Six months ago, New Zealand's Nate Pringle wasn't even registered with a UCI team. On Monday, he stood on the podium at his first World Championships, runner-up in the under-23 time trial, sandwiched between some of the best under-23 riders in the world.
The 21-year-old joined Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Rookies in March of this year, after mainly racing in New Zealand and Australia with the Oxford Edge Cycling Team, though he got his first taste of racing in Belgium last summer.
However, he didn't race a UCI event in Europe for the first time until this April, when – after emailing the team, he told Cyclingnews earlier this year – he secured a spot on Red Bull's development team.
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Pringle was thrown into racing, stepping up to race with the WorldTour squad several times, including in his first month with them.
He's only ridden a small handful of dedicated U23 races this year, and when the favourites for the time trial in Kigali, his name wouldn't have been on many people's lists. But, going up against the best U23 riders in the world, Pringle immediately left his mark to secure the silver medal.
"It's surreal," he said after the race. "It was a bit of a surprise, but I don't really have anything to compare it to."
"I just went as hard as I could and then tried to recover," he said of his ride to Eurosport. "And then I was pretty dead by those cobbles, they were so much harder in person, but it was really fun.
Pringle won the New Zealand U23 time trial at the start of this year, but other than that, he's only raced a TT at the UCI level once, so there was really no foundation for how he might perform on Monday.
To come away with second is a huge achievement, and it was clear in his post-race press conference – where he kept his answers very short – that the significance had not really sunk in yet for the rider who's never even raced a World Championships before.
"It really means a lot," he said. "I really wasn't expecting it, to be honest."
Pringle ages out of the under-23 category at the end of this year, and hasn't yet confirmed a contract for 2026 – he doesn't seem to be among the 'Rookies' stepping up to Red Bull's WorldTour team – but his performance in Kigali will surely have caught some attention.
"I've got no idea what it means for the future, but I'll just live in the moment, I think," he said. "It feels awesome."
As for the kind of rider he is, the 21-year-old is still very much discovering that.
"I have no idea," he said to Eurosport. "I love hills, but I also don't really shy away from flat, so anything but a sprint, basically."
A great day for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Rookies
Though the riders in the World Championships are racing for their national teams, it's hard to ignore the fact that WorldTour development team riders dominated the standings in the time trial, with many of the top 10 headed to WorldTour teams next season.
There was one team in particular that stood out, with three of the top five riders being Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Rookies riders – Pringle in second, Lorenzo Finn (Italy) in fourth, and Callum Thornley (Great Britain) and fifth.
Riding their team-issued bikes in a discipline notoriously tech focused, and widely perceived as one of the better funded development teams around, it's certainly not a coincidence that this one trade team did so well.
"Congratulations to Nate, my teammate," Finn said at the finish, reminding us that trade teams are not forgotten at this race, whilst Pringle couldn't say if the team has particularly improved his TT, but did praise the Specialized bikes they all ride on.
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