This article was first published by .

A year later, I was given the opportunity to become Lea’s teammate and jumped at the chance. I signed with Specialized and over the next five years, Lea and I became inseparable. We pre-rode courses together, planned adventure rides between races and slept about six inches apart in tiny European hotel rooms in twin beds we could barely separate. For me, traveling and training with one of my idols was a dream come true. But looking back, I am amazed by how warmly and wholeheartedly Lea invited me in and took me under her wing. The experiences we shared and lessons I learned looking up to Lea have had a profound impact on my life and career.

Of all of the experiences I have shared with Lea, one in particular stands out. It started at the beginning of the 2016 Olympic season when Lea sent me a package in the mail with a little note. It was a Nike T-Shirt with the Olympic Logo on it from her time in London. “2012 Olympic Team” was typed out in a white font inside a red circle around the Olympic rings. “This can be you,” Lea had written in the note. I wore that shirt every day in training, pushing just that little bit harder believing that my extra rep in the gym or interval on the bike might really make the difference. She believed, so maybe I could too.

When it came time for the first race of the season, Lea and I hopped on our flight to Cairns, Australia. It took three connections and an airport transfer to get there, so we swapped snacks, compared notes on the latest Beyoncé album and napped until we finally touched down. When we arrived at the hotel, we were excited to be staying in condos with kitchenettes—until we saw that our condo only had one actual room. Our teammate took the upstairs bedroom, which left Lea and I sleeping in a glorified closet with two roll-away twin beds about a foot apart.

“I guess let the Olympic year begin,” Lea said, breaking into laughter. When people think about professional athletes chasing an Olympic dream, they don’t imagine roll-away beds in a closet halfway around the world.

On trips like these, Lea and I complemented each other perfectly. I have always been a planner. I want to know where I am going, how I will get there and preferably one or two places to stop for snacks along the way. Especially as a young athlete, I had a tendency to push too hard and hold on too tight to fixed outcomes and a naive idea of what discipline looked like. I wanted to be in control. Lea, on the other hand, dwells in the mystery of it all. She chooses her own path and trusts it, while always leaving a bit of room for something unexpectedly magical to happen. My parents nicknamed her “free range” because she is the type of person who needs to be able to come and go as she pleases, not one for a strict schedule or rigid plan. In some ways we balanced each other out, which made us great teammates. When we were together, things always seemed to work out.

Over that week in Australia, we spent the days riding to and from the course, analyzing every rock and root to pick our perfect lines for race day. I kept Lea on time and she made sure that in moments when I started to get too rigid or anxious, she would grab me for a walk down to the ocean or to go get ice cream. By the time race day arrived, we were both ready.

After all of these years, the race results seem to be the least important memory of this trip. I won my first U-23 World Cup and Lea suffered a few flat tires that made a great result impossible. But what I remember most is our trip back home.

Getting home from Cairns is not an easy travel day. No matter how you plan it, you will have a long layover in Sydney, so we decided to embrace it and extended ours overnight. With our focus so squarely on the racing, we hadn’t made any plans for our night in Sydney and when we finally arrived, I pulled out my phone to research the best places to eat, drink, walk—everything. We should have made reservations weeks ago, I concluded after a few moments on the New York Times 36 hours in Sydney guide.

“Let’s just wing it,” Lea said as I pored over my Google searches.

“But we only have one night! How will we know if we picked right?” I answered back.

“Okay my little planner. This will be good for you,” she said.

And just like that, we were on the subway heading toward the Sydney Harbor with no clue where we would be going once we got there. Lea knew she wanted to see the Opera house so we hopped off and went there first. I spent the walk peeking at menus and trying to find the best place to eat. Lea spent the walk telling me to relax and look at the view.

The Opera house was beautiful, unlike any building I had ever seen before. We walked around and looked out at the lights of the city and the boats out in the water. Yes, this was worth seeing, I thought. We went around to the front of the building to see who was playing and, to our surprise, saw the name of one of our favorite artists in flashing lights: Vance Joy. Vance freaking Joy was playing!

“See Lea this is why we have to plan ahead! It’s probably been sold out for months,” I said.

