Girl-Powered Girl Power
I’ll be the first to tell you that when it comes to who I follow on Instagram, it’s mostly female mountain bikers. I follow everyone from my friends, who range from trail builders to cycling advocates, to the pros, who compete in everything from enduro to freeride to BMX. The women I follow also come from all over the place. My feed includes riders who live in the Pacific Northwest, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, and Massachusetts, but also Poland (because it’s the motherland), Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Mexico, and South Africa. They also come from different generations and persuasions because everyone from girls to moms to trans women is sending it these days. Men, don’t get me wrong, you certainly shred too, but I just relate better to the women who are expanding the notion of what’s possible as they take on this sport on all levels. And let’s face it, there are just fewer of us doing it, so I’m throwing all my support behind the women and girls who are pushing the boundaries because they deserve it. So, to the dudes, I’ll still watch you race World Cup downhill, but let’s be honest, I’m mostly there for Myriam Nicole and Camille Balanche. And as far as the elite level enduro and cross-country events go, I’m back to exclusively cheering on the women, so I can drop lots of facts about Evie Richards and Noga Korem, but don’t ask me to tell you much about any of the men.
There’s a saying you’ve probably heard already that a rising tide lifts all boats. It’s usually used in reference to economic policy, but I think it can easily be applied to the women’s mountain biking scene. Women have been making waves in this sport for a while, but this year especially it feels like all those waves have come together to form an ocean that’s opened itself to a lot of other boats. It’s been written about already, but nowhere has that been more evident than in women’s freeride, which initially caught a lot of people’s attention when Katie Holden organized the first Red Bull Formation in 2019 in Virgin, Utah. Two years on, that event was preceded by Mons Royale’s Future Ground in New Zealand and followed by Casey Brown’s Dark Horse Air Sesh in Revelstoke and Hannah Bergemann’s Hangtime in Bellingham. It’s also been a big year for firsts. Chelsea Kimball became the first woman to send a canyon gap during Formation before going in for surgery to fix a torn meniscus, Robin Goomes became the first woman to land a backflip in a speed and style competition at Crankworx Innsbruck, Olympian Caroline Buchanan became the first woman to land a front flip to dirt during Audi Nines, and just a couple of weeks ago, Cami Nogueira made history when she became the first woman to take first place at Proving Grounds. That event itself saw a 500 percent increase in female participation since 2019 when Casey Brown took on the massive course that had previously only been ridden by men.
I know there are men involved in these endeavors, whether they’re advocates for including more women or supportive partners or parents building up the women and girls in their lives, but from reading the coverage of these events and reactions from the participants themselves, it’s clear these spaces that push and celebrate women’s progress wouldn’t exist without women creating them for other women. I love the photos and videos of Veronique Sandler’s sideways whips, Samantha Soriano’s no-handers, and 15-year-old Brooke Anderson coming off a drop-in that looks 30 times taller than she is as much as I love the photos and videos of these women lifting each other up when they succeed or take a slam.
Andreane Lanthier Naddeau is surrounded by her fellow competitors after a near-win at the EWS race in La Thuile.
I’ve felt this same kind of energy coming from the women who are racing the Enduro World Series this year. Who could forget the photo of Andreane Lanthier Naddeau as she was hugged by her fellow competitors in La Thuile, Italy where she led the race after dislocating her ankle on the Pro Stage only to encounter another crash on the final stage of the day? And then there’s the outpouring of love and support that’s surrounded Isabeau Courdurier, who started her EWS season just a few weeks after her father passed away. On a personal note, I’ve appreciated the thoughts she’s shared about the emotional difficulty of getting back on a bike after something like that. It was comforting to know someone else understood what I was feeling after my dad died two years ago and having fun on a bike just sounded hard. I’ve also noticed the overall excitement many of the enduro women are expressing about the growing competition in their field as times continue to get tighter, which means they’re all getting better together. The Gowaan Gals, which is a moniker taken on by UK racers Martha Gill and Bex Baraona, recently documented the leveling up that’s happened in women’s racing by interviewing their fellow competitors about what they’ve noticed and what needs to happen to keep that momentum going.
I also follow plenty of cross-country rippers. Although I’d argue that women’s discipline has generally gotten a lot more attention simply because it’s been around longer and the field is bigger, it’s definitely been injected with more excitement since riders like Kate Courtney and Jolanda Neff arrived on the Instagram scene. I’ve kept up with Neff, who won gold at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, for a while now, but this year I’ve also really enjoyed following Evie Richards, who won the World Championships in Val Di Sole. They’ve both always come across as encouraging of all the women they race against, but there’s another rider who caught my attention in the last few months for very different reasons. During the Olympics, Jenny Rissveds made a post that’s stuck with me since then. She wrote in part:
After the Tokyo Olympics, Jenny Rissveds opened up about why she’s struggled to get along with her competition.
