris a few months before. It was the perfect end to a fairytale final season for the Australian rider who was adamant that despite it all, she was stepping away from the sport at the right time – when she was still at the very top.
Now, almost six months later, Brown’s voice crackles through my phone as she speaks to me from back home in Melbourne and it is clear that the 32-year-old is embracing what has come after professional bike racing. We might call it a ‘retirement’, but Brown, as she tells me, is busier than ever before. Stepping away from the WorldTour peloton was simply the end of one chapter in the complicated tapestry that makes up the former FDJ-Suez rider’s life so far. There’s still so much more that Grace Brown wants to do.
“It feels like a world away, that time in Zurich being in the middle of World Champs and everything. I wouldn't say that as a person I'm really that different now, but life has changed a lot,” Brown admits. “That professional rider identity is put away, but I’m still involved in the cycling world in so many capacities. My life feels just much more like a normal person’s would.”
When Brown made the announcement that 2025 would be her last season as an elite sportsperson, some were surprised by her choice. At that time, it seemed like the Australian rider was just getting better and better, winning Monuments and gold medals against the very best as leader of one of the biggest and most exciting teams in the Women’s WorldTour. A few weeks before her final race, she told Rouleur that she felt as if she’d achieved all she ever wanted to in bike racing. Now she knows what it is like to sit on the sideline, does Brown have any doubts?
Image: SWPix.com
“I don't feel like I have any regrets about stopping when I did. I've been commentating and watching the racing and I haven't yet felt like I really wish that I was there. I’m not getting FOMO or anything,” Brown says. “I stepped away and I was really content with where I was at and excited about other challenges in my life, making the most of my career post-cycling. I was hungry for that change.”
Stopping competing when she was still enjoying the sport, rather than continuing to ride and risk losing the love for bike racing, means that Brown has continued to be a big part of the sport in retirement without any resentment.
“It never felt like a chore to get out and train in those last few months. I haven’t done a training ride since but I’ve been able to just go out and ride with friends for fun,” she explains. “I’ve realised I actually really enjoy exercising, it makes me feel good and healthy. I’ve reframed my relationship with riding and I go out because I want to, not because I have to.”
While she is no longer competing in races herself, Brown has continued to use the knowledge and expertise she gained from six years at the highest level of the Women’s WorldTour in other facets of her life. She regularly commentates for SBS (Australia’s lead broadcaster of professional bike racing) and has her own podcast series offering analysis and opinion regarding what is going on in the world of bike racing.
“I feel like it's helping me not to miss the adrenaline of racing because I feel like I get adrenaline commentating,” Brown explains. “I haven't found it as stressful as I thought it might be. It’s been great to watch the racing too, with all the riders switching teams in the women’s peloton it hasn’t really settled into a rhythm yet and it’s been mixed up which is making things so interesting. You can’t really say for sure how the season will pan out with all these new players in the mix so it’s such an interesting dynamic.”
Image: MAAP
As we speak, the 2025 edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes is just a few days away, the race in which Brown got the biggest one-day victory of her career at the start of her swansong season. 12 months ago, she outsprinted the likes of Elisa Longo Borghini and Demi Vollering to take a historic win in one of the most iconic Monuments professional cycling has to offer. The race would take place this year with no defending champion on the start line due to Brown’s retirement, and I wonder if she will find it hard to commentate on an event that holds such a special place in her memories.
“I think it would feel harder for me to watch if I’d not won it and had finished my career with two second places there,” Brown laughs. “But I‘m happy I can just watch it in peace, it is one of the best races as it is so hard and attritional. No one flukes making it to the final of Liège, whoever wins it is generally going to be one of the very best.”
As well playing an integral role in bringing high-level coverage of professional races to an Australian audience, Brown is also passionate about continuing to improve and evolve women’s cycling for the generations of bike racers that will come after her. At the end of 2024, The Cyclists’ Alliance (an independent union representing female riders of the pro peloton) announced that Brown would be their new president. With a mission to ‘Strive for Fairness’, the TCA advocates for equal opportunities, better working conditions, and a level playing field for women in cycling. The goal of the organisation is to create a future where every rider can thrive and earn a sustainable living from the sport.
Brown explains that she has felt first-hand some of the failings of supportive working conditions for cyclists during her retirement, admitting that she has received minimal support while trying to navigate life after bike racing.
“I’ve not had formal support from the UCI or any international group. That’s something that the Cyclists’ Alliance is hoping to work on and develop a programme to help riders transition out of the sport,” Brown says. “Currently, there’s not really much out there – I’m pretty sure the men’s peloton at least has a pension fund but nothing like that exists for the women apart from if you’re on an employed contract and get a pension through whatever nationality your team is. I’ve found there really isn’t a heap of formal support for retiring riders which I hope we can change in the future.”
On a personal level, following her instinct and focusing on her own key aims is what has helped Brown forge such a successful post-racing career so far: “The one thing that really helped me transition from being a rider to life outside of that is being sure of my own personal values and what mattered to me outside of my identity as a cyclist,” she says.
Her work with the Cyclists’ Alliance, combined with her SBS commentary, plus taking on a role as race director of the Sun Tour (which is due to return to the calendar next year), not to mention developing her own product, means that Brown has barely had a chance to take a breath since she hung up her race wheels after those final whirlwind few weeks in Switzerland last season. She stresses, however, that she feels like she is exactly where she is meant to be, living through her next chapter, one page at a time.
“I'm learning a lot of different things at the moment and putting myself out of my comfort zone in ways that I didn't really get the opportunity to when I was riding my bike,” she smiles. “I’ve had an amazing support network around me which has meant that although this big thing has changed in my life, I’ve known it was all going to be okay.”
Cover image: Daniel Hughes/MAAP
