At the end of 2025, plaudits rightly went to the new world champion, Lisa Tertsch, as the German athlete stormed to a glorious double triumph in Wollongong, securing gold in both the WTCS Final and overall Series. As a result, however, one of her compatriots flew a little under the radar.
The 2025 campaign was a triumph in many respects for Tanja Neubert. Having entered the year as an unheralded albeit rising member of a German squad loaded with WTCS medallists – Neubert closed 2024 with finishes of 4th at WTCS Weihai and 13th at the WTCS Final in Torremolinos – she left it ranked 10th in the WTCS, 9th in the world rankings and up to 2nd in the German pecking order. Today, she is the only other woman alongside Tertsch in the top national squad.
“Overall I'm really happy with the season and how it went,” she said in understated fashion. “At the start of the year, my goal was just to gain more experience in the WTCS because I hadn’t done that many races before. The first one was Hamburg 2024. So I just wanted to see how it goes, improve, and learn from race. It went better than expected!”
She opened her account with a 6th place finish in Abu Dhabi, a performance that was slightly lost in the German sweep of the podium led by Tertsch. Solid mid-season finishes of 11th in Yokohama, 12th in Alghero and 11th in Hamburg followed before a return to the top-10 in the French Riviera; there Neubert finished 8th . Across those races, was there a moment where she felt like she truly belonged at the highest level?”
“I think I realised that at the end of the season. At the beginning, I thought maybe no one knows me or has me on the radar and I just can do my thing. But I realised that it wasn't the case in the end anymore. And it was also a lot of fun to race against the best athletes in the world, and you just stand with them on the same start line where you maybe looked up to them one or two years ago and then next time can actually beat some of them too.”
It was back in Weihai, site of her breakout display in 2024, that Neubert’s 2025 reached new heights. A head-turning outing saw her claim the bronze medal, her first at this level, after spending much of the run locked in a fight for the win with Tertsch and 2023 world champion Beth Potter.
“So we went to altitude in August,” she explained, “and I decided to not do WTCS in Karlovy Vary, even though it's a pretty nice course and always a really nice race to do. I wanted to take the time after the altitude camp with some more weeks of training here at home to prepare for Weihai and then also the Final (she would finish 9th in Wollongong). And I think this worked pretty well! The weeks before Weihai I had a feeling like I was probably in the best shape of the last season and I think it also showed in the race.”
“I wanted to have a better swim than I actually had there, because it was a smaller field and I thought maybe I could do better. But it wasn't the case. And then I was ok on the bike and I just went for it and tried to chase the front, because I knew I was in a good run shape. Even if it wasn't the course from 2024, which I really liked with the hills, it was still a good course. Then on the run, I knew that probably Lisa and Beth wanted to go for the win, and my goal was just to stay as long as I could with them. Beth’s move came quite early on, and then I tried to stay with Lisa.” Another understated remark follows, “She's a pretty good runner as well.”
“It was really nice to run with the best athletes in the world. In the race, you don't realise that that much, but afterwards it's pretty cool.”
The conversation of racing the likes of Tertsch brings us to the German elephant in the room: the race within a race when competition for places domestically is so fierce. After all, Team Germany could afford to leave WTCS medallists and World Cup winners Annika Koch and Lena Meißner at home for the Paris Olympic Games.
“It's crazy like to be the second-ranked German right now because I think when I started Hamburg 2024, I was the ninth German athlete in the world ranking, and I could only start because Nina (Eim) and Laura (Lindemann) didn't do the race because they wanted to focus on the Olympics. And it came pretty fast that I moved up, also in the internal ranking, but I tried not to focus that much on the internal rankings even if there's always the thing with the national quotas at races and stuff like that.”
“I think what makes the team so strong is also that we have that pressure, and we can push each other also in the training group and in the camps.” German winter camps in Namibia, for example, have been a common occurrence in recent years.
“I still want to do my best and not focus so much on what the others are doing. But we have quite good relationships. In the camps and in training it's always hard training together in a good way and you can also learn a lot. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, so I think if you use it right, you can improve a lot.”
When it comes to strengths, Neubert carved out a niche as being one of the most powerful athletes on two wheels last year. She logged consistently fast bike splits and was a regular presence at the front. In many respects, it was similar to another rising German, WTCS Karlovy Vary winner Henry Graf. Ever seeking points of improvement, in a discussion of her strength Neubert first points to a separate weakness.
“I often struggle with the swim, but my strength on the bike is where I can play my cards. Even if the swim wasn't that good I managed to close the gap as far as possible on the bike and even after a hard bike, I could always do a solid run.”
“I think one good thing (in the German system) is that when we start quite young and even in the youth years the focus is on developing the bike and the technical skills. For me, the bike was always a crucial part in the race. When I got into U23 racing I always had bad swims and it was the only way to get back into the race. So I think I developed the strength also with racing and just pushing hard on the bike at every race to get back into the mix.”
With the new season around the corner, Neubert is not dwelling on what has already been. She will open her 2026 WTCS campaign in Abu Dhabi before tackling Samarkand and the European legs of the Series. Naturally, a return to Hamburg is firmly in her sights, as it is for the whole German squad, not least since it will host the WTCS Final in 2027. And of course, Neubert will have to return to Weihai.
After finishes of 4th and 3rd in the past two seasons, perhaps a silver medal will be in store this time round. “It's not my top favourite place for travelling with the long flight,” she admitted, “but I feel I can always perform quite well there, so you always come away with a better feeling. So who knows.”
“I have to go and get a podium again in the WTCS and also improve in the Series ranking. Maybe something like top-8, top-5, would be a goal. The focus for now is to develop the swim so that I'm not in the part of chasing at this time. But also, you just learn to play the cards you have.”
Germany’s latest über-cyclist has therefore risen at dizzying speeds in no time at all. Yet there is plenty of work still to be done. And the challenge ahead is daunting to say the least. For if she is to become her country’s best, Neubert will have to aim for the very top. With the cards she has at her disposal, though, as well as those she plans to acquire, she might just have the hand to make it happen.
