The Kiwi climber won the first stage and general classification at Trofeo Ponente in Rosa, her first European stage race of the season. A few weeks earlier, she won the Black Fern as New Zealand time trial champion. Kim attributes much of her recent success to the work she has done to improve her bike-handling skills.

Kim is still a recent convert to road racing. She grew up hiking and skiing in the mountains near her hometown in New Zealand. She swam and played rugby and tried every sport she could. As a teen, she took up triathlon, and only started to focus on cycling when an injury stopped her from being able to run. Kim’s natural athleticism propelled her from the moment she started riding. At 19, she rode her first races, the New Zealand age-group championships, and finished on the podium. Soon, she was off to Europe to compete against the pros. At first, she was shocked by how technical the racing was.

“You come here and you are going on cobblestones and through Belgian towns with all of these corners,” Kim says. “I realized right away that there were skills I needed to learn. In New Zealand, we’d just just race on these big straight roads.”

Matching her rivals, who have bumped elbows in pelotons since they were little kids, has been a challenge for Kim. Together with her coach Emma Trott, she is now making a focused effort to brush up her skills, fitting a day or two of bike-handling drills into her weekly training schedules. That work is already paying off.

“At Ponente in Rosa, I saw the front of the bunch more in one stage than I did the whole of last year,” Kim says. “The skills training has made a big difference. I have learned a lot. Last year, I never would have intentionally touched someone in the bunch, because I would have been afraid that I would not be able to hold it up myself, but after all this practice I am now quite happy to bump into people. Descending too—in my first race last year I lost a good minute and half from the front group on a downhill, but now I am quite confident in my descending abilities. I still tend to stay near the back of the peloton, but I didn’t lose the group at all in Italy.”

Kim is encouraged by the progress she has made, but still determined to get better. During the prologue at Ponente in Rosa, she missed her line in a corner and had to race hard to make up the seconds she lost. At races like the Tour de France Femmes, a slow corner like that could make the difference between winning and losing. That’s why Kim is so focused on improving her skills.

Try out Kim’s favorite drills to improve your bike-handling.

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“Efficiency wise in the peloton, skills save so much,” says Kim’s coach Emma Trott. “Being a good bike handler just smooths out the bike ride. You burn fewer kilojoules. You feel safer. Fear is energy sapping as well. At the end of a race, you can see distinct differences between a rider who can just surf through the peloton and one who makes lots of accelerations based on poor positioning and then pops. There are some bike riders who get to the end of bike races and you are just like, how the heck are they still there? They are there because they are so good on the bike and in the peloton. Especially for young riders who haven’t yet reached their physical peak, what is going to make you go to the top will be your ability to move through the bunch. Kim has the power to win the biggest races. Kim just needs to iron out her skills and be brave and confident. If we work on her skills, that will calm her. So much of it is just about making these sessions enjoyable. You learn a lot by mucking about on your bike with your friends.”

“The biggest challenge that I have faced in cycling is just trying to learn a lot of skills in an extremely short amount of time and learning that you have to be patient and that it is not something that you can rush,” Kim says.

Kim recommends including regular skills-practice sessions in your training schedule. At times, these might be frustrating, but you will get better if you put in the work and trust the process. Doing these drills with friends can be a lot of fun too. Just don’t compare yourself too much to them.

“I am not patient with myself. I want things to click quickly. I look at a lot of girls in the peloton and think, ‘If they can do it, why can’t I?’ Kim says. “Surely, I just have to do what they are doing, but I know that there are years and years of work behind their abilities. That is why you have to be patient and also spend the time doing it yourself. By working on my skills in a more structured way, I think I can accelerate the process.”

You can too. Team EF Coaching is ready to help you work on your bike-handling skills like a pro.