'I couldn't be happier with how this year has gone' – Meet Erin Boothman, British cycling's rising star

Erin Boothman is Cycling Weekly's Rising Star of 2025. This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 4th December 2025. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.

Trying to stop the two gold medals around her neck from clinking together, Erin Boothman holds them to her chest as she walks through the Manchester Velodrome. “Some riders transport theirs in socks, you know,” a member of staff advises the 18-year-old. He then pauses, looks her in the eyes, and nods to her achievements: “You’re doing really well.”

The medals the teenager is wearing for her photoshoot this morning were prised out of a frame in her bedroom. She has three – “massive, thick frames” – one for her Junior Track World Championships golds, one for her Junior European Track Championships golds, and another for her 2023 European Youth Olympics silver. How many medals are in the first two? “Three in the Euros one, and four in the Worlds one,” she says. “I wake up in the morning and they’re all there.”

This season, in her final year as a junior, Boothman’s medal collection ballooned in size. She doubled her tally of world titles, earned three new European track titles, plus three national titles, all the while stamping her name on three world records: the junior women’s team pursuit, individual pursuit and kilometre time trial. The Scot knew her form was good when she clean-swept seven out of seven events at a track meet in January. Everything after that, she says, was “eye-opening – I couldn’t be happier with how it has gone.”

Our interview, held across leather armchairs in a side room of British Cycling’s HQ, has spared Boothman the morning’s rainy road ride. We start with her personal highlight from the year: a sunnier day in Belgium, when she won the junior Gent-Wevelgem with her team Tofauti Everyone Active Majaco. The race came down to a two-up dash. “I knew I was the better of the sprinters,” she says – so much better, in fact, that she was able to start celebrating with more than 25m to go.

That victory came after one at February’s Clásica de Jaén. After testing the punchy gravel tracks of southern Spain in her recon, Boothman messaged her mum confidently: “This is my race. This course could not be better for me.” She ended up winning from an eight-rider breakaway and collapsed in tears afterwards. “I could not believe I’d won it. The year before, I wasn’t really doing well on the road, so to win the first Nations Cup, I was literally over the moon.”

The Scot’s road success continued in July, her most prolific month of medal-winning. First came the junior British time trial title, followed by three gold medals at the Track Euros, including the team pursuit, the Madison alongside teammate Abi Miller, and the kilo, in which she broke the world record twice, first in qualifying and again in the final. A week later, she set another one in the 3km individual pursuit at the British Junior Track Championships. “I’ve actually gone four seconds quicker in training,” Boothman says, “but it was unofficial, so,” she trails off with a shrug.

August’s Track World Championships brought a similar story: again, Madison and team pursuit titles, and a new world record in the latter. “It meant more at Worlds because our families were there,” Boothman says. In celebration, she collected a Union flag from her mum along the banking, and roared around the track.

Boothman’s parents, both engineers, met in a climbing club, and used to take their young daughter to cycle the 10-mile loop of the Isle of Cumbrae off Scotland’s west coast, an hour’s drive from their suburban Glasgow home. Around the age of nine, she joined her first club, and at 12, won a three-stage race in Donegal, Ireland, which would end up being a watershed moment. “There’s a picture of me with a trophy that’s double the size of me,” she laughs. “I remember I won this little pink jersey, and I was like, ‘Oh, I could do this. I want to do this more.’”

Initially for Boothman it was a toss-up between netball and cycling. She committed to British Cycling’s development pathway as an under-16. “If you’d have asked me two years before, I probably would have said I preferred netball,” she says. Unsure if a career in cycling would take off, she applied last Christmas to study pharmacy at the University of Strathclyde, and received an unconditional offer in April, thanks to her straight-A grades. Two weeks later, she signed a pro contract with Liv AlUla Jayco. “I’ve postponed uni now, and if it all goes well, I won’t have to go back,” she smiles.

The deal will see her join the team’s development squad next season, before stepping up to the elites in 2027. She decided that going straight to the WorldTour at 18 would have been much too soon. “I want to be in cycling for the next 10 years, instead of signing a really good three-year WorldTour deal and then maybe struggling. [My agent and I] decided to play it safe and give myself a year to get grounded in the team, and try and develop a bit more.”

This year, it’s clear, has been one of immense growth for the teenager. She has learned the art of winning races, but has also built resilience from the times things didn’t go to plan: the crash that ended her Track Worlds omnium bid; the car door that floored her before the junior Tour of Flanders; the accidental unclipping in the Rwanda World Championships time trial that cost her a medal.

Sore memories now in the past, Boothman is looking ahead. “I’m someone with a lot of power, who suits TTs. I think the Classics will be where I’ll end up,” she says of her future. There’s also the matter of a home Commonwealth Games in Glasgow next August. Boothman’s on the long list for the Scottish track squad. If all goes well, she might need to mount a new medals frame on her bedroom wall.