How do you like to spend your vacation?
For 24-year-old Welsh cyclist Illi Gardner, tackling Italy’s toughest climbs seemed like the perfect way to spend a holiday. But she wasn’t just touring up the Passo dello Stelvio or casually climbing Monte Zoncolan. The young rider had her sights set on the Queen of the Mountain (QOM) record for both—and she not only took the honors on those climbs, she absolutely dominated them.
Gardner is a former pro known for her feats in hill climbing and Everesting. In 2021, she set a world record for women’s Everesting at 8 hours, 33 minutes, and 47 seconds. She then improved this record in 2022 to 8 hours, 3 minutes, and 29 seconds and won the National Hill Climb Championships. Last year, Gardner won the first edition of Championnats d’Europe des Grimpeurs and secured her second National Hill Climb Championship by 59 seconds.
However, what makes the Stelvio and Monte Zoncolan rides even more impressive is that when you look closer at Gardner’s equipment, you see that she’s been claiming these huge QOMs while riding on a 2020 Factor O2 VAM road bike with rim brakes. (As he who shall not be named would put it, it’s not about the bike.)
On Monte Zoncolan, she rode 17.21 miles in 1 hour, 39 minutes, and 16 seconds, climbing 5,063 feet. The segment itself took her just under 40 minutes (39:47, to be exact), and her finishing time not only cemented her QOM status but also put her in the top ten on the men’s leaderboard, where Thibault Pinot currently holds the KOM. Her women’s record is made even more impressive when you consider the person who woke up to the notification that someone just stole her QOM. That someone would be Annemiek van Vleuten, the Dutch legend whose record was 41 minutes and 13 seconds, three minutes ahead of the Australian Amanda Spratt.
Gardner was clearly methodical about her approach to Monte Zoncolan, pre-riding it a few days before she made the attempt—and snagging a few smaller QOMs in the process.
She didn’t start with Zoncolan, though; she saved that one for last. Instead, as she explained on Instagram, she “Kicked off holiday in Italy with a proper Stelvio experience…aged a few years towards the end of that one!”
On the Stelvio–the famed switchback climb notorious for its freezing temperatures at the top while boiling at the bottom—was another serious victory for Gardener. “Stelvi-oh my gosh, that got cold!” she titled her Strava route, and photos at the top showed it was quite chilly. “Suffer suffer survival for last 30 mins 😵 what an epic pass,” she added.
The 16.79-mile ride took 1:35:15 and climbed 6,230 feet. The official Stelvio segment spanned 14.77 miles, and she averaged 10.7 mph to finish the segment in 1:22:55, taking the QOM title from German rider Peluchine Paco (whose Strava is private).
While these rides are wildly impressive, they’re nothing new for Gardner, who has the QOM on the Alpe d’Huez climb, among thousands of others. A quick perusal of her Strava shows that barely a single ride goes by without snagging a QOM.
