Fariba Hashimi will ride for BePink-Vini Fantini in 2026, giving the Afghan champion a new base in the European peloton after the collapse of Ceratizit Pro Cycling Team left her without a contract for the season ahead.
Hashimi had been part of Ceratizit’s Women’s WorldTour set-up in 2025, but the German team folded, abruptly removing a key pathway for several riders and forcing late moves across the market. For Hashimi, the switch to BePink-Vini Fantini closes a period of uncertainty and places her into an Italian Continental programme that has often served as a competitive platform for riders building experience, leadership opportunities, and results in European racing.
Hashimi’s career is sometimes reduced to context, but her recent racing has shown clear sporting substance. In September 2024, she delivered her most visible European result by winning the queen stage of the Tour de l’Ardèche, a performance that stood out not only because of the terrain but because it came against a race defined by repeated climbing efforts and aggressive racing over multiple days.
That win fitted a broader pattern that season. She also recorded top ten stage finishes at the Giro Mediterraneo Rosa, and at the Asian Road Championships, she finished fourth in the under-23 individual time trial, an indicator of a rider developing beyond pure climbing instincts. At the under-23 Road World Championships, she placed seventh, another result that suggested she could remain competitive when the level rises and the racing becomes more tactical and less forgiving.
Those performances helped shape the step up to WorldTour level in 2025, and they matter now because they show why teams kept watching even as her contract situation became unclear.
Photo Credit: TCFIAThe Olympic Games, and racing in exile
Hashimi was born in Afghanistan’s Faryab province. She began cycling in striking circumstances, entering a local race in 2017 alongside her older sister, Yulduz, despite having never ridden a bike before. They borrowed bikes, disguised themselves, and finished first and second. The two continued racing secretly at first, before their family later offered support, even as harassment and threats followed them through training.
After the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, women were effectively barred from sport, and the sisters fled Afghanistan with external help, leaving their families behind. From there, Hashimi’s development became rooted in Europe. She secured early opportunities as a trainee in Italy, then continued building through structured programmes and international competition.
That journey carried into the Paris Olympic Games in 2024, where she rode the women’s road race after qualifying, despite not being recognised by the Afghan government. During the race, she spent time in the break alongside her sister before being reeled in on the approach to Montmartre, eventually finishing in the bunch behind. The result was less important than the visibility and the continuation of a career that had to be built outside the system most riders take for granted.
National titles and a route into the European peloton
Hashimi won the Afghan women’s road title in 2022, in a championship organised in exile, and she repeated that success in 2025, adding the Afghan time trial title as well. Those national results have acted as both confirmation of her standing among Afghan riders in exile and a practical route to international starts.
Her team pathway has been equally varied. After early European exposure, she rode within development structures including the UCI World Cycling Centre programme, then joined Ceratizit for 2025, a move that placed her inside a WorldTour environment at the point when her results were beginning to translate into broader recognition. She will now get the opportunity to make a name for herself again at BePink.
