After a difficult few months leading up to the start of the 2021 season and fine-tuning her approach to the cycling season, Sophie Wright is looking forward to seeing her team, the newly rebranded UAE Team ADQ, succeed.

During the off-season, she relocated to her hometown of Norfolk because it is "so flat and the winters are cold." I spent the winter training in Cyprus and had a really great winter."

Wright's first season in what was then called Alé BTC Ljubljana was hampered by off-season cyclocross racing and a world-class event that hit 2021.

"Last year I raced cyclocross in Belgium in the winter. Despite being a great experience, it wasn't the best preparation for racing on the road." But this year I wanted to fully commit to the road and give myself the best chance to succeed in the 2022 season.

"It wasn't the best season, to be honest, with the COVID issues and the quarantine issues. 'There was also Brexit, I applied for Spanish residency twice and was turned down twice. It was a waste of money, time, effort, and mental stress.

"That was in the spring, so there was fatigue in the spring races. By the end of the season I was almost at my peak, but I didn't have a race. So my season was really all over the place."

Wright began his career in mountain biking and found early success in the discipline, becoming Junior European National Mountain Bike Champion, World Cup champion, and Junior National Cyclocross champion.

She took a bronze medal in the 2016 European Championships Junior Road Race and transferred this success to the road, later signing with Ale BTC Ljubljana in 2020.

The team's license was acquired by UAE Team Emirates, but its structure remains largely unchanged.

"The takeover has left us with a lot of riders and staff," Wright said, "and almost everyone knows each other very well. It's very nice. We have new staff, new riders, and it's really good. I'm in Spain right now for training camp, I've had meetings with sponsors, I've got some new kit, I've got some new riders, I've got a new team, I've got a new team.

Looking ahead to next season, Wright hopes to serve as a domestique for riders like Mavi Garcia.

"My goal is to do my job as well as I can in the race," she said, "I want to be selected for the first ever women's Tour de France and also for the world championships in Australia.

"I want to do my job as well as I can so that the team can be successful. If I can have my own success in the process, that would be really great. I would be super happy if that happens."