1996: winning before there was a women's race
The Berkeley Hills Road Race's winners list records Nicole Freedman as the 1996 winner of its top race, listed with the men's Pro/1/2 winners. Cycling West, writing about the race's history, says the same: she won the pro-elite men's race in 1996, before women had their own race.
No results from that year are online, so we don't have the field, the margin or how the race was won, and we don't know whether other women started it. The record keeps the result itself: in 1996 the winner of the top race of the day was a woman.
Where she came from
Freedman grew up near Boston and studied at MIT and then Stanford, where she joined the cycling team in her senior year and won a collegiate road title in 1994. Her results took off in 1996, the year she won here.
U.S. champion and Olympian
She turned professional in 1997 with Shaklee, then raced for Charles Schwab, Credit Suisse First Boston, RONA and Basis. In 2000 she won the U.S. Olympic trials road race in Jackson, Mississippi, and rode the women's road race at the Sydney Olympics. She was U.S. national champion in 2000 and 2001; the 2001 title was in the criterium.
In 2001, the year after Sydney, she came back to Berkeley Hills and won the women's race.
After racing
Freedman went on to work on getting more people on bikes. She directed Boston Bikes, the City of Boston's cycling program, worked in transportation for Seattle and Newton, Massachusetts, and became the first female executive director of the New England Mountain Bike Association.
How women's racing here has changed
The earliest women's winner in the organizers' record is Susy Pryde of New Zealand, in 1999; no earlier women's result has turned up. Today women race on both days of the Berkeley Omnium, in fields from Women's 4/Novice to Women's Pro/1/2/3, and in 2026 the Pro/1/2 cash purse was split 50/50 between the women's and men's races.
Thank you, Nicole
A special shout-out to Nicole Freedman for being part of Berkeley Hills history: for racing with the men, and winning, before women had their own race at our event. It's part of the history we want to keep as we keep building women's racing here.