Bronze at World Cup only came after a fight

Mountain biking
Andrew Poolman
  • 2 Months Ago 01 July 2024
Fighting hard until the very end is certainly not a concept that Namibian mountain biker Vera Looser is unfamiliar with – but for her bronze position at Saturday’s UCI Marathon World Cup race at Megève, in France’s Haute-Savoie region, she’s had to battle harder than usual.

Looser had already won the first UCI Marathon World Cup race of the year in Czech Republic a few weeks ago. The story of her weekend’s race of nearly seven hours is best told in her own words in her post on social media.

“XCM World Cup number 2 decided to throw me some curve-balls.

“The course alone with a distance of 100 km and 4300 metres of climbing (in reality it was less than they said) was already going to be brutal and I was prepared for a long and hard day in the saddle”, Looser wrote.

“After around 32 km I punctured my rear tyre. After quickly plugging it twice and inflating it with the co2 bomb, I was good to go. I decided not to change the wheel in the next tech zone, since the air was staying in the tyre. I just had to top up with some more air and got some extra plugs and bombs.

“I was consistently riding between 2-3 min behind the two leading ladies.

“After the longest climb of the day, Adelheid Morath (the 39-year-old German, a consistent force in the series) also suffered a bad puncture and was forced to withdraw from the race.

“After six hours and still having Lejla (Njemcevic of Bosnia, another fierce rival) in my sight, I finally reached the top of the final long climb and only 13 km, with mostly downhill and only a ‘short’ climb of 200m separated me from the finish line.

“But bad luck struck again. After only 100 m of descending, a rock flicked up and broke my spoke, which poked my rim tape and gave me no chance to fix it with the tools and spares I had on me.

“Somehow, I had to get to the finish, so I rode the last 13 km on a flat rear wheel. Although it went surprisingly well, I still lost plenty of time.

“At least I was lucky once today. I saved myself a spot on the podium with only 16 seconds to spare – after six hours 50 minutes of racing.

“Of course I ask myself if I could have done something different, or if I took too many risks on the downhill. But both mechanicals were not riding mistakes and a certain amount of risk is part of racing. So I will leave this behind me and I will be proud of myself for not giving up.

“Well done @lejlamtb for a strong race today! And well done @hannah_finchamp for making your trip to France worthwhile.

“A big thank you to @konnylooser for being my feeder, mechanic, chef, cleaner, supporter and of course, best husband!”