“Yeah man that’s a bummer,” Lea replied.

I thought I might as well see if there were any tickets up for resale. I got on the wifi and started searching. Ten minutes later, I was down an internet rabbit hole on a website called GumTree, which I believe to be the Australian equivalent of Craigslist. There were a few tickets listed and I started to message the sellers. A couple had decided not to go last minute and posted two tickets.

“Find anything?” Lea asked impatiently.

“I got this Lea, hold on,” I said. “I’m offering them all of my prize money.”

“Okay Kate,” she replied, “work your millennial magic!”

I messaged them, offering all of the cash I had been handed on the World Cup podium the day before and, to my surprise, they said yes.

“We are IN!” I shouted excitedly. “We are meeting them in the roundabout at the front of the theatre in 10 minutes.”

We ran down the steps and toward the circle, nearly sprinting with excitement. We found their car, handed them the cash and walked away with two golden tickets. We looked like little kids who had just stolen from the cookie jar and promptly went to the opera house bar to sip cocktails and celebrate. It was surreal.

Even more surreal was the concert itself. Vance Joy was as funny and talented as I had always imagined and when he started playing “Fire and The Flood,” the crowd erupted into song. Joy stopped playing and it was just us. I swear with the acoustics in that building, the crowd sounded like a choir. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.

Lea and I were being given the opportunity to travel the world and fill our lives with incredible experiences, not just as athletes but as human beings. We just had to choose to value those moments alongside the results, to hold the hard work and the joy in balance rather than in opposition. That night, as we sat in the Sydney Opera House and felt the vibrations of Vance Joy’s music moving through us, my heart sang. I wasn’t planning my next step or thinking about what was on my training schedule the next day. I just sat and savored every note.

This experience remains one of my favorite memories with Lea. In a world where so many elite athletes seem to preach sacrifice and suffering, Lea showed me how joy and adventure can be your secret weapon. Yes, of course she wanted to win and was willing to be disciplined and serious to reach her goals. As her teammate, I watched her win National Championships, World Championship medals and qualify for the U.S. Olympic Team. I saw her come back from injuries and heartbreak with grit and belief and never give up on ferociously chasing her dreams. Those results have had a huge impact on the trajectory of mountain biking in America, particularly for women.

But her legacy and impact go far beyond her desire to stand on the top step of the podium. Lea taught me that in the long run, your character will define you far more than your race results ever could. It isn’t just what she achieved, but how she achieved it that makes her the incredible mentor, friend, teammate, partner, sister and daughter that she is and will continue to be long after her time on the World Cup circuit comes to a close.

To know Lea is to know joy. She loves riding her bike so much that she can’t help but share that enthusiasm with the people around her. And, if there is anything she has taught me, it is that joy can be the unexpected ingredient to the best performances— and what makes chasing those good days on the bike, with people you love and admire, an unforgettable adventure.

The post Kate Courtney Reflects on Her Mountain-Bike Mentor, Lea Davison appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

On September 8, 2018, during her first year as an elite racer, 23-year-old Kate Courtney in Lenzerheide, Switzerland, ending a 17-year gold medal drought for the United States. Reflecting on her win, Courtney noticed a shift in her interactions with fans—particularly male fans. Here’s the story, in her words.

I’ve made a living out of being uncomfortable. I ride through the rain, tumble over rocks, and push through rugged climbs laden with roots, ruts, and boulders. In order to get better, I have to take risks, and I have to suffer. I thrive in these moments of discomfort, because I know they ultimately lead to the next level. But there is one type of discomfort I have never gotten used to, one that can’t be controlled by putting my head down and working harder. It’s the discomfort that usually comes from interacting with male fans at my competitions.

I’ve received marriage proposals and many unsolicited observations on my appearance. Two years ago, after I won the national championships, a group of teenage boys shouted in unison, “You’re cute!” I had just won nationals; I was covered in dirt and sweat, my fishtail braid fraying from exertion and elation. This outburst told me that when they watched me race, some weren’t paying attention to the skill I had spent the past decade cultivating. I was a lot of things that day, including many more powerful adjectives than “cute.”

