The inspiring story of Jacqueline Godbe’s comeback.
American Jacqueline Godbe was sitting pretty after stage one of the 2025 UCI Cycling Esports World Championship semi-finals on October 3. She finished ahead of 135 other riders to place ninth, comfortably within the top-20 qualifying positions for the in-person final in Abu Dhabi on November 15 on MyWhoosh. The three-time USA Cycling Esports National Champion seemed poised to keep her perfect record intact, having qualified for every World Championship final since the event’s inception in 2020.
But this one was different. Special. The implications cut deeper. She had so much more emotional equity on the line than can be defined by any result or record, and she was well on the way to achieving her goal. Then disaster struck.
Churning a big gear at high power and low revs during the steep uphill effort of stage 2 pushed her drivetrain to the limit, as evidenced by the guttural grinding sound her gears were making. By the time she sorted it out, the 35-year-old Missouran had slipped to somewhere around 100th place. Her streak had gone up the road with the front group on stage two of three, and her chance to represent the USA in Abu Dhabi for the second time seemed to have slipped away.
You might think that would be all right for the only American ever to stand on a UCI Cycling Esports World Championship podium – Godbe finished third in 2023 when the event was on Zwift. She has certainly accomplished plenty in the sport.
You may be even more inclined to give her a pass when you consider that less than 10 months earlier, she was on the operating table at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, the primary adult teaching hospital of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, receiving treatment for a tumor at the base of her brain.
“Hearing that you have to have brain surgery is never something you want to experience,” Godbe told Escape Collective in an emotional and inspiring interview. “You never want to get that call from your doctor saying, ‘Are you sitting down? I have something to tell you.’”
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