The young Bavarian is only twenty-three, but she already has ten years of cycling behind her. Her brother started racing first and then at thirteen, Lisa began. She didn’t do her first track race until she was fifteen, but she quickly made selection for the Youth National Development Team with the German Cycling Federation. Then in 2005, she won Junior Worlds and Junior Nationals in the TT. Power was her strength then and it remains her strength now. She is the type of rider you want in a breakaway.

She has spent the past few years paying her dues in cycling. She rode with a local team, Team Stuttgart, to learn the sport before moving on to Equipe Nurnberger. She then moved on to a Norwegian team for a couple years and is new to the Specialized-Lululemon squad for 2012. One thing she has learned from the years she has already put in is that you have to set your goals high so you can really work toward them. She loves working toward those goals both on the road and on the track. “On the road, you get to be outside and work together with the team to get results. The team is like a second family,” she says. “But on the track, my main race is the team pursuit. It’s concentrated, just 3.5 minutes, and you have to get it all done in that short period of time.”

Languages she speaks: German, English, Dutch (her boyfriend is Dutch) and a little Italian.

Things she misses when she is away from home racing: Her boyfriend. And having good German bread with marmalade at breakfast.

One of her favorite things about cycling: Standing on the podium after winning a race, the feeling that you know exactly why you’ve done all this training and all the preparation, the payoff.

Her mantra: I can do this.