Introducing Romina Hinojosa: Mexican rider 'living her dream' with Lotto
Global Peloton chats with young Mexican about her cycling journey, Mexican cycling and signing for Lotto for the 2025 season
Romina Hinojosa is one of the most exciting talents in a new generation of Mexican cyclists.
Since moving to Europe for the 2024 season, her rise has been impressive, with a brilliant performance at the Tour de l’Avenir Femmes enough to convince the Belgian Lotto team that she was worth offering a contract to for this year.
The 22-year-old’s results show her gift for climbing, but this year she has been tested in the Belgian Classics, including completing her first Monument at the Tour of Flanders last month. By all accounts, Hinojosa has handled herself well through the cobbles, wind and hills of Belgium so far, and looks set for a good career ahead. This week, the Mexican is riding her first Grand Tour at La Vuelta a España Feminina.
Without a functioning federation since it was suspended by the UCI in 2022, it’s not easy for Mexican riders to progress in the sport. Hinojosa came through the same route as Isaac del Toro with the A.R. Monex set up, based in San Marino. The team aims to give Mexican riders the opportunity to race in Europe.
Global Peloton spoke to Hinojosa as she finished up her Classics season. In a wide ranging conversation, we covered her beginnings in the sport, cycling in Mexico, moving to Europe, her excellent 2024 season and signing for Lotto.
Global Peloton: How did you get into racing bikes?
Romina Hinojosa: Since I was a young girl, I've always been very competitive. I get it from my older sister, since we're really close in age. My dad always put us to compete against each other and since I was the younger one, I was always like, ‘oh, I want to beat her’…it has helped me be competitive.
I started in gymnastics. I was a gymnast when I was younger and I've always been very active. I've always loved moving my body and doing sports. And gymnastics was my goal. And I had a dream to go to the Olympic one day. But then my mother decided I wasn’t going to do gymnastics anymore because my sister didn't want to.
So I was trying to look for a sport. And my dad, he does mountain biking. And he's like, ‘hey, why don't you try cycling?’ I tried it. I felt really uncomfortable at first, honestly. The position, it's not really natural. It took a while to like it, but then fell in love with it. And it really all started to advance really, really quickly for me.
I've always wanted to be better in everything I do. If I'm doing something I want to succeed, I want to do it a hundred percent. And it's really this mentality has helped me advance every year I've started cycling. I've been advancing and trying to see what I can do to be a better cyclist and always learning from other people. So yeah, I started when I was 13 with riding my bike and competing.
GP: What was your early racing experience like? And when did you decide to take the sport seriously?
RH: I wasn't really good as a junior. I think that's also something that shaped me and made me very resilient. As a junior, I had no results. I was strong, but I just got really nervous. So yeah, junior was really hard for me and I even was this close to quitting. For years I was struggling, but then I decided to go to the United States and study at a university there that had cycling as a sport, which was really great.
The level over there was way higher, so it helped me. I learned from everyone there. Then I was like, I really want to do this professionally. I want to try. I still needed to study. My parents were like, ‘you're not quitting uni. You have to study’. So I decided to go online, which was really hard at the time. It basically takes all the fun out of studying, like all the people surrounding you. So that was like another part of my life that I shut down.
I emailed a lot of teams in the United States. I was recently reading the emails that I sent out to some of those teams in the US. Basically I said that I would really love the opportunity to like be on the team so that one day I can be compete in the top peloton in Europe, which is my dream. And I was reading it and a tear fell because I'm doing that already. And yeah, I realised like, wow, I'm living my dream. Recently I've been sick, it's been a bit hard mentally. So reading that got me back on track. It's like, yes, it's hard right now and I'm away from my family and away from a lot of people, but I'm doing what I love, so it's all worth it.
After that, one of the many teams I emailed responded and they decided to take a chance on me. The next year I went into another team that was UCI Continental, but in the United States. And then last year, which was my first year in Europe, this team called A.R. Monex, which takes Mexicans to race here in the US and Europe - in Italy mostly because they're based in San Marino - to test themselves, to like put themselves here and like try to get on better teams in the future.
GP: What was it like when you started racing in Europe?
RH: Since I had a lot of experience in the United States, I had an idea of how racing in a bigger peloton was like. But I mean, over here is another level. The first time I raced here, it was traumatising. I was like, ‘how did they climb that fast?’ Like in my head, that was impossible. Like it just, it all seemed a bit impossible, but then I was like, ‘but they're doing it, so it is possible and I can do it too’. But then I'm like, ‘am I willing to do it? Like, do I really want this?’ Because this is a whole change of life.
