Rad Girls

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MSA cyclists in the upper meadow looking over the Bell Tower and Blue Ridge Mountains.

“Sure, I’ll drop it,” Bridget Ciambotti cheerfully exclaims with an automatic smile and jolt of enthusiasm. She stands over her bike—shoulder to shoulder with her teammates Alice Hoskins, Maddie Fisher, Zanna Logar, and Raina Logar—looking down at the most technical drop line on the US Cup XC race course.

Below them is a seven-foot cliff with a landing as steep as a rollercoaster. In technical race course terms, it is called the “A-line” and is reserved for racers with world-class technical skills as well as a willingness to take a calculated risk in order to save a few seconds during the race. Most racers opt for the easier and more conservative “B-line” a few yards up the trail.

Before anyone can suggest otherwise, there is a wave of wind as Bridget soars through the air and lands fifteen feet down trail—she makes a highly technical and scary drop look easy. Moments later she is followed by her teammates Zanna, Raina, Maddie, and Alice with the same confidence and effortless execution. They then roll out of sight and continue to preview the race course. A spectator on the course looks over to her friend with wide eyes and says, “well, that was rad…I’m pretty sure that drop was built for the pro men.”

These girls are rad, and they are flying onto the national mountain bike scene.

At the same time at a different event, Azyra Franklin is rocketing through a ninety-degree turn at twenty-five miles per hour in a road cycling race in Poolesville, Maryland. She is one of a few teenagers in a peloton of adult racers competing in a grueling seventy-mile road race on the rolling hills of Maryland’s countryside. 

These riders represent a new era of cycling–they train and compete in nearly every discipline of cycling. Endurance Program Director, Andy Guptill remarked: “While most elite-level cyclists choose a specific discipline and focus the majority of their training and racing time on it, these Miller School athletes are pursuing four or five different cycling disciplines at the same time.” Specifically, most of the girls are competing in road races and criteriums, downhill mountain bike races, enduro events, cyclocross, and XC mountain biking. Coach Guptill explains further: “This would be the equivalent of a race car driver driving a Formula 1 one weekend and then Nascar the next…and then mixing it up in a rally race the following.”

Fortunately for the girls, Miller School’s extensive network of on-campus trails and the endless country roads around the school provide the ideal training ground for their ambitious goals. For many of the girls on the team, Miller School has been their home for training and racing long before becoming students. Coach Guptill explains: “Many of the riders on the team have come up through the youth cycling programs and camps that are hosted on campus. In some cases, the riders on the team have been riding mountain bikes at Miller School since they were eight years old.” 

Their ambitious pursuits are fueled by a passion for riding bikes and pushing their limits as athletes. The roads and trails ahead of them are full of adventure, and each is carving a path that is unique to her own vision of the sport of cycling.