It was in early February 2019 that Finn Fisher-Black captured the world record in the 3000-metre individual pursuit for juniors. Before that, it had been unheard of for riders to go under three minutes and 10 seconds in the discipline, but the New Zealander shaved almost three seconds off the previous best time. He suddenly became one of the most sought-after young riders in the world. Finn Fisher-Black was the next big thing. He signed for the best under-23 squad, Jumbo-Visma Development Team, and moved to Europe, on the path he’d always dreamed of to becoming a professional bike rider. The big contract came in 2022 with UAE Team Emirates, who offered Fisher-Black a spot on their WorldTour outfit, alongside Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar. It was all going as planned for the young, cycling prodigy. Until it wasn’t.
The dreaded crash happened on the last stage of the 2022 edition of Boucles de la Mayenne, a small, 2.Pro ranked level race in north-western France. Fisher-Black shattered his femur in the fall, and spent the next eight months in between a wheelchair and crutches while his body healed from the battering. His first season as a professional was derailed, the potential he’d shown as a junior unfulfilled, through no fault of his own. Since then, it has been a turbulent road back to normality for the young Kiwi.
“It was a really big setback. I was on a good trajectory and making steps but it took the wind out of my sails. I kind of stagnated, I was starting at zero again and had to build up,” Fisher-Black remembers, speaking a few days before his first race of the 2025 season, the Tour Down Under. “I wasn’t the talent that everyone thought I was. They thought I was going to just go straight into winning races. It's taken me time to come back to that level. In the last few years it’s gotten better, I managed to win four races in 2024.”
While Fisher-Black credits his time with UAE Team Emirates for helping develop him into the rider he’s become, he also notes that there were some downfalls to riding for a team full of so much established talent. In part due to the lack of race results following his accident, the 23-year-old often found himself in a domestique role and wasn’t selected to ride a Grand Tour for the Emirati squad last season.
“UAE just had an unbelievable amount of talent. Every year they just bring more and more in. When you're there for a few years, you start to fit into this mould of what the team expects you to be and you start to believe it,” Fisher-Black explains. “I was meant to go to races as a helper a lot of the time, but I’m only 23 and I think I’m too young to settle into that.
“I've always really needed people that backed me and believed that I could achieve results, especially at the highest level. At UAE, I didn't feel like I really needed to get the results, because we had so many guys that were good. I would go to a race and most of the time another guy from my team would win.”
It was clear to the New Zealander that change was needed in 2025 in order for him to fulfil the potential he believes he has. Despite the struggles he outlined from when he was part of UAE Team Emirates, Fisher-Black still had an impressive season in 2024, finishing third in both the Tour of Oman and the Alula Tour, as well as winning the Muscat Classic. Later last year, he also won a stage of Vuelta Asturias Julio Alvarez Mendo and finished on the podium of the Vuelta a Burgos. He can taste how close he is to that big victory, and believes that his new team, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, is the key to helping him get there.
“It's interesting to leave a team that is already at the top with UAE Team Emirates, so they don’t need to make an effort to get any better. It’s about staying there,” Fisher-Black says. “Now I have come to a team that really wants to come up the ranks and they are putting effort into every aspect. That’s cool for me and makes it an exciting project to join.”
With the move to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe comes a change in coach for Fisher-Black, who explains that this winter he is prioritising improving his performances in longer races. With a focus on the Ardennes classics later in the season, having the ability to sprint at the end of an attritional day is something that the Kiwi rider believes is imperative to executing strong rides in punchy one-day events.
“I've always really struggled in the longer races, especially in 200km plus races, I feel like that is something I was missing in training. We've already nailed that as my first thing to improve with my new coach,” Fisher-Black says. “You can do specific training to improve durability, like when you do your efforts and how far into the ride. In my mind, if I want to be good at six-and-a-half hour long races, I need to be doing six-and-a-half hour long rides.
“I’ve been doing much bigger weeks than I ever did at UAE, so 28 to 30 hours. That’s massive compared to what I did on UAE – it’s not that the training is bad there and it’s obviously working but I felt that I was missing something and hopefully we found that.”
Having a clear plan, belief and support from Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is especially important to Fisher-Black for whom mentality and morale is clearly as important as physicality and performance. It has been a turbulent ride so far in the WorldTour for the New Zealander, who has had to remain resilient and force himself to keep believing on multiple occasions.
“I remember my first year living in Europe was super rough. I was 18 and I’d just left home, my rent was more than my salary. It was character building and I think it's good to do that as an under-23. There's so many guys now you see go from under-19 straight to World-Tour, and they have the luxury of having so much support so early on,” Fisher-Black says.
“I think it is really important to have those couple of years where you are actually really doing it the hard way. I was in a good setup with the Visma development team and had some good support around me, but still I was an 18-year-old from New Zealand on the other side of the world, with no money and no friends, so it was tough. But I'm glad that I did it, and I think it's made me a better rider because of it. Now, I’m just a bit more resilient. I feel like I've grown up a bit more and I know what to expect.”
Now five years on from when he first moved to Europe as a junior with a weight of a world record on his shoulders, Fisher-Black is ready to make the next step in the professional peloton. After four seasons riding on a team with the best cyclist in the world in Tadej Pogačar, he understands the level of competition and how tough it is to win in the current WorldTour better than anyone. Still, Fisher-Black keeps believing – as he always has.
“I think the nature of professional cycling is that if you don't believe you can do it on the start line, then there's no point being there. This year was really a domination from Tadej, but I think this will start to change cycling a bit and people will realise, okay, if we can't beat him head-to-head on a climb, we're going to have to find another way to do it. That's sport, and that is how it's going to evolve. No one can stay at the top forever,” the Kiwi rider smiles.
Fisher-Black, above all, doesn’t seem worried about what anyone else is doing. For him, the focus is about being the best again, just as he was when he smashed that junior world record in 2019. The destination is simple: the top step of the podium.
“My goal this season is just to be winning, especially in the WorldTour. I want to focus on the Ardennes and the physiology of those races suits me well. I love the Grand Tours too and that’s when I feel like cycling reaches the rest of the world,” Fisher-Black says. “That is the biggest stage, and that’s where I want to be.”
