A junior doctor from Thornborough, near Ripon, has won a silver medal in e-cycling at the 2023 UCI E-sports World Championships.

Zoe Langham, who now works part-time as a junior doctor in Birmingham, went one better than last year, where she earned a bronze medal only hours after finishing a shift in A&E as part of her medical training.

E-cycling is a sport rapidly growing in popularity. It consists of cyclists pedalling on stationary bikes, powering virtual avatars moving on a screen.

Zwift, a competitor to Peleton, which provides the e-cycling technology and software for the world championship, has a reported user base of 2.5 million users, including runners as well as cyclists.

Former Ripon Grammar School student Zoe took up the sport to accommodate the demands of her medical training.

She balances her time on the wards alongside road racing and e-cycling. She competes for cycling team Pro-Noctis on the road and Wahoo Le Col in e-cycling.

Zoe studied at Ripon Grammar School before attending the University of Nottingham. Photo: Zoe Langham, Instagram

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The e-cycling world championship featured a new format for 2023, where competitors faced three short, explosive events.

The first event was The Punch, an 13.8km elimination-race where 100 riders competed with only the top 30 moving on the second race. In an interview after the competition, Zoe said:

“If you’d asked me what I’d be happy with coming out there, if I made it past that first race I’d be ecstatic”.

The second event was The Climb, an 8.5km series of hill repetitions which whittled the field down to 10.

The final 10 then went through an event called The Podium, where riders were eliminated one-by-one at a series of intervals until three riders remained, who then raced for the title.

Reflecting on the race, Zoe said:

“It makes all the long days at work, trying to train in the late evening hours worth it.

“It’s been really hard to juggle the job I do with the training hours necessary, and female cycling in general is just going from strength to strength.

“It’s really lovely to see and be a part of, but it definitely takes its toll. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to go part time now, so I can fit in a bit more training and time to race abroad with my team Pro-Noctis- Heidi Kjeldsen-200 degrees coffee. They’re a fantastic and very experienced team and I’m very excited to see where things go this year with them.”

World champion boxer Josh Warrington thrilled members of a boxing club in Harrogate last night when he dropped in on a training session.

Warrington, the IBF featherweight king, was accompanied by IBO lightweight world champion Maxi Hughes at H Hour Boxing Gym on Skipton Road.

Rob Smith, head coach at the club, has known the fighters for years and invited them down.

They brought their world title belts and posed for pictures first with junior members and then with the seniors.

Maxi Hughes (left) and Josh Warrington with juniors Eduardo Pereira (front left) and Jeno Laki.

Warrington told the Stray Ferret he often visited Harrogate with his wife and daughters and found it peaceful compared to his home city of Leeds.

He has visited H Hour Boxing previously and said he particularly liked having the opportunity to inspire kids.

“It’s easy for them to go down the wrong path. I like to talk to them and say ‘life is hard, boxing is hard but stick at it because it’s worthwhile.

“I started at seven or eight and never thought I had the natural ability to succeed. It was my mindset that did it and now I like to instil that in other kids.”

Some fans brought memorabilia for Warrington and Hughes to sign and were clearly thrilled to meet them.

Dane Hall poses with the champs.

Dane Hall, 22, who has been training at the club for just under a year, got the fighters to sign his gloves. He said:

“Josh is bloody brilliant. He’s one of the boys. My dad is also a massive fan.”

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Rob Smith, who puts on training sessions three times a week at the club, is well connected in boxing. He is chairman of the central area of the British Boxing Board of Control and has brought the fighters to the gym on previous occasions. He said:

“Harrogate is perceived as an affluent area but boxing is a working class sport.

“Some of our members are not from the wealthiest families and they look at Josh and Maxi and see guys from similar working class backgrounds who have done the business at world level so it inspires them.”

Training at the gym last night.