Such interactions have long been the norm for women across all sports. Even in mountain biking—where women race the same course, for the same amount of time, and for the same amount of prize money as men—female racers are all too familiar with receiving these types of comments. Even if the talk isn’t explicitly centered around a woman’s body, her accomplishments are often qualified by gender. She didn’t just win nationals, she won ·É´Çłľ±đ˛Ô’s nationals. She doesn’t ride well, she rides well for a woman.

This year, however, I experienced a distinct and heartening change in the way people interacted with me. After crossing the line at the world championships, and in several instances since, conversations about my riding have shifted from a preoccupation with my looks, instead focusing on my grit, determination, and ability to overcome obstacles—the kind of qualities that drive all athletes, regardless of gender.

Now, instead of boys of telling me they think I’m cute or want to marry me, they ask me how I learned to ride a rock garden, climb a technical hill, or descend on impassable ground. They want me to sign helmets, hats, and jerseys. They tell me they want to be like me, leaving out any qualifiers. Their fathers say I’m a good role model for their sons—as well as their daughters. At nationals, a few teenage boys even painted their nails pink with a sparkly accent nail to match my prerace manicure.

These changes represent a larger shift in the sport. In the past, the ·É´Çłľ±đ˛Ô’s field was dismissed as uncompetitive because it had less funding and fewer competitors—and those competitors were women. Since 2013, the world championships’ elite ·É´Çłľ±đ˛Ô’s heat has grown by 20 athletes, compared to 15 in the men’s field. Now our races are considered some of the most exciting to watch. From 2017 to 2018, viewership for the ·É´Çłľ±đ˛Ô’s world championship event more than doubled, from 99,000 to 233,000 views on Red Bull TV, on par with the men’s event. These races are always tight, often decided in the last lap or dwindling minutes of an hour-and-half-long race—before worlds, the highest I’d placed in a World Cup race was sixth. While we still don’t have as many racers as the men’s field (60 to 80, compared to their 90 to 100), no one who watches a World Cup can reasonably make the argument that the ·É´Çłľ±đ˛Ô’s field is soft.

It’s hard to quantify what it means for attitudes to change and for boys to openly look up to a woman. But when I stood on the podium at worlds, I could feel a sense of history in my achievement. I grew up just after the Title IX era, where athletic feminism centered around access. The motto was one of inclusion and participation—the idea that “women can too!” At a very young age, this kind of feminism irked me. Of course women can ride a bike, I thought. Of course they can play football. Why is the focus on participation, and not on how well women compete and push the limits, like in men’s athletics? I now understand that the work of women before me gave me the privilege of thinking that way.

Across ·É´Çłľ±đ˛Ô’s sports, a new generation of talented female athletes are finally benefiting from gradually changing attitudes. People call Serena Williams the best tennis player of all time. When Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall won gold at the Winter Olympics, they were recognized as heroes for all Americans, not just women. Watching these performances, and those of so many other female athletes, inspires me to deliver at the top level and to be recognized for my work as an athlete.

At my first world championships, in 2012, I crashed and watched the elite women race from the sidelines, concussed and forlorn. At least, I did until Georgia Gould crossed the line in third place—while the loudspeakers blasted “Born in the USA.” Seeing Georgia, and later my teammate Lea Davison, win medals for Team USA at the 2012 and 2014 world championships showed me that it was possible to get to the next level. This year at worlds, that finish line anthem was on my prerace playlist.

Today, someone else could use my race as inspiration to do better. And I’m not just talking about little girls.

Yes, we still have a way to go. Women are still largely underpaid as professionals in cycling and other sports. Girls still than their male peers or don’t get the chance to participate at all. But if cycling has taught me anything, it’s that progress is jagged. We often stagnate or step back before we step forward, and in order to improve, you must keep moving and celebrate the victories along the way. Subtle changes in perceptions of female athletes may seem like a small step, but the implications represent a greater victory and an opportunity to keep moving.

As told to Annie Pokorny.

The post Mountain Biking’s Bumpy Road to Gender Equality appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.