“I think I was always really competitive,” says Kiara Lylyk, Guelph's up-and-coming competitive cyclist who is heading to the Junior Track World Championships later this summer.
Despite only cycling for just over a year, there has been plenty of success for the 17-year-old Lylyk.
Since November she has travelled to Milton, Arkansas, Belgium, Netherlands and France to compete. She is headed to Tel Aviv in August to represent Canada in the Junior Track World Championships. She won seven national titles in Milton in April at the Junior Canadian Track Championships.
Lylyk said she is most looking forward to an event called the omnium, where riders compete in four different kinds of races and gain points based on their position in the races.
One of the challenges she faced was burnout.
“Particularly in the fall I noticed I was not gaining or losing, I was just the same and I wasn’t really happy with that. That just comes from not spending enough time resting or doing things outside of cycling like going to school and hanging out with friends.
“I think definitely at my age everyone’s just trying to figure out what they want to do with their life. I think having something that you really love to do is so important.”
Lylyk will be graduating this June from Centennial CVI. In September she will start her post-secondary education at Brevard College in North Carolina where she landed an academic and athletic scholarship.
Brevard has a collegiate cycling team. Lylyk said it was an easy choice to go to the United States for school because the college is small, and she received scholarships. “You can really communicate with the profs (professors) when you’re racing outside of school,” said Lylyk.
It will be a busy September because she will be starting school after she comes back from Tel Aviv and she hopes to make it to the Road World Championships in Australia at the end of September.
“So there is actually minimum salaries now for women which is really cool. I’m growing up at a really cool time to be a part of the sport,” said Lylyk.
She said one day she hopes to make it to the Olympics but she doesn’t know the probability of it happening.
