'Cycling appeared out of nowhere' - Marine Lenehan's rapid rise from hurdling to the WorldTour

Marine Lenehan didn’t seek out cycling, but it found her all the same. In January 2023, she ventured out onto the road for the first time in the hills of County Wicklow. The bug caught hold quickly. 

One training ride begat another. A sportive appeared on the horizon and that led to more. Racing on gravel gradually bled over to racing on the road. Results began to stack up. People began to take notice. And so, barely three years on from that first, tentative ride, Lenehan is preparing for her debut season in the Women’s WorldTour with Lidl-Trek.

Even now, Lenehan can’t help but marvel at the speed of the journey. 27 may be an advanced age for a neo-professional, but everything is still new to the Irishwoman.

“I guess cycling just kind of appeared to me,” Lenehan said at the team’s training camp in Denia earlier this month. “I didn’t search for it. It just appeared out of nowhere and I’m so glad I found it because I appreciate it. I just love the sport so much.”

The daughter of an Irish father and a French mother, Lenehan has spent her life toggling between the two countries. She was born in Ireland but grew up in Normandy, where her first sporting love was athletics. Her gifts of endurance were either under-developed or simply undetected at that age, and her speed and technique instead saw her ushered towards sprint hurdling. 

“I just liked the hurdles, and I was also good at it, so I just kept on with it,” she said. “But to be honest, my endurance back then was not the best either, so it’s still a mystery to me how my muscle fibres switched from fast twitch to more endurance. I mean, when I was doing long distance runs as a hurdler – whew! – they weren’t my favourite runs. But today I guess it’s still in my DNA that I would be more of an explosive rider rather than a complete endurance rider, so I guess it’s still there.”

Lenehan’s hurdling talent carried her to compete at national level in France, and her involvement in high-level sport would also inform her career path. She studied dietetics and nutrition at university with the aim of setting out on a career as a sports nutritionist. She established Vivify Sports shortly after moving back to Ireland three years ago, working primarily with cyclists and triathletes.

“I think it was mainly to be closer to the family again,” Lenehan said of her decision to move to Wicklow. “I have my sister living there, my dad’s living there and I just like going home, so I moved back to Ireland in November 2022.”

Shortly after returning to Wicklow, Lenehan met Matteo Cigala, an Italian cyclist and coach who has been based in Ireland for over a decade. One of their early dates involved a bike ride and Cigala quickly suggested to Lenehan that she should apply her talents to her racing.

“I went out on dates with my current partner and he said, ‘Well, you should really join our team, you’ve really got something in cycling',” said Lenehan, who by year’s end would be lining out in Ireland’s national tour, Rás na mBan. 

Lenehan’s progress was even more striking on the gravel scene. In only her second race, she claimed gold in the European Gran Fondo Championships in Oud-Heverlee, and that persuaded her to see just how far she could go on two wheels.

“I’d just trained for three or four months beforehand, and afterwards, I was like, ‘Well, maybe I can try and give it a go,’” she said. “I guess I’m the type of person that if I put an idea in my head, I try and go until the end of it and do the best.”

Lenehan would defend her European title in 2024 before adding the amateur gravel world title to her palmarès. That would prove a watershed moment. Although Lenehan’s early successes on the Irish domestic scene had already seen her garner plenty of praise, she only truly began to believe the hype that was building up around her when she was presented with the rainbow jersey that afternoon in Belgium.

“I grew so fast and there were so many people around me saying, ‘You have talent, you’re good, you’re strong.’ But I think that only really has a meaning once you start to believe it yourself deep down,” Lenehan said. “Before the Gravel Worlds, I didn’t believe it. I kind of said, ‘Ok, people are saying this to be nice,’ and I didn't really believe it.”

By then, people were sitting up and taking notice far beyond Ireland. Alex Carera’s A&J Sports agency began canvassing interest on Lenehan’s behalf and newly appointed Lidl-Trek women’s manager Michael Rogers was among those to make contact. An invitation to join a training camp in early 2025 led to a stint as a stagiaire later that season at the Tour de Pologne.

“I was quite nervous about that because, even now, my teammates are people I used to watch on television,” Lenehan laughed. Still, there was no sign of impostor syndrome in Poland, where she worked on behalf of Emma Norsgaard. 

“I knew I had prepared well for it in the sense that I couldn’t arrive any stronger than I did, but I was still nervous because it was new people, new team, new setting, new type of racing,” Lenehan said of that Poland experience.

“For the first half an hour of the race, my heart rate was up, not because of the power, but because of everything that was happening. But then, you know, I just settled in, and I guess it became natural, even though I’ve still got so much to improve, to learn, and to grow. But yeah, it felt like it was where I belonged.”

Rogers and Lidl-Trek clearly agreed. Shortly afterwards, Lenehan was offered a two-year contract to join a team that features Niamh Fisher-Black, Anna Henderson and former world champion Elisa Balsamo. “It’s like a dream come true,” said Lenehan, who will start her first pro season at the Challenge Mallorca. 

“If we’re talking like short-term ambitions, next year I want to grow as a rider, become stronger, smarter, spend as much time in the peloton as I can. Right now, I just want to race as much as possible because I think what I’m missing is race experience. The level of racing that I’ve been doing wasn’t that high, so I’m looking forward to that, and I think that’s what I need.”

Lenehan isn’t some ingénue in top-level sport, of course. Her qualifications as a nutritionist mean that some of the principles guiding her new life are already more than familiar.

“I’ve already had some chats with my nutritionist, and we keep laughing because we’re both experts, so I understand what they mean,” Lenehan said. “My understanding in nutrition and the body and the physiology and everything has also helped me become stronger on the bike.”

Given her off-road background, Lenehan will hope to feature in the line-up at Strade Bianche in March, and in the longer term, she covets one race above all others. “I’m still discovering who I am as a rider, but if you’re asking me one race that I would like to win, it would be Paris-Roubaix,” said Lenehan. 

After the rapid journey to this point, who would rule it out?

“Well, I have to take things easy and not go too fast too soon,” Lenehan said. “But I mean, what can I say, it’s just exciting for me. I’m like a kid on Christmas Day.”