A first I didn't really know if I was going to be able to do it. If I don't feel like I'm capable, then why would I like try? So that was really hard at first to believe in myself that I can do it. But once I did, and once I let go of a lot of things and was at peace with my decision, I started to improve and get really good results over here and started surprising myself.
I got a podium in Giro del Mediterraneo in Italy [on stage 5 of the 2024 edition - ed], and I was like, what? And people were like, ‘wow, you're improving so fast’. And then I started to believe that I could be on another team next year. And my boyfriend, he helped me with the managers, A&J, and they've been really helpful. They connected me with Lotto and they took a chance on me. And I'm really happy because I feel like I've been developing so well here that everyone's so nice and it feels like a really nice family.
GP: What is the national racing scene like in Mexico? What sort of opportunities are there for Mexican based riders to race?
RH: There's opportunities, there are some races. There's like this national Olympics is in a sense where each state selects two people for every discipline on the track. And then for the road, they select four. All the states in Mexico, they competed against each other and you race with your state uniform. I was just selected once my last year as a junior. It's really nice to race against other States because the community there is really fun. Like in cycling, I don't know how, but everyone knows each other, even in Mexico. There's not a lot of cyclists, but we know about each other and we're supportive.
The pelotons are a lot smaller and sometimes you have to race in the men's field, because there's no women's field, but sometimes there is, and it's getting better. I'm happy I started there because it makes me appreciate the racing here.
It was a bit frustrating because since everyone knows each other, everyone knows like she's a sprinter, she's good at that. So for me, it was hard mentally to race there because I knew everyone and I lacked some confidence in myself. So when I went to the United States, it helped me change that mentality that I don't know anyone here. I'm just going to race because I love racing. And then I go back [to Mexico] and I'm like, ‘wow, I'm good at this’.
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GP: What is the situation with the Mexican federation? How is that impacting young riders?
RH: It kind of sucks a bit because you can't be national champion officially. I was U23 national champion in 2023, but there were two national championships and my team even made me a kit, but I didn't even want to wear it because it wasn’t official and there's another person wearing it too, because there were two races. It's been rough honestly, because who doesn't want to be national champion?
It has been a while being suspended. At first I remember some races that Mexico couldn't even race. There's more problems, but now the Mexican Olympic Committee was the one that was like taking responsibility for the federation. And because of federation, the whole committee needed to change and the UCI need to approve the new committee and then the suspension would be lifted, but that hasn't happened.
I decided for my sake to try to not depend on the Mexican federation and like go and explore in a different sense. It's something I can't control at the moment.
I really want to help. I hope like me doing this is motivating more cyclists to come [to Europe] and I think in a way that's helping to see if more people are involved, more people want this to get better. So yeah, something I've decided is not to put a lot of attention on it anymore, but it's there and hopefully it gets resolved soon.
GP: In 2024 you seemed to really take a step up in terms of results. What was it that enabled you to step up that level? Was there a change in your training, or just more experience...?
RH: Being in Mexico, I knew I really I wanted to be a professional and I tried to do everything in my power to be my best cyclist self. But the reality is that the lifestyle there is not really oriented to that. When I went to Europe, I could focus just on being a cyclist because the team I was on, like they had a mechanic who focused on the bikes and there was a massage therapist and they helped with the food. And so I feel like I just focused on what I had to do as a cyclist and on my nutrition, on my training, on my strength workouts and like everything from my experience and from what I've been learning. I try to do it as best as possible and yeah, and let go of the things that I can't control. And that just gave me some peace in a sense.
It's just the slow and steady. After the first races, I didn't do well because I was just trying to get myself to learn this peloton. I've done crit racing in the United States and other things that help, and I did track racing. So that helped me like with knowing something of how to handle my bike in a peloton, a bigger peloton. So combining that and just going back and resting because before it was a lot of traveling on a planes and my training wasn't really a very good program.
So yes, last year I did that. But this year it's been even better. The races I've been doing have been harder, but I feel stronger. And even like now I'm gaining different experience from bigger pelotons. And my coach this year, Sander [Cordeel], he's been really helpful with his experience and coaching. And Grace [Verbeke] has a lot of experience. Grace is my Sports Director. She helps me like guiding each race, since like I've been doing mostly Belgian races.
Everyone is funny because they're like, ‘yeah, then you go right. And it's the Koppenberg’. And I'm like, ‘I don't know what that is’! I know I should, but everyone knows it here. So it's a lot of learning to experience that I am lacking, but it's been fun to to mix it. So I've been trying to be patient with myself and always have a learning attitude. I know everyone here knows a lot and I have some experience and matching that is going to help me keep improving.
GP: The result that stands out last season is your 12th place at the Tour de l'Avenir with a couple of great performances in the big mountain stages. Tell me a bit about that week and did that result surprise you?
