Meet the 22-year-old Rochester cyclist aiming for Olympic Gold in Paris

Despite its global popularity, bicycle racing is a relatively unknown sport in the United States. A 22-year-old elite rider from Rochester NY is trying to change that as he races his debut grand tour in Italy and prepares for the Summer Olympics.

Magnus Sheffield is participating in the Giro d’Italia, one of the three prestigious tours. Sheffield knows people back home might need a little context.

“It’s like the Super Bowl of cycling,” says Sheffield. “There are three big tours – the Tour de France, the Giro and the Vuelta. Most people know about the Tour.”

It may not be as prestigious as the Tour, “but my peers and competitors would say it’s just as hard, and sometimes it can be even harder.”

The competition is fierce and, for the uninitiated, a bit confusing. There are 176 competitors in 22 teams and the results are based on individual and group efforts over 2,000 miles divided into 21 stages.

There are as many goals in a grand tour as there are riders, but there are three main categories of winners, each with a corresponding special jersey. The fastest bib gets the pink jersey, La Maglia Rosa, while the best climber wears blue and the cyclist who breaks out of the pack of riders to become the best sprinter wears purple.

There is no jersey for Sheffield’s time trial special, an individual time trial. This year’s Giro has two time trials – stages 7 and 14 – and despite good overall performances, Sheffield suffered a crash on stage 14, spoiling his chance of winning the stage. He was heading for second ahead of his teammate, stage winner Filippo Ganna, but lost too much time getting back on the bike.

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That’s just part of the sport, Sheffield says. “Unfortunately, if you want to win, you have to take big risks, so I hit the deck in a corner with about six kilometers to go, and that ruined my chances of a nice result.”

His original plan was the time trials and perhaps a stage win in this final week. He says: “I honestly don’t know if that’s still possible, how I feel after the accident, so I think it will be more about supporting the team as much as possible.”

Team support is the main task of most competitors in a grand tour, but Sheffield rides for one of cycling’s biggest teams, British team Ineos Grenadiers, formerly Team Sky. The team won the Tour de France seven times. At the Giro, they are led by 2018 Tour winner Geraint Thomas, Olympic gold medalist and three-time world cycling champion. Thomas – or G as he’s known – is second overall and Sheffield’s aim is to help him stay there as the race ends on May 26.

Bicycle racing is dominated by Europeans. Sheffield is an anomaly, just one of 13 Americans competing at the World Tour level. But most surprisingly, he has a hometown friend on the team — 18-year-old Andrew “AJ” August — also from Rochester.

“It’s a pretty unique story,” says Sheffield. “In childhood, the Augusts were good family friends. I first met them through ski racing.”

He became good friends with AJ’s older brothers and the three rode their bikes to and from each other’s houses. “We were almost neighbors. To think that AJ is a member of the team, even though I haven’t raced him yet, it’s really unique that someone from that side of New York is on the same world-class team as me,” he says.

It wasn’t the winters that made Rochester two elite bikers. Sheffield says the local cycling community, like his coach Craig Mattern and the Genesee Valley Cycling Club, brought him to Europe. And his family friend, August’s father, Andy, who owned the Park Ave bike shop and organized local bike races.

And he gives a shout out to Flour City Bread’s Keith Myers, a local bike fan and enthusiast who has been rooting for Sheffield for years. “Keith is an absolute legend,” he says. “He probably bakes the best bread in all of Western New York, if not all of New York State.”

With his major tournament debut almost over, Sheffield is looking to the future and not dwelling on the slump. “It’s important not to let it get me down,” he says. After all, he has Paris to look forward to.

“It’s hard to know who the overall favorite would be, but for the time trial, that’s a big goal of mine,” he says. “And I’m also looking forward to the home Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.”

Sheffield is still waiting to find out if it will qualify for this year’s Paris Olympics, which start on July 26.