Seana Gray is not your ordinary 16 year old teenager. Her successes as a young athlete across many sports and codes is nothing short of incredible. As she has matured and focused on the sport she loves the most (Cycling), the passion has not dwindled but is only burning brighter.
When there was the opportunity to travel to her mothers country and attend a German school that had an incredible cycling program for a term she jumped at the chance.
The mix of great schooling built around developing world class young athletes who dreamed of becoming great in a supportive yet competitive environment was quite the story.
The race program on offer for both the track and road was world class and would allow Seana to experience cycling at a level she had long dreamed about.
Would the reality and challenges of going to school in a foreign country speaking a different language be to much?
For many it would be but the last few months has shown the reality has far exceeded the expectations, with Seana now part of a world class development program that allows talented young athletes to pursue there sporting passion on a well planned pathway from U19 through to Elite while completing their secondary and tertiary studies.
Obviously along the way their was a hard choice, she would have to change her nationality and live a good part of the year away from her family and friend’s in NZ. Not an easy choice, but none are when chasing the life of an athlete.
The schooling, the program, the training and the racing since then has been what dreams are made of. Competing at the highest level, on challenging roads, in large super competitive fields and against the best in the world on the road and track is everything Seana could have dreamed of.
The philosophy behind the development, progression and pathway is so closely aligned with ours that it was not a hard switch for Seana. We are so proud of how well she has adapted and what she has achieved so far.
It is only the beginning for Seana, the learning curve has been huge in all aspects of life but it is clear she is where she wants to be and will only go onto to bigger and better things.
We look forward to hearing from Seana in person soon but in the mean time she has some pretty big racing coming up so we will let her stay focused on the job coming up.
For now a quick summary of high level racing results:
Road
- European Junior Road Race – German National Team
- German Junior National Road Race – 3rd
- State Junior Road Race – 1st
- State Junior Time Trial – 3rd
Track
- European Junior TP – 2nd
- European Junior IP – 5th, missed bronze ride off by 9/100s
- German Junior National TP – 1st
- German Junior National IP – 3rd with fastest time and 3rd fastest German Jr women ever!
That’s just the highlights as there have been lots of other races too!