RH: Before Tour de l'Avenir. I was having a bit of a rough patch. It had been a while since I was already in Europe. I arrived in March and it was the first time. So at first everything was going great. But then when summer hits, it was like beginning of June, the last of May, I broke two ribs in a race. It was a bit rough and I started to lose a bit of confidence.
After that I went to altitude, I did two weeks of altitude and I managed to change my mindset and concentrate and do everything in my power to get better. I remember I was training really hard and honestly, I did not know where I was going to stand in that race. It's like the only U23 race in the whole calendar. And it was the goal for last year. It was always the goal.
So I started the race and the first was the time-trial. There was an uphill time-trial and I knew that I like uphill time-trials, but I also get very nervous in time-trials because there's a lot of things that can go wrong, but there's a lot of things that can go right. I think the preparation towards a time-trial is important. And good thing it wasn't on a time-trial bike because I had no preparation for that, but it was on a road bike and uphill. I did a race back in the United States that made me believe that I'm good at this type of race because it's pure watts and I knew I was strong. So I tried to pace it as well as possible and ended up surprising myself. I think I was like 14th or something. I was like, ‘oh, okay. I'm strong. I can do this’.
Then the next stage, the first climbing stage, I lost a bit of my confidence in the climb. I remember the first time I was like, ‘how am I going to climb next to these crazy people’? And I lost the peloton and I was really mad at myself because I knew I could do better. So the second to last stage, it was a climbing stage and then sprint. I got fifth in the sprint and sixth on the stage because there was someone in the breakaway. It gave me confidence.
I've never considered myself as a climber. I've never thought that was a strong suit of mine. So it was hard for me to challenge that. I always thought I was more like a punchy climber. I knew that the last stage was pure climb [finishing on the Colle de Finestre - ed], like over an hour and a half, 18 kilometres with the last eight kilometres on a gravel section. So I had no expectations at the moment. This is a climber stage and I'm not a climber. So, well, I have nothing to lose. Let's go in the breakaway.
So I saw this group go and I saw one of every country and I was like, ‘wait a minute. I think I got to be there’. So I attacked the peloton. If I'm in a breakaway, I'm always like the one that's cheering everyone on. And so we started all working together. When the hills started to come closer, they didn't want to pull anymore. But I was like, ‘this is our chance. We have a gap’. It was two minutes at a time.
And then when we got right to the climb, it was like a minute and a half. And I felt I had good legs. And I remember I went into this state of mind that I just didn't think of anything. I was just in the flow and just kept going. I remember I was not watching my Garmin. I just went and I was thinking like, ‘I'm Demi Vollering. I'm a climber.’
I just kept going and going. And I remember I didn't look back and I was with these other two girls. I believed it in my head and I just kept going.
And I don't know how, but I finished sixth. In my mind, I wanted to do more though. I believed I could win. At first I wasn't even expecting anything in this stage, but now I'm sort of depressed because I wanted more. It doesn't make sense. But then I'm like, ‘wow, this is this is a really big deal, be proud of yourself’.
I need to acknowledge more the good things I do, instead of focusing on what could have been. So that was a lot of learning and confidence that I'm strong. I feel like that result really made people notice me. And I noticed myself that I'm strong. I can be a climber if I want to, if I trained for it. And now I consider myself a climber, a punchy climber. So it was good for my confidence. This is a race I will always remember.
GP: Then over the winter you signed for Lotto. How have you found it settling in with the team?
RH: It's been good. I just didn't know what to expect. It's a Belgian team and I'm not really familiar with the Belgian culture or anything. I came to Europe with no expectations. The good thing is I have my boyfriend who's helped me prepare myself as best as possible mentally.
I wanted to come to the team as best prepared as I could be, because I wanted them to be proud of the choice they made for choosing me and I want to be proud of myself. So I did the best offseason I could have imagined for myself. And that made me confident. The first time I saw the team was in the team camp in Valencia. I arrived, I was nervous, of course, meeting everyone. What if they don't like me? What if Belgians are really like serious and like…I don't know what I thought.
But no, it was not like that. Everyone was super welcoming. And all the girls were, really nice. I was surprised in the good sense that I feel welcome in this team. And everything has been very supportive. Sometimes I like have really high expectations for myself that are not really that realistic. And the team like, helps me manage all of that. And how to prepare best for races, especially Belgian races, because it's a Belgian team and they have all the experience.
It's really fun to see how fascinated all the fans here are, of the team. I go to cafés, and they're like, ‘you're in Lotto? Who are you?’ What is happening?! It's just so surreal. And last time I was in a café, and they even gave me a free waffle. So yeah, I've been really happy with how everyone's been supporting me.
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Loved reading this. Keep it coming! :)
Great write up! Thank you.