Daphne's Profile

Daphne Schrager began her elite para sports career as a track athlete but made the switch to two wheels in 2019 and has since become multiple national champion and world champion on both the track and the road. This summer, she will make her Paralympic debut in Paris, hoping to add Paralympic glory to her already significant list of achievements.

Growing up with cerebral palsy, a sporting career was not something the young Daphne Schrager had ever considered possible. But she was inspired watching the 2012 Paralympic Games in London in person, as it offered her a glimpse of what was possible.

It wasn’t in cycling that Schrager first shone as a para-athlete though. At the age of just 17, she was selected to represent England in the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia on the athletics track rather than the boards of the velodrome, but she was overawed by the atmosphere at the event and began to seek other sporting opportunities while still in sixth form at school.

That led to Schrager applying for a talent day with the British Cycling team in 2019. It was an opportunity that would open new doors for her, as she was offered a place on the foundation programme to develop her skills as a para cyclist.

While she had already proven herself at an elite level on the athletics track, transferring her skills to cycling was a steep learning curve, and Schrager used the lockdown period to practice and hone her skills while in her first year at university.

The results began to come after that, with Schrager taking on her first elite cycling competitions in 2021, and immediately confirming that British Cycling’s belief in the then 21-year-old was warranted. She won gold in her first ever world cup event in Ostend, Belgium, in the C1 time-trial and a month later, she claimed a bronze medal in the C3 road race in Cascais, Portugal.

In 2022, silver and bronze medals at the Para European Championships in Austria laid the foundations for Schrager’s first Para-Cycling Track World Championships that autumn. In Paris, Schrager exceed her own expectations and hit new heights in her sporting career as she overcame double Paralympic champion Keiko Sugiura of Japan to win gold and her first ever rainbow jersey.

Schrager’s good form continued into 2023, where she began the year by clinching three national track titles, before a busy racing schedule saw her go from strength to strength, collecting medals at three world cups both on the track and on the road. Two golds in Maniago, Italy, another in Ostend, Belgium and a gold and a silver in Alabama, USA, set Schrager up for the multi-discipline Cycling World Championships on home soil in Glasgow. Schrager achieved a silver medal in the C2 individual pursuit behind Flurina Rigling of Switzerland in the final. So far this year, Schrager has reinstated herself as the best in the world in that event, beating Rigling to take gold in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She also took part in the omnium achieving an impressive silver medal.

With the results from worlds boosting her confidence ahead of the Paralympic Games in Paris, Schrager will hope to add Paralympic gold to her rapidly expanding medal collection.

If you have been inspired to get on a bike...

Get Involved