Sam Welsford

Sam Welsford OAM (born 19 January 1996) is an Australian professional racing cyclist, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe.

Cycling career

Welsford's father was a keen cyclist, and Sam began joining him on rides when he was seven. Welsford worked hard at his cycling and won team pursuit junior world titles in 2013 and 2014.

He rode in the men's team pursuit at the 2016 UCI Track Cycling World Championships winning a gold medal. Welsford won the 2019 UCI Men's elite Scratch race world championships less than an hour after breaking the Men's team pursuit World Record in a time of 3 minutes 48.012 seconds.

Welsford qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and was part of the Men's team pursuit together with Kelland O'Brien, Leigh Howard and Alexander Porter. They secured a bronze medal after overlapping New Zealand who had crashed. Welsford also competed in the Men's Madison where the team finished fifth with a time of 3:48.448 and therefore did not qualify for the final.

After spending much of his career as a track specialist with occasional forays onto the road, Welsford signed with UCI WorldTeam Team DSM in November 2021, for two years.

Welsford participated in the 2024 Tour Down Under, where he won in three group sprints on the first, third, and fourth stages.