Name: Chloé Dygert
Born: 1st January 1997
Place of birth: Brownsburg, United States of America
Turned pro: 2016
Height: 1.76m
Chloé Dygert at the 2024 World Championships in Zurich. @Sirotti
Dygert was born in Brownsburg, in the State of Indiana, USA. When she was younger she was a basketball prodigy but following injuries she turned to cycling where she discovered she had an incredible talent and began to achieve great results from a very young age both on the track and road. She was touted as one of the biggest American talents, and perhaps the new America star of women's road racing. She was married to fellow pro rider Logan Owen from 2016 to 2020 and is currently in a relationship with Axel Merckx - son of the legend Eddy Merckx.
On the Track Dygert proved to be an overachiever, winning world titles in the 2016 Team Pursuit; 2017 Team and Individual Pursuits; In 2018 and 2020 she won the same two titles once again whilst in 2023 she won the Individual pursuit for a third time. At the 2024 Olympic Games Dygert won the gold medal in the Team Pursuit event together with Kristen Faulkner (also winner of the women's road race), Lily Williams and Jennifer Valente.
On the Road Dygert proved her talent further however. In 2015 she won both road race and time-trial events at the USA's national championships and then World Championships that took place in Richmond, USA. Expectations were skyy-high for the youngster. Turning pro in 2016 with the TWENTY16 - Ridebiker team she quickly showed herself amongst the pros, mainly performing in the time-trials whilst staying in the USA. In 2017 she became Pan-American time-trial champion and finished fourth in the ITT World Championships. In 2018 she won two stages at the Tour of the Gila and one at the Joe Martin Stage Race.
2019 was a breakthrough season as she won two stages and the GC at the Joe Martin Stage Race, two stages at the Tour of the Gila, the Chrono Kristin Armstrong, the Pan-American ITT championships, the Colorado Classic alongside all four stages and finally a World title in the road World Championships in Yorkshire, where she beat none other than Anna van der Breggen and Annemiek van Vleuten with a massive margin.
It was impossible for a rider of such talent to remain racing at a low level, and so she became a Women's World Tour rider in 2020 for Canyon//SRAM. However this was a 'dead' season. The pandemic saw her start her season on the road only in September and it ended on the same day as she crashed out of the time-trial World Championships with a crash that left her with a huge scar after she hit a road rail. This scar has been seen and shown throughout the years and the injury that came from it took a very long time to be recovered as it was a very deep wound.
She returned to competition in June of 2021 almost a year later and won the time-trial national Championships. She raced the Olympic Games time-trial without a flashy result and ended her season at the Olympics. In 2022, besides her very irregular schedule, she contracted mononucleosis and once again had a completely empty year with no racing whatsoever besides the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in February.
But against all odds she would retain her very best level and in May of 2023 (after 15 months out of racing) she once again returned to the peloton, having very strong results added to her palmarès including both road race and time-trial national championships, and finally her second time-trial World title in Glasgow where she beat Grace Brown by a margin of only 6 seconds.
In
2024 she did not race from March to July but in her return at the Olympic Games she finished third in the time-trial event. At the World Championships she was third at the time-trial once again and then surprisingly was only beaten by Lotte Kopecky in the road race, nearly winning the rainbow jersey on the road for the first time in her career. Her season ultimately ended with an unusual incident as she
suffered a nose fracture after hitting a door during the Simac Ladies Tour.