Sam Welsford

Like father like son, a seven-year-old Sam Welsford started cycling because he wanted to be like his dad.

Sam would see his dad go out on early morning rides and one day asked if he could join him. From these humble beginnings, Sam achieved Olympic and World Championships success.

As a competitive cyclist, Sam showed his potential early on, winning back-to-back team pursuit junior world titles in 2013 and 2014.

Sam was a part of the Australian pursuit team that was victorious at the 2016 World Championships, the victory confirming his place on the Australian Team at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

There, Sam helped the Aussies finish third in qualification before they won their first-round clash with Denmark to move through to the final where they took on Great Britain for gold.

The Aussies went out hard but the British reeled them in and took the win while breaking the world record as Sam, Michael Hepburn, Alex Edmondson, Jack Bobridge and Callum Scotson won silver.

At the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games Sam teamed up with Alex Porter, Leigh Howard and Kelland O’Brien to become the first pursuit team in history to break the three-minute fifty-second barrier (3:49.804) on their way to winning gold.

The quartet then smashed their own world record at the 2019 World Championships clocking 3min 48.012sec. Sam won two gold medals in the space of 30 minutes with victory also coming in the men's scratch.

His form flowed into 2020 as Sam claimed dual gold in the omnium and madison at the World Cup and Oceania Championships in Brisbane. Sam dominated all four events in the omnium, before sealing madison gold on the final lap.

At the 2020 World Championships, Sam was part of Australia's title defence in the men's team pursuit. The quartet were just two-hundredths of a second off fourth, from Italy who claimed bronze.

Sam was the only member of Australia’s Rio Olympics silver medal-winning pursuit team who returned for the Tokyo 2020 campaign looking to go one better.

The new-look team of Sam, Alex Porter, Leigh Howard and Kelland O’Brien were world champions in 2019 but suffered a setback in qualifying in Tokyo when Alex crashed at high speed and the team was granted a restart.

They posted the fifth-fastest time before Alex was replaced by Lucas Plapp and they rode an Olympic record 3mins 44.90secs to beat Switzerland, and then lapped New Zealand in their final to claim bronze.

Sam also rode the men’s omnium where he finished 11th overall. He was ninth on placings after the scratch and tempo races and then 11th after the elimination and points events as Great Britain’s Matthew Walls won gold.

Making the switch to road racing in 2022, Sam had an immediate impact and picked up his first professional win with victory on stage five at the Tour of Turkey, before claiming his first overall win at the GP Criquielion in 2023.

Sam rode in the 2023 Tour de France and shortly after switching to the Bora-Hansgrohe team he cemented his status as the fastest sprinter at the 2024 Tour Down Under, winning three stages in four days and claiming the blue sprint jersey.