6.4W/kg at 16: How Harry Hudson went from pocket-money climber to world champion and Lidl-Trek prodigy in just two years

When Harry Hudson walked into a bike-fit studio in spring 2025, he wasn’t looking for direction – only data. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t need anything else. The then 17-year-old, who was already competing at the sharp end of international junior racing, did not have a coach and was not looking for one. He was visiting physiologist and biomechanic Craig Stevenson at Elite Edge in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, to garner some metrics on his form and efficiency. What happened next epitomised his approach to the sport.

“Harry took the results away, analysed them himself, added his own research, and built his own training plans,” says Tom Denwood, who oversaw Hudson’s racing at his old team Harrogate Nova. “At that point, he was effectively coaching himself.” In an era when almost every top junior is guided by an experienced performance coach, often an ex-pro, Hudson’s self-directed approach is remarkable, not least for the fact that it propelled him to a solo victory in the junior road race at the UCI World Championships in Kigali, Rwanda. No British junior male had ever won the title before. Lidl-Trek had already spotted Hudson’s potential, and snapped him up for their Future Racing development team. In doing so, they have bagged one of Britain’s most promising talents.

Growing up in the quaint village of Bamford in the Peak District, in the heart of England, Hudson was surrounded by climbs. His dad Paul would take him and his brother Finley, two years his junior, on routes around the Peaks, decked out in their Matlock CC jerseys. Speaking to CW in 2023, aged just 16, Hudson told us: “Dad would give us incentives to reach the top of the climbs, like 10p or 20p.” That interview took place because he had just become junior national hill-climb champion, finishing third overall – beating all but two senior riders. “My average power was 337 watts, which is 6.2W/kg, and my normalised power was 345 watts, around 6.4W/kg,” he said of his effort up The Struggle. He was right to be proud of the performance: it was vivid evidence of his exceptional talent.

Hudson’s racing career had begun a few years earlier: from age 12 he dabbled in circuit racing, and shortly afterwards took up cyclo-cross. But it was climbing that he became transfixed by, and soon hill-climbs were his speciality. “It was something I was good at, as I was always generally a bit smaller and lighter than the rest,” the fair-haired, rosy-cheeked 18-year-old told me a week after his win in Rwanda (in an interview for Rouleur).

When Denwood first spotted Hudson, he was immediately keen to sign him. “We were setting up Harrogate Nova in 2023 and were actively looking for top junior riders,” Denwood recounts. “We went to the North West Youth Tour and Harry and Jamie Stewart, the current national junior champion, ripped things apart on the hilly stages. Harry went from the gun and was doing all the driving. His Matlock CC jersey was flapping about and you could just tell he was a class act.”

Shrewd and determined

It was Hudson’s dad who introduced him to cycling, but it was Chris Froome who inspired him to be a pro. Specifically, the then-Sky rider’s fourth and final Tour in 2017, when Hudson was nine. The youngster soon grasped that emulating his hero would require a meticulous approach. No problem. “He takes such care of everything,” Denwood says. “He orders parts off AliExpress, and with his dad Paul he builds his bikes up. He’ll insist on one drop of chain wax per link and then he’ll rotate the cranks back to make sure everything’s working smoothly.”

When Hudson’s dad Paul bought a squat rack and leg press machine from Facebook Marketplace, Hudson spotted an opportunity to further develop. “When Harry started doing strength and conditioning exercises, he made massive gains,” says Denwood. He is also fully across nutrition. “He knows how many grams of carbs he needs, and exactly what he should be eating. White rice cooked with jam is a particular favourite.”

Others I speak to about Hudson tell me similar: he’s very meticulous, very dialled-in; he leaves no stone unturned in his quest to achieve his dreams. According to Denwood, these are traits inherited from his parents. “He’s a clever kid: his dad is a hospital consultant, and his mum Anne is a midwife, so he’s learned to think about stuff and how to make things better. He enjoys being around others, and likes teasing and being teased, but he always makes sure he goes to bed at the right time. He’s got his priorities.”

