It’s not as though Emily Marcolini has never experienced sporting success.

The 26 year-old graduate of St Benedict Catholic Secondary School captured more SDSSAA track and field and cross-country championships than she has toes inserted into her fast moving sneakers.

While at Cambrian College, she won gold at the OCAA cross-country championships.

She would make the move rather seamlessly into the world of high-end cycling, quickly making a name for herself on the national scene.

Still, this most recent stretch of road races in California and New Mexico was different.

“These are the first ever professional international world events that I’ve ever won,” said the team leader of the 3T/Q&M Cycling team based out of Michigan. “This is at the top of my list.”

And that is saying something.

The tone of this trip was set early.

“The very first day, I finished third overall but picked up the “Queen of the Mountains” jersey,” she said, explaining that stage races often include mini-challenges within the race. “On certain climbs, they will have sprints for points. I kept that jersey for the whole race.” Marcolini also captured the second stage of the Redlands Classic outright.

Cracking through at this level was not completely unexpected – though it was not necessarily the game plan as Marcolini envisioned it last fall, at that time looking to take a serious run at velodrome track racing, targetting a spot on the national team down the road. Though her path may have veered a little, her time was not wasted.

“My training on the track helped me immensely with my bike handling skills, being more comfortable riding in a pack,” she explained. “As my coaches like to say, everything on the track happens at ten times the speed of out on the road. If you can handle yourself on the track, you’ll have no problem racing on the road.”

Still, as recently as December of 2021, events such as the Redlands Classic (California) and the Tour of the Gila (New Mexico) were not where Marcolini most expected to make hay. “When I left for our Christmas break, I was just coming off a week-long training camp with Cycling Canada,” she said.

“I was starting to feel pretty good about my comfort level on the track; I was gearing up to race the national championships.” Those goals were set initially for early 2022 – and then came Omicron.

And while her current stretch of great racing may have muddied the waters a little about exactly what the next step might be, Marcolini did concede that track cycling and road racing are not mutually exclusive pursuits.

“I would say that about 90% of the training is the same,” she suggested. “Track races are shorter, so they do require a little more fine-tuning of the anaerobic systems compared to road races. More often than not, you do end up in some kind of a sprint at the end (of road races), but you still need to have a larger aerobic base in order to last the three or three and a half hours before you get to that sprint.”

If Marcolini was somewhat uncertain of her full potential on the road, the same could not be said for her cycling teammates, the decision made after their March training camp to work together as a unit to help their only Canadian rider mount the podium. It’s a strategy that is as much of the fabric of cycling as is the Tour de France.

“That was pretty cool – and pretty nerve-wracking,” said Marcolini. “I’m not used to coming up with race strategies; I’m used to following orders.”

It worked out better than she could have imagined. While she is quick to note that the pinnacle of global road cycling is the World Tour, hosted almost exclusively in Europe, followed by the UCI professionally run teams that operate one level below, her performance among the elite North American teams will not go unnoticed.

“These races are definitely events that Cycling Canada looks at,” she said. “They are events that directors of professional teams follow to find riders that are up and coming. They are pretty big races on the calendar, at least for me.”

And they now shape the way that Marcolini will approach her short term goals, hopeful of a selection to a national team project that will head to Europe at the end of august. “Cycling Canada is taking a few elite riders to France and Belgium for a few UCI races there.”

“My ultimate big goal for this year is to try and qualify for the World Championships in road racing in Australia in September.”

And that would be a big deal – even for Emily Marcolini.