When Lauren Stevens first rode Zwift, she had to swallow her pride. Unlike on the road, where she showed off to the local women and went toe-to-toe with many men, she was struggling to keep up with riders she had never seen race outside. Now at level 29 and about to get the "Tron bike" of her dreams, Stéphane has become adept at the game and helped her TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank team win the second stage and move into first place in the virtual Tour de France.

Stéphane told Cycling News that the virtual Tour is "the real thing."

"I know it's virtual, but I can't believe I won a stage of the Tour de France," Stephens said from his home in Dallas, Texas.

"It's being put on by ASO. It's organized by ASO. I think most of the girls in the race take it very seriously. Kristen (Faulkner) came in second the day before. We get to pick one athlete to wear the yellow jersey, and on Saturday we'll be wearing the yellow jersey and the green jersey, so it's very exciting."

Stevens says her meteoric rise in Zwift is due to her research into how the game works, embracing it as a training tool and viewing it as a completely different discipline from road racing. 'It's like a mountain biker racing a road race, or a road racer racing a mountain bike. Sure, we take some skills and knowledge from our discipline, but we have to accept that it's a new discipline," she says.

"The biggest difference is that you don't know how your competitors feel. You don't know when to slow down or when to attack. On the road, you can see gestures that indicate how the rider is feeling. [In Zwift] you can use the 'fun view' to check heart rate and other things, but it's not like racing on the road. But it's not like racing on the road.

Once a racer has risen to the ranks of the pros, they come to expect to be treated with respect and reserved by the lower-ranked athletes in the peloton. In Zwift, however, the culture is different. There is no elbowing or throwing hooks, only watts per kilometer, PowerUps, and perfect trainer setups. Says Stevens, "I think a lot of professional cyclists have a hard time with it because they really put themselves out there." 'It's like a pro going into a local race. When pros go to local races they are expected to win, they are expected to do well, they are expected to do well, they are expected to do well, they are expected to do well.

"I had to put that aside. At first I didn't win races, and I had to accept that I would be transparent, that I would be vulnerable. I lost to girls who had never even done a road race in real life. I was like, 'What's going on? Their heart rate was this high and my heart rate was this low.'

Not only were the girls strong, but Stevens was struck by the cultural differences. The riders cheered each other on and reacted badly to the kind of banter normally found in road races. She said, "In a road race, when you're on the bike, there's a lot of nastiness. But from the women at Zwift, it wasn't quite as offensive, but in the chat box, "Are you going to chase that thing?" And I got a little bit of backlash. - But they were like, 'What? But they were like, 'What the heck, this isn't cool. But when you're in a race, you're in a race.

"It happens in the local scene too. When the girls are competitive, they get mean, but when the boys are competitive, it's normal. At the professional level, that's normal, but at a more local level, you don't see that as much. I think that's what the Zwift community was all about.

In addition to getting in shape and learning a new form of racing, Stevens and her teammates were able to maintain strong relationships with longtime sponsors TIBCO and Silicon Valley Bank and equipment partners Cannondale and Shimano.

"We have a cool relationship with Cannondale and we go into the competition with bikes equipped with Shimano parts. We also have a group ride on Wednesday mornings called the Midweek Motivational Ride, and riders get to ride a Cannondale Super Six Evo on that ride. It's a really big deal to have the (team) jersey in the competition. We're pros, so we get to keep wearing the jersey.

"I feel like we have another new fan base. People who didn't know about our team are winning the 'Tour for All' and doing well in the 'Virtual Tour de France. We're creating a whole new market for fans." [Stevens' husband Matt is also obsessed with Zwift, they race regularly together and cool off in the living room with a side-by-side TV, three fans, and a dehumidifier. Since Texas is one of the states hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, they live "like little hermits," going grocery shopping only once a week.

Stefan wants to stop being a hermit and go to Italy for the Strade Bianche on August 1, one of her major goals before the season started, to get results; USA Cycling has selected her for the long team for the Tokyo Olympics, scheduled for 2021, and selected her for the long team for the Tokyo Olympics scheduled for 2021.

"My main goal is to get back to Europe and get as many UCI points as possible and hopefully get a result in a World Tour race," Stevens said. In a way, COVID is kind of a blessing for me because it puts me on the same playing field as my rivals, and I was put off getting on the team by the fact that my 2018 and 2019 seasons weren't that great, so I'm really looking forward to getting back on the team." Now I think I can compete on even terms by getting out of COVID."

Stéphane suffered a soft tissue injury to his hip after a fall on the final stage of the 2018 Santos Tour Down Under. After a series of physiotherapy exercises and treatments, he finally started to get back into shape towards the end of 2019 and finished the race in the top 10 overall at the Tour Cicleste Femininin International de L'Ardèche, where he was in a stage battle with Marianne Vos. He was back in the mix at the Tour Down Under earlier this year, finishing on the podium of two stages and fourth overall, and feels he is finally back to his best.

"At the end of last season I was at about 90%. I still had a few bad days on the Tour Down Under, but for the past month I haven't had any pain in my hip at all."

"I've been feeling good, but I'm not sure if I'll ever be back to my best again.

"It's exciting. My power is back to the power I was doing in 2017. I'm definitely ready to get back out there and show that I'm back to being the rider I know I can be."

.