Time and again, I hear stories of Hudson acting and riding with a professionalism beyond his years. Take the Super Dévoluy one-day race last June, for example. “In the race the day before, he struggled in the 38ºC heat but the next morning you could see he had this ambition to win, to make up for the day before,” Denwood remembers. “We all left the hotel and he was the only one who’d brought his finishing bag with him. He’d checked the weather and could see it was going to rain. He went on to win the race in torrential rain and after he crossed the line he had his finishing bag with his towel and rain jacket. He was the only one organised enough to plan ahead. So professional.”

Escape artist

For the past two seasons Hudson has been racing for one of the best junior teams in the country – Harrogate Nova. He took nine wins in total, including a victory at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. “All I wanted to do was to sign a WorldTour development contract,” he told me in September. “I’d have happily not got any race results as long as I’d signed a contract.” Fortunately for him, he won races and signed a contract.

Winning in Rwanda, the biggest stage he had ever competed on, wasn’t a complete surprise to close observers of junior racing. He had just won a stage and finished second overall at the Vuelta a Cantabria in Spain, and was one of Europe’s strongest juniors. But no one, least of Hudson himself, anticipated the manner of the win: a Tadej Pogačar-style escape act worthy of a new nickname – Harry Houdini.

“As a team, the plan was to be at the front at the start to make it easier to think about the race when moves would start going,” he reflected. “I was thinking the race wouldn’t properly start until 60 or 40km to go, and when I made a move at 36km I was expecting a small group would come with me.”

Hudson kept looking back, almost willing other riders to bridge across to him, but he was too good, too strong. He was all alone. “On the next cobbled climb, no one appeared so I decided to settle in and I committed with a lap-and-a-half to go. I realised if I was going to do well out of this I had to go solo and hold on.” One of the first to greet him at the finish was Mark Cavendish. “That was pretty cool, as I got to chat with him,” Hudson said. The moment felt symbolic: the recently retired greatest sprinter of all time alongside a prodigious young climber, still glowing from his first major victory. It was hard not to see it as a passing of the baton.

What Denwood saw watching the race back in the UK while “going mad, cheering in the office”, was what he’d been privy to on so many occasions: a young lad who’d learned from his past mistakes and executed the lessons. “He was taking on loads of water and food each lap, as he had remembered he had a heat issue in the summer. He was conscious of that and didn’t want a repeat. That he attacked was no surprise. It’s not in his character to wait and win a sprint on the climb. He likes to win and win in style.”

Denwood is conscious of the risk of placing too much pressure on Hudson to fulfil his obvious potential, but – as someone who knows him better than most – can’t hide his excitement about what lies ahead. “He’s a pure climber,” Denwood says. “He’s got a massive kick on the climbs, a real explosiveness. He’s never going to be a [Mathieu] van der Poel or [Wout] van Aert, as his strength is on those longer climbs. He can time trial, too. A GC contender? Absolutely he can be.”

KEEPING IT REAL: ‘NO BIG EGO, JUST A LOVELY KID’

Being world champion comes with adulation, praise and a weight of expectation, which for an 18-year-old isn’t always easy to handle. But those close to Hudson are not concerned about it going to his head.

“There’s no need to take him down a peg,” said Tom Denwood, Hudson’s DS at Harrogate Nova. “He’s confident in his own abilities and he’s lucky that he’s got such great parents in Paul and Anne who keep him grounded. He’s such a nice guy with a lot of internal strength. He’s not flashy or brash, just a lovely kid with a lovely character. Really grounded in reality and quietly confident with no big ego.”

To illustrate his point, Denwood told us that Hudson was intending to spend the February half-term in Calpe, Spain, training with Harrogate Nova – provided it didn’t clash with his Lidl-Trek race programme. “It’s planned that Harry will come along for the week with us – and that says everything about his attitude and intent,” Denwood said. “He’s been brought up in an environment where everyone is cycling-mad, and it’s an environment he wants to be in all the time.”

This feature was originally published in the 22 January 2026 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only) while digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazine's Direct.