“I feel genuinely happy for Jolanda Neff. We have raced together for the last 10 years and over a decade she’s been the most consistent rider out there. People who are close to me know that I’ve had my struggles getting along with Jolanda. The reason has always been very clear to me but also very hard to admit. She’s always been my biggest competitor and I’ve felt jealous about her success. Therefore I am very proud about being able to feel true emotions and to cry true tears with her. Without any sense of envy.”
Damn. It takes a lot of courage to admit some of your worst feelings towards another woman to 136,000 followers. Rissveds’ post is another one that I can relate to because it perfectly summed up some of the emotions I had toward my competition when I was a kid fencing saber on a national level and then again when I started riding and then racing mountain bikes in my mid-20s on a very amateur level. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s felt this way and it takes a while to openly admit that you not only had so many negative feelings toward yourself but also toward other women. Now that I’m in my 30s, I spend a lot of time consciously reminding myself that comparison is the thief of joy and that’s what mountain biking is ultimately about. Comparison is also the thief of progress in personal endeavors and the collective pursuit of elevating women in sports. As women, we can’t build ourselves up to demand more equitable sponsorships, pay, and prize money if we’re tearing each other down. So I’m trying to follow the example of the female riders who are pushing themselves while also saying “Look at this girl, she’s pushing herself too and deserves to be seen and supported” because it’s up to us to create that kind of culture in this sport.
On that note, I can’t end this entry without mentioning the women who I know in real life after nearly seven years of mountain biking in Northwest Arkansas who are making their own moves in the mountain biking scene. Some are pursuing individual goals, while others are building communities that welcome women from all walks of life into the sport. So here’s to Kylee, who started mountain biking a couple of years ago and just took second place overall in the women’s amateur class at this year’s Big Mountain Enduro series. Here’s to Morgan, who jumped into trail building and is currently ripping around in machines rebuilding portions of the training ground for some of America’s best downhill riders. Here’s to Victoria, who recently became the OEM Sales Manager for DT Swiss America. Here’s to all the women at BikeNWA who are getting bikes into local schools and pushing cities to invest in cycling infrastructure. Here’s to all the women behind Women of OZ who are encouraging more women to try mountain biking through events that build skills and create friendships. Here’s to the women of Bike POC who are demanding space for black, indigenous, people of color, and other marginalized groups in the local cycling scene. Here’s to the women of Grit MTB Festival who organized an event for trans, femmes, non-binary folks, and women two years ago and are now looking for an executive director to run the show. Here’s to the women of Arkansas NICA and Little Bellas who are getting more girls on bikes. Here’s to the women of Empower MTB as they encourage more women to give enduro racing a try. Here’s to the women who are thinking about getting on a mountain bike, who just did their first ride, who are learning to ride berms, who are working up to that small drop on that one trail, who are working up to that big drop on that other trail, who just hit their first jump, who just successfully executed a whip, who just did their first race, who just did their 40th race, who are getting back on the bike after having a baby, who are trying to get their confidence back after an injury, and whose lives have been permanently altered because of a crash.
And here’s me racing down the trails at Brian Head Bike Park where the BME held its finals.
And you know what, here’s to me for completing my second enduro race of the season after not feeling good enough about myself to do three other events I had signed up for this year. I’d be lying if I said writing this blog had nothing to do with it. I started writing this entry before the Big Mountain Enduro finals in Brian Head, Utah and it undoubtedly fired me up to get down a couple of A-lines and to do a 20+ minute stage without being able to feel my thumbs because we were racing in 40-degree temperatures while getting pummeled by rain. Turns out, getting stoked on women who rip on bikes gave me the boost I needed to do the same thing, which brings me to an apology. I’d like to apologize to the women I pushed away both consciously and subconsciously because of that envy I discussed earlier. I turned your successes into my failures and, whether you knew it or not, I made those moments about my abilities as a rider instead of celebrating your achievements, but I’ve learned a lot since then. And to the women doing this mountain biking thing professionally, I know social media can be soul-sucking, but keep riding and sharing about what it’s really like out there because girls and women like myself are cheering you on as you push the limits of this sport and demand more of the industry as a whole.
Cheers, Zu