Lisa has been earning consistently solid results both on the road and on gravel over the past few years. She took home the silver medal at the South African national championships for both road and gravel this year. On the road, she won the Cape Town Cycle Tour and finished in the top ten at Bucks County Classic. Lisa showed her strength in the UCI Gravel World Series, soloing to victory at Around The Pot by 16 minutes and finishing second at The Ceder.

With gravel racing exploding in South Africa, there have been more opportunities for Lisa to race gravel, but her heart belongs to the road and she is eager to start her two-year contract with us.

“In South Africa, the road scene is struggling at the moment, so more mountain bikers and road riders would all go do the gravel, so that’s why I started to move to gravel. I enjoy gravel but my dreams and ambitions are still on the road. I love road racing. I love how it’s very, very tactical. It’s a team sport and you have to work as a team, which I really enjoy,” Lisa said.

Looking for an opportunity to shift her focus back to road racing, Lisa didn’t hesitate to sign with EF Education-Oatly.

“I have always wanted to ride for a WorldTour team and to ride at the pinnacle of the sport. I want to be on a team, I want to be racing and I want to do the biggest races in the world against the best people in the world,” Lisa said.

The 27-year-old recognizes that she’s already taken huge strides in her growth as a racer but she knows she hasn’t reached her full potential yet.

“I also want to improve as a rider. That's one of my main goals of coming to Europe in the first place is I want to get to a point where I am the best rider that I could possibly be and the only way that I can do that at the moment is by coming to Europe and racing more and more against the best. And so I'm excited to have an opportunity to do that. I love it,” she said.

EF Education-Oatly general manager Esra Tromp agrees that Lisa has room to grow but what really impresses her about Lisa is the way she’s found her own way to the WorldTour.

“Lisa has forged her own path to the WorldTour,” Esra said. “She comes from a strong athletic background having been a highly competitive field hockey player. She combined that with being a physiotherapist, then she replaced field hockey with cycling while continuing to work full time. All of this in a country that does not necessarily have an established pipeline to the WorldTour, and in a sport she picked up just a few years ago. This tells me that Lisa knows how to create opportunities while having the confidence to make bold decisions. A rider with this mentality and strong race results can go far on a team like ours.”

For most people, moving to a new continent for a new career would be overwhelming. Not for Lisa.

“If you aren't scared and you're not doing things that are out of your comfort zone, then you're not pushing yourself to be better. And so I think you almost need to have that slight feeling of ‘Am I capable of doing this?’ If you don't have that, then your goals and your ambitions are not big enough. This is a new experience that is definitely out of my comfort zone, but that's how it's supposed to be. And I'm excited for the journey and for the way that it's going to push me to be better,” she said.

It’s too early in her racing career to say where her strength lies. So far, Lisa has mostly competed in one-day races, so she’s looking forward to stage races and to seeing how she goes in the big mountains. She’s put a lot of work into improving her aerobic capacity this past year while continuing to spend time on anaerobic efforts.

“If I look at my power profile, the one to five-minute efforts, that’s where I enjoy hurting people. That's definitely where I feel confident in my ability. But again, that's where I've trained to be strong and not necessarily where I know that my strengths lie because it's only been a short period of time that I’ve been racing.”

Lisa is practically counting the days until team camp and the new season begins. She’s ready to start the next chapter of her life.

“I can't wait for next year to come. It feels like it's so close, but so far at the same time. I’ll be leaving family and friends, and everything, but I actually can't think of a better reason for it. I'm really excited to get started.
It's like one of those kind of dream come true moments where you have to pinch yourself,” she said.

“For me, it feels like the beginning of another journey. You know when you go along a journey, and then you reach a point where the road kind of stops and you're kind of fumbling around a little bit and trying to figure out the next path. And I feel like I've found the next path and I'm on it, full steam ahead.”

We’re right there with you, Lisa. Full steam ahead!