Niamh Fisher-Black discusses the team’s ambitions in her first Grand Tour of the year
“There’s just something special about doing a lap around Italy,” Niamh Fisher-Black says with a smile. It’s the morning before the opening stage of the Giro d’Italia Women, and the Kiwi rider is ready to tackle one of her biggest goals of the season.
Fisher-Black has a long, happy, love affair with the Giro. She has finished in the top-10 overall in the last four editions she started, and achieved a breakthrough stage win in 2024. That victory was one of the performances that put her on the map as one of the most exciting climbers of this generation.
“That win was a big moment for me, and solidified the fact that I could do it. You can’t describe the confidence a win like that gives you, it was a huge moment,” she recalls.
In 2026, the 25-year-old is hoping she will once again taste success in Italy. After a busy block racing in the Ardennes in the first half of the season, she has been training hard at altitude and aims to come into this period of stage racing refreshed both mentally and physically.
This is a big goal, to be honest. It is my first Grand Tour of the season. It's a bit of a switch over from what I've been racing so far this year, so it's a bit daunting, but I know that in the last month we've been putting in a lot of work, so hopefully it pays off.
Photo: Anouk Flesch
“We did a small training camp with just three of us riders. Being up at altitude, it’s an important time to focus and put hard work in, but it’s also a nice opportunity to switch off a bit away from the racing and make some mindset changes. It was not the best start to the season for myself, but we made a switch and will head into the second part fresh.”
The opening stages of the Giro d’Italia Women will be best suited to Lidl-Trek’s sprinter, Elisa Balsamo. For Fisher-Black, it will be about staying safe and protected until the first mountain tests of the race, as well as helping her fast Italian teammate when she can.
I think it's also just as important to point out that we go for stage wins with Elisa here. It sets the other way the week goes if we can have success early. It fuels everyone and I think she is in a really good way at the moment. We all believe in her.
“We then have a really strong climbing squad, and that’s important in the mountains. I think Bella [Holmgren] can have a strong ride. She is young, so there’s also a young rider’s jersey she can go for. We always aim for the GC, but I hope that we always take the opportunity for the stage wins.”
While she can use her previous experience in the Giro this week to her advantage, Fisher-Black stresses that the most important thing is staying calm and focusing on the process throughout the nine stages to come. Rather than putting pressure on specific results, she hopes that the whole Lidl-Trek squad can come away from Giro d’Italia Women feeling like they have given everything in the fight for both stage victories and the elusive maglia rosa.
“If by the end of the week the whole team is in a good place, happy and satisfied and I’ve not been set back by bad moments, I’ll be happy,” she states.
“If I look at the last few stages, they are so hard that I really don’t know what can happen. It’s beyond my physical understanding of what I can do. It sounds like a cliché, but I want to take every day as it comes. In the end, I hope and I believe that we can get a very good result out of this week.”
