Olympic road race champion Anna Kiesenhofer has announced that Swiss Krono Group will support her until 2024 as she continues to pursue her cycling aims without a trade team.
Kiesenhofer, who hasn’t ridden for a professional team since 2017, looks set to continue as an independent amateur rider with the arrival of this new partnership.
“We have a lot in common regarding mindset, work ethic and desire to succeed,” Kiesenhofer wrote on Instagram about Swiss Krono Group, a wood-based materials manufacturer based in Lucerne. “Thank you for your support and looking forward to a great collaboration!”
Apart from one season spent with Lotto Soudal Ladies in 2017, 30-year-old Kiesenhofer has spent the majority of her career either independent or riding for amateur teams.
Prior to the Olympics, her achievements included a stage at the Tour de l’Ardèche and three Austrian time trial championship titles. She has often cited her discomfort at racing in a bunch as her reason for not joining a road team, preferring to focus on time trialling in recent years.
Partnering with personal sponsors seems part of Kiesenhofer’s plan to continue to support her career as a cyclist without a trade team, a plan that didn’t change after her win in Tokyo.
“I might make cycling an even the bigger part of my life, in a professional sense, in terms of really working more, and earning money with cycling,” she said in an interview with VeloNews in August. “Not in the teams, but rather like individual projects, working on coaching, mentoring or appearances in public, and also working on products.”
Kiesenhofer’s victory in Tokyo made headlines outside of cycling: the rare feat of a non-professional winning the road race gained worldwide attention.
The sole representative of the Austrian team, her day-long breakaway effort saw Kiesenhofer beat WorldTour professionals Annemiek van Vleuten and Elisa Longo-Borghini into second and third.
Alongside cycling, Kiesenhofer has a PhD in mathematics and is a research fellow at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
