Rising Stars: Ollie and Lily Keast - Twins at the Junior Worlds

Most riders arrive at a Junior World Championships towards the end of their time in the category, with much of their junior development behind them and the next step already beginning to come into view. For Ollie and Lily Keast, Zolder came much earlier.

Born on 22 December 2009, the New Zealand twins were still only 16 when they lined up in Belgium, almost as young as it is possible to be within the junior category. They had already done enough to earn a place on the national team, but neither arrived as a finished junior rider whose future could sensibly be judged by one week of racing.

Zolder gave them a first look at the highest level of junior track cycling while there is still enough time left in the pathway to do something with what they learned. They will have another complete junior season in 2027, another year of physical development and, potentially, another opportunity to return to the same championship environment with a much clearer understanding of what is required.

By then, their careers may also look increasingly different.

Lily arrived in Belgium with the stronger collection of headline results. At the 2026 Oceania Championships she won junior titles in the kilometre, elimination and team pursuit, adding to a domestic season in which her development had already begun to stand out.

Taken together, those results point towards a young endurance rider with useful breadth rather than somebody who needs to be pushed towards a particular event too early. The team pursuit, elimination and kilometre ask for different qualities but all sit comfortably within the development of a powerful endurance rider at this age. What matters more is that Lily is already finding ways to be competitive across several parts of the programme while still only 16.

Ollie's pathway is beginning to take a slightly different shape.

His strongest performances have so far come through the endurance side of the sport, including silver in the junior men's team pursuit at the Oceania Championships alongside Alex Botha, Riley Crampton and Remi Dalton. His wider background has also taken in bunch racing, road competition and earlier mountain biking, giving him the sort of broad endurance base from which a more defined track identity can emerge later.

That is where the twin element becomes more than a convenient introduction.

Ollie and Lily have grown through much of the same environment, are the same age and have had access to many of the same development opportunities, yet the demands of the sport are already beginning to pull their racing in different directions. Watching how that continues may ultimately be more revealing than comparing their results directly.

Both had also been exposed to international racing before reaching Zolder.

They travelled to Malaysia in 2025 and returned again in 2026, building experience of competing away from New Zealand at an age when many junior riders are still largely working within domestic programmes.

The first of those trips produced some significant racing. Lily stepped up into under-19 competition, helping to win team pursuit silver and taking bronze in the points race before a heavy crash during the omnium ended her event with fractured ribs and a significant head knock. Ollie, racing in the under-17 category, won team pursuit gold and finished second in the omnium after victories in the elimination and points components.

The medals tell part of the story, but for riders coming from New Zealand the travel itself is also part of the education.

European juniors can access international competition without leaving the continent and, in many cases, without dramatically disrupting the normal rhythm of training and racing. For New Zealand riders, stepping into an international field often means long-haul travel, unfamiliar routines and learning how to prepare and recover when almost everything around the race feels different. It is part of the international experience that has to be learned alongside the racing itself.

By the time Ollie and Lily reached Belgium, racing overseas was no longer completely new. Zolder still represented another step, but they arrived with some understanding of what it meant to travel with a team, adapt to a different environment and prepare to race away from home.

Junior Worlds then provided the part that cannot really be recreated elsewhere.

Domestic success tells a young rider that they are progressing. Continental racing adds another level of comparison. A World Championship shows where that progression sits when almost everybody around you has been producing similar results in their own country.

For a rider approaching the end of the junior category, that can become an assessment of whether they are ready for whatever comes next. For Ollie and Lily, the value was different. They were able to see the standard while there is still time to return home and build towards it.

They now know how quickly the racing develops, how deep the fields are and what the wider championship environment demands. They have also experienced the preparation that surrounds racing for New Zealand at a World Championships, rather than having to imagine what that step might feel like.

That should make 2027 different before the season even begins.

Both have also been selected for the 2026 foundation year of the ILT Academy Southland programme, where support extends beyond cycling-specific coaching into strength and conditioning, nutrition, mental skills and wider athlete development.

That matters because the transition from talented junior to successful senior athlete is rarely decided by physical ability alone. Young riders gradually have to learn how to manage training alongside education, travel, recovery and increasing independence, with international racing simply making some of those demands more obvious.

The objective is not simply to produce the fastest possible 16-year-old, but to give a rider the tools to keep progressing when the pathway becomes harder.

Lily already has Oceania titles across the endurance programme, while Ollie is building through a broad endurance pathway that has taken him from domestic competition into international racing and now a Junior World Championships. Neither needs to have the next five years mapped out, and there is still plenty of time for the sport itself to help determine where they fit.

Seen in that context, Zolder becomes less important as a set of results and more important for what it gives them to work with next.

Their first Junior World Championships did not need to provide a definitive answer. They were there early enough for the championship itself to become part of their development, giving them a chance to see the level, experience the environment and then return to training with a much clearer reference point.

When the 2027 Junior World Championships arrive, Ollie and Lily Keast will still only be 17, but they will no longer be riders seeing that world for the first time.

For two careers that began in almost exactly the same place, the next season should start to show both how far they can progress and how differently those paths may eventually unfold.

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