In early September, Kate Courtney lined up at the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships for the 12th time in her career, but the first time targeting the marathon distance. A figure at the front of the pack in the shorter cross country and short track distances, Courtney would surprise everyone by winning the 77-mile race, claiming the second rainbow jersey of her nearly decade-long career.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe competition at the sharp end is so high and the course was brutal, so I was productively intimidated,\u201d said the 30-year-old Courtney, \u201cI didn\u2019t think much about the pressure of winning, which let me just focus on myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite a final climb that took an agonizing hour, a 20-minute hiking section over a boulder field, and flat tire on the final descent that could have ended her race, Courtney stayed calm, thanks to a different mental approach this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past, I felt like I had to be on every podium to feel success,\u201d said Courtney. \u201cIt was an impossible standard and the pressure got to me. The preparation for races would be nearly perfect and I would come completely unhinged on race day. There was a broken connection between training and racing.\u201d<\/p>\n
In late May, Courtney broke her wrist after the third race of the season, forcing her to step back from the sport and reflect on what wasn\u2019t working. \u201cInitially it felt like my season was going off the rails,\u201d said Courtney, \u201cbut in retrospect I really needed the time away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sidelined from the World Cup circuit for the first time since she started her professional career, Courtney dropped out of the top 20 in the world rankings, something that hadn\u2019t happened since she was 16 years old. At first this was a hard pill to swallow, but became a crucial inflection point.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019m looking for now isn\u2019t just results, but instead to engage meaningfully with the challenges and invest in the process,\u201d said Courtney. \u201cIf I approach training and racing as a challenge, it becomes an opportunity for me, without the big weight of external expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her PT and strength coach, Matt Smith, knew her wrist wasn\u2019t ready to jump back into the rigors of technical short races and encouraged her to try something new. He proposed she try the Leadville 100, America\u2019s most prestigious long distance mountain bike race. Initially Courtney was skeptical, but a day later she bought in. \u201cI found so much freedom in the new challenge. I focused on feel, not numbers or structure. Low external pressure, high intrinsic drive.\u201d<\/p>\n
On 9 August, Courtney returned to racing, lining up at Leadville. With an early headwind and new rules that restricted women not drafting off men, the pace started slower than she expected. At the first major climb it began to pick up and from there Courtney rode a blistering pace, breaking the long-standing course record by nearly 10 minutes.<\/p>\n
A week later, Courtney flew to Switzerland with her coach and mechanic, to pre-ride the Marathon Worlds course. \u201cThe two weeks before the race was the most fun I\u2019ve had in my entire career,\u201d said Courtney. \u201cI knew my fitness would translate, because it was another seven-hour course with a ton of climbing. Mentally I was just focused on the course and my plan, not anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a newcomer to marathon races, Courtney flew under the radar, allowing her to race with more freedom. \u201cI took a risk on the second to last climb and went solo,\u201d said Courtney. \u201cOn the final fireroad descent I got a rear sidewall flat and just had to hope my tire would hold up until the finish. Those moments are earned, but also given. Things that are out of your control have to go right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kate Courtney won the Cross-Country Marathon (XCM) world championship in the Swiss canton of Valais in September. Photograph: Piotr Staron\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Despite 50 career wins, this one felt different. It had been seven years since her last world championship and in many of those years it felt well out of reach. \u201cIt was a healing event for me. I raced at the limit, physically and mentally. It\u2019s the way I hope I\u2019ll be remembered as an athlete.\u201d<\/p>\n
Courtney had a lot of early success from 2017 to 2019, often at the front of World Cup races. She made the US Olympic Team in 2021, another major highlight. But the extreme pressure in Tokyo and later on the World Cup would get to her, creating a mental hole which took years to dig out of.<\/p>\n
\u201cI lost a full grasp of the process,\u201d said Courtney. \u201cThat was a low period for three or four years, where I wasn\u2019t prepared to compete on the level I wanted to. I was putting a lot in but not getting as much out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad always says you\u2019re remembered for your best days,\u201d said Courtney, who fell in love with mountain biking by riding a tandem mountain bike with her dad as a kid. \u201cI\u2019ve been lucky to have a few of them, but over this period I learned it\u2019s more important to zoom out and see the bigger picture. I\u2019ve weathered the storm of big challenges and it\u2019s the years that everything didn\u2019t click that almost meant more to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Courtney switched coaches at the start of 2024 and began a new training program, designed to get her back to where she wanted to be. The first step was finding the motivation to keep working hard, day in and out. The answer had been in front of her for years, mentoring young women through mountain biking.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing that kept me in the sport when I wasn\u2019t performing well was paying it forward and trying to be a role model for young girls,\u201d said Courtney. \u201cIt was a way to meaningfully contribute beyond my race results, and I learned they didn\u2019t care if I won or fought to finish after a crash. What was important was how I showed up.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2023, Courtney launched the She Sends Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to getting more girls on bikes. \u201cMy goal wasn\u2019t about developing the next top level mountain bike racer, but more to use the sport to equip young girls for the real world. Mountain biking is great at teaching lessons, showing girls they can be powerful and confident.\u201d<\/p>\n
She Sends is part of a cultural shift, Courtney says. \u201cWhen a woman walks into a bike shop, she should get the same respect as a man. And when she lines up on race day, she should get respect for being a great athlete, not just being \u2018great for a female athlete\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her main message to young girls is to take risks. \u201cIn pushing your edge you find out you\u2019re capable of more. I realized this year that if I was giving girls that message, I needed to live it. I needed to compete at the top level and give myself the opportunity to exhaust my athletic potential.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the new motivation, Courtney\u2019s season started slowly, with poor performances at her first two races and a broken wrist at her third. But, instead of throwing away the season, she decided to pivot.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a matter of how you evaluate your success,\u201d said Courtney. \u201cWe often over emphasize the wins instead of the process.\u201d She embraced the new challenges and the results speak for themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In early September, Kate Courtney lined up at the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships for the 12th time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-245186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}