![]() Maeve Plouffe (2020) | ||||||||||||||||||
Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||
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Born | 8 July 1999 | |||||||||||||||||
Team information | ||||||||||||||||||
Current team | Hess Cycling Team | |||||||||||||||||
Role | Rider | |||||||||||||||||
Amateur team | ||||||||||||||||||
2025– | Hess Cycling Team | |||||||||||||||||
Professional team | ||||||||||||||||||
2023–2024 | Team DSM | |||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Maeve Plouffe (born 8 July 1999) is an Australian professional racing cyclist for Hess Cycling Team. [1] [2] [3] [4] She was selected on the Australian women's track endurance squad for the 2020 Summer Olympics [5] and the 2024 Summer Olympics. [6] She is the current Australian record holder for both the Team Pursuit and the 3000m Individual Pursuit, in which she was the third woman in history to break the 3:20 barrier. [7] At the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Plouffe won the gold medal in the women's team pursuit event alongside Sophie Edwards, Chloe Moran and Georgia Baker, setting a games record time of 4:14.06. In the same year, she also won a silver medal in the Individual pursuit. [7]
Plouffe was introduced to track cycling by a South Australian Sports Institute talent identification program from a background of swimming and surf life saving. [8] She exhibited an early aptitude for the road time trial, winning the event as an U17 in her first year competing at the Australian Junior Road National Championships [9] and again as an U19 in the Oceania Road Cycling Championships. [10] Maeve made her international debut in the 2017 UCI Junior Track Cycling World Championships. [11]
Plouffe made her international elite debut at nineteen years of age in the opening round of the 2018–19 UCI Track Cycling World Cup women's points race in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France. [12] She represented Australia again at the UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Hong Kong, [13] before returning to Australia to win three elite Australian Championship titles in the individual pursuit, team pursuit and madison. [11] In the 2020 season Maeve Plouffe became Oceania champion in the scratch race [14] and won two silver and two bronze medals. [15] Only three months prior to the championships, she underwent an operation on her wrist as a result of a fall in a street race in Belgium. [16] [15] In the 2019–20 UCI Track Cycling World Cup season, Maeve's team won a silver medal and set a new Australian record in the women's team pursuit in Cambridge, New Zealand, [17] before winning a gold medal in the women's team pursuit in Brisbane, Australia. [18] Her performances gained her selection for the UCI Track World Championships in Berlin, where she rode in the women's team pursuit event and the women's individual pursuit event. [19] [20] The team consisting of Ashlee Ankudinoff, Georgia Baker, Annette Edmondson, Alexandra Manly, Maeve Plouffe finished fifth. [21]
Plouffe was the youngest member of the women’s cycling team at her Olympic debut in Tokyo in 2021 where she was a member of the team pursuit squad that finished fifth. [7] In 2022, she won gold in the Individual Pursuit at the UCI Track Nations Cup in Milton. [22] At the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Plouffe won the gold medal in the Team Pursuit and silver in the Individual Pursuit, setting Commonwealth Games records in the process. After a successful season on both the track and road, including being named Australian Track Cyclist of the Year, [23] she went on to race in the UCI Women's World Tour with Team DSM in 2023 and 2024. [2] In 2024 Plouffe raced at her second Olympic Games in Paris. [6]
In 2020, Plouffe was studying a double degree in law and science, with double majors in marine biology and ecology at the University of Adelaide. [24]