How U.S. Champ Liz Stevenson Found Her Way To Colorado As Hannah Chadwick’s Next Pilot

Liz Stevenson’s biking world changed quickly in November.

Just a few months after Hannah Chadwick, a visually impaired rider, made her Paralympic Games debut in Paris, she was in the market for another riding partner. Skyler Espinoza had piloted Chadwick to international success but retired from competitive racing following the Paralympic Games for family reasons.

“I’m really, really happy for her,” Chadwick said.

And that’s where Stevenson, an elite racer who won a national championship in women’s pursuit last July, stepped in.

Stevenson, a 23-year-old Michigan native specializing in track cycling, had moved to Southern California from Indiana so that she could work out at the VELO Sports Center and pursue clinical work in her nutritional studies. The track just outside of Los Angeles will be host to the Paralympic and Olympic track cycling events in the 2028 Games.

Instead, following a successful U.S. Paralympics Cycling tryout in November, Stevenson packed up her belongings in late December and chased a dream at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. There, she is training with Chadwick in a new tandem combination that has already resulted in both being named to the 2025 U.S. Paralympics Cycling national team.

“I’m just beyond grateful to be here,” Stevenson said. “I’m kind of speechless. It’s not just about me. I’m able to be Hannah’s pilot and help someone reach their goals while achieving my goals at the same time. I think it’s a really great relationship.”

Just ahead are the national championships in August and the UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships in Rio de Janeiro in October.

Chadwick is coming off a busy stretch of 18 months in which she won bronze medals with Espinoza in back-to-back world championships the last two years, won a pair of gold medals at the Parapan American Games, and posted a sixth-place finish at the Paralympic Games Paris 2024.

“We made it,” Chadwick said. “It means all of our hard work paid off. It was just really cool to go to the Games and experience it, for both of us.”

As Stevenson moves into the pilot seat, she and Chadwick are working on things in much the same way that Espinoza and Chadwick did at the beginning.

“I think about when I first met Skyler, we talked,” Chadwick said. “I can’t really guarantee anything, but what I can guarantee is I’ll train hard and do my best every day and see how far it gets us.”

Stevenson sees that work ethic surface constantly from Chadwick, who is a marketing operations manager at Disability:IN, a nonprofit that helps businesses with disability inclusion.

“I think it’s really cool to see her work,” Stevenson said. “She’ll have meetings back-to-back and then all of a sudden we have a gym session, and she’ll work again, and she’ll eat and go to the track with me. Even between sets, she’s doing work. So that’s really cool to see the dedication to both aspects.”

For Stevenson, the relocation to Colorado Springs has allowed her to secure clinical work, beginning in May, at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central, which is located across the street from the Olympic and Paralympic Training Center. Stevenson is a certified nutritionist.

Since Stevenson arrived in Colorado Springs, she and Chadwick train twice a week together and individually more than that.

“I was an endurance rider before,” Stevenson said, “so the training volume has decreased. The intensity obviously is increased, but the volume is decreased. I feel like it’s not bad, honestly. I love the gym here.”

The successes of the past two seasons have motivated Chadwick even more. She lifts three times a week, she bikes six days a week. She added Chris Murphy, a two-time Paralympian, as a coach.

“Get stronger and faster than before,” Chadwick said of her goals. “There’s a lot to be gained during this offseason. There’s a lot that I can work on in terms of becoming a better athlete.”

For now, the focus is the race start, a critical point for any tandem team.

“We’ve been doing a lot of starts, which are really great,” Stevenson said.

With seven months to go before the national championships and nine months until the world championships, Stevenson is grateful for the extra training time in a non-Games year.

“I just wanted a lot of time to prepare,” she said. “I feel like that’s important. I’d rather be prepared for an event than just like go to multiple ones and underperform. I’d rather focus on one big one.”

Stevenson and Chadwick actually met long before they wound up forming a partnership. Stevenson remembers greeting Chadwick and her guide dog, Zorro, when they were competing at the same venue during a cycling event.

“She’s super sweet,” Stevenson said. “She’s really kind to everyone. She’s really optimistic and has everything together.”

Stevenson was also familiar with Espinoza. The two had previously met during a team pursuit camp in Colorado Springs. They’ve had opportunities to talk about cycling and about Chadwick. It has made the transition smoother.

Those tips, Stevenson said, went like this: “Look through the turns. Hannah knows what to do. Just do your thing. Don’t accommodate to her. She knows how to accommodate to me.”

“I think Liz is very strong and kind,” Chadwick said. “She’ll be a great addition to our team.”

Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic and Paralympic sports since 1996, when he was an assistant bureau chief in Atlanta. He is a freelance contributor to USParaCycling.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.