Cat Ferguson prepares for "10 days of carb-loading" with aim at a first Grand Tour success

While the men's 2026 Giro d'Italia is gradually coming to its conclusion this Sunday, ladies will move to the spotlight from this Saturday onwards. Fierce battles are expected over the next nine stages with the general classification battle set to culminate on the mythical Colle dell Finestre. Movistar Team is one of those who bring a rather intriguing squad led by Marlen Reusser and young starlet Cat Ferguson.

Naturally, the Briton doesn't aim for the highest peaks, but rather the bunch finishes where Ferguson proved to have a great potential in past weeks and months. Meeting up against the world's fastest woman, Lorena Wiebes, she won't have an easy job to reach a stage victory.

"The Giro is hard, but then there are a lot of opportunities for sprints. I will be trying to do my best on the sprint stages," she told Cycling Weekly ahead of the Grande Partenza.

Since last year's Grand Tour debut at Vuelta Femenina, Ferguson will look to use that experience to reach higher than a seventh place the coming week: "It’s not just a one-day race, it’s 10 days of carb-loading, and it’s very different to a junior stage race," she said. "If you don’t manage to get that pasta down you at dinner, then the next day you really feel it."

And when it doesn't click in one of the completely flat stages, Ferguson may look to use her versatily to benefit on more undulating days. The 20-year-old has already proven to be not afraid of a little climbing when she won the Navarra Classic, or placed high in Flemish Classics.

"The Classics are just something else, and that’s what I’m continuing to learn," she said. "Even having more of a physical ability doesn’t mean that it’s going to go right. I think a lot of the Classics is just positioning, and that’s something I’ve still not cracked."

With Vuelta and Giro participations ticked off, there'll be only the Tour de France Femmes remaining in Ferguson's racing CV. And that could change this summer as Ferguson is currently a part of Movistar's long list of possible nominations.

"It will be [dependent on] how I’m going around the Tour," she said. "If anything happens between now and then, if I’m injured or something, that’s why we have this long list. All the team on the long list will do altitude with the team, and then from then we get selected."

"I think it’s a good system. It makes us hungry, and it makes us more competitive in a healthy way, so we can be the best team and the fairest team that goes to the Tour," she concluded.