'A dream I didn't even know I had' - Unbound Gravel winner Rosa Klöser on the unlikely path from commuter to WorldTour rider

Five years can bring a world of change, especially in sports. In women's cycling alone, the period between 2019-2024 has seen the birth of the Tour de France Femmes, which is now the biggest race on the calendar, increase in professionalism and salaries growing towards the €1 million mark, and a whole new generation of riders emerge. 

But for one rider, Rosa Klöser, the past five years have seen her take an unlikely path from riding the Copenhagen commute during her PhD in Green Shipping through to victory at gravel racing's biggest event - Unbound Gravel 200, and now into UCI Women's WorldTour. 

While you may know her because of her fight back from a puncture and surprise sprint triumph in Emporia, Kansas last June, if you watched the recent three Challenge Mallorca Femenina races that kicked off the 2025 women's road racing season in Europe, you may seen Klöser's name on the start list.

However, while riding for her new team Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto, the German is competing in some of the first road races of her life, certainly at the professional level, after a remarkable rise into cycling's top division.

Klöser describes joining her native Germany's top women's team as "a dream", but one that wasn't even possible for her to dream of five years ago, having come to the competitive side of the sport late during the COVID-19 pandemic after her city bike was stolen.

"I kind of started in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. In Copenhagen and Denmark, everyone is really sporty, so a lot of people use a bike for commuting," Klöser told Cyclingnews at her first team training camp in December. "I thought at one point, why shouldn't I do that? And then I really fell in love with cycling quickly.

"It must have been late 2020 that I was on a road bike for the first time in my life. Then at the start of 2021, I bought a nice road bike and went out on the first longer rides. But still, the first local race I've ever done on the road was in 2022."

Klöser beams as she recounts her early moments in the sport, paying big credit to her time in Copenhagen's local racing scene three years ago when it was "really more like a hobby" than a job option. But she also highlights a trip to "cycling's Mecca", Girona where she first tried gravel and met pro Piotr Havik, who was impressed with her level as a newcomer and encouraged her to pursue racing the off-road discipline.

"I took his advice, then fast forward to 2023 and I did my first gravel races, almost by myself, very unprofessionally, with just me and my boyfriend going to the races. But it went really, really well," said Klöser.

"I went on to score multiple podiums in the UCI Gravel Series. From there on in, my professional cycling career started, because that was the first time I got in touch with sponsors who were keen to support me in the sport."

Klöser showed heaps of potential in these initial UCI races in 2023, earning podiums behind Marianne Vos at Gravel Grit 'n Grind and Carolin Schiff at Millau Grands Causses as well as a top-five finish behind Gravel One Fifty winner Pauliena Rooijakkers. After netting 28th at the UCI Gravel World Championships in Italy, won by her now-teammate Kasia Niewiadoma, the 28-year-old German showed this was just the start. It only got better in her second season. 

"In 2024 I had a way more professional setup for races, but still very much focused on gravel," she recalls. "Then I managed to win arguably the biggest gravel race in the world, Unbound Gravel, as a little bit of a dark horse to some."

Klöser still couldn't quite believe where she'd ended up when speaking in December, with that unlikely rise all coming in such a condensed period.

"It's been huge progress and to be honest with you, I never expected it. My main focus was my PhD when I started cycling, so if you had asked me if we would be having this interview in 2022, I would for sure not have believed you.

"If you had told me that I'm sitting here today with you as a Canyon-SRAM WorldTour rider, I would not have believed you. So yeah, it's mind-blowing and honestly, a dream come true for me - but maybe a dream that I didn't even know that I had in 2022."

Combining road and gravel racing going forward

With a thrilling sprint win after 327km of gravel-induced Flint Hills pain in the bank, Klöser's deal to join Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto only fully came to be after her natural instinct to be inquisitive again took over. Three weeks exactly after Unbound, she put away the gravel bike, entered German road nationals on a whim and finished ninth, mainly behind WorldTour riders.

"It's fair to say that I was definitely elevated through the victory at Unbound. Canyon as a cycling brand, they're really big in gravel and are investing heavily in it. They do already have the GRVL CLLCTV, their individual gravel squad," said Klöser. 

"But with me, I was always curious from the start of my short cycling career about road racing as well, with it being much more strategic, more about teams and sometimes having goals for some riders not always to win, but to contribute.

"When I talked to Canyon about becoming part of their gravel team, at the same time, I was actually just signing up for the German road nationals, to do some road racing just out of curiosity. I went there, and it actually went really well. I was in the final selection in the race and of course, Canyon-SRAM was present because of the team's German riders.

"That was kind of my first touch point with the road racing side of the team. I think the idea emerged that actually, there are a lot of synergies that we could maybe use and that it could be a really nice, dare I say, experiment to use me in both capacities."

For a team with a history of supporting multi-discipline goals, be that Zoe Bäckstedt in the cyclocross field or Chloé Dygert on the track, Klöser was confident Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto were the perfect fit. 

"It's a team that always, from when I started racing in 2022, really stood out to me because of their very unique approach of working with cyclists," Klöser said. "They're very open-minded and they've always had new approaches like Zwift Academy to select new talent, but also with riders in the past who have combined different disciplines.

"They are giving me the opportunity to combine gravel racing with road racing and I think if we look at both disciplines, the gravel and the road, we can actually see that there's a lot of synergies and gravel is becoming way more professional."

Klöser didn't know much of her calendar at the end of the year when speaking to Cyclingnews, however, a defence of her title at Unbound is definitely on the schedule and she's got the biggest one-day races on her eye for the long-term future.

"For me, definitely, it's not a secret that you will find me at the start line of Unbound again hoping to defend my title. The team has also been super supportive in allowing me to prepare well for that and have this goal in mind," Klöser said.

"I'm hoping long-term to do some of the more technical, gravel-style road races like Strade [Bianche], or [Paris-]Roubaix would of course be a dream to participate in.

"I think I can learn so much from the girls, from their road racing smartness. But I hope that I can bring my big gravel engine to the road races as well and support them as well as possible."

She may not have taken the conventional path, however, Klöser didn't take long at all to become one of the stars of gravel racing, so don't be surprised if she's soon making a rapid rise up the road ranks.

Klöser will be back on the gravel soon, though, after kicking off her road season in January, with her first race coming at X Santa Vall as part of the Gravel Earth Series this coming weekend.