Boulder – Two years after taking up cycling to give herself something to do between college swim seasons, Boulder’s Mara Abbott has become one of the hottest stories on the American cycling scene.
She says she’s “not very good” at swimming, her winter sport at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., (enrollment 1,454), but the folks at USA Cycling see the Fairview High School graduate as a phenom.
Last month, she outsprinted America’s premier female rider, world champion Kristin Armstrong, to win a national road race title. Abbott already was guaranteed a spot in the world championships later this summer by finishing second in a World Cup race at Montreal in June.
Abbott, 21, will go back to Whitman for her senior year this fall, and she will swim again for the NCAA Division III school, although cycling clearly is where her athletic future lies.
“She’s probably the top up-and-comer in the nation,” said Jim Miller, USA Cycling endurance program director. “She is by far the youngest. She’s one of the top four or five girls in the country.”
Last summer, Abbott competed for Boulder’s Sports Garage, where she was a teammate of Alison Powers, another rising prospect in women’s cycling who also is going to worlds this year. Sports Garage is a seemingly modest bike shop, but it has a major impact on the racing scene.
“It’s a very small team,” Miller said of Sports Garage, “and to have that much talent is pretty remarkable.”
Abbott has not competed in Europe, but that changes this week when she leaves on a USA Cycling trip intended to familiarize her with road racing at the elite international level.
“I’m kind of nervous, just because a lot of people say European races are a lot more aggressive,” Abbott said. “But I know that’s the next step, and I know I’m strong enough to hang with them. I just have to learn how to race a new style.”
Abbott did some mountain biking growing up, but swimming was her sport. She chose Whitman because she wanted to attend a small liberal arts school for its academics. She is an economics major.
“I’m good enough that I can swim at a D-III school, but really anyone can swim at a D-III school that wants to,” Abbott said. “It’s just something I’ve always done that I’ve always enjoyed.”
During the spring of Abbott’s freshman year, some friends on the cycling team talked her into giving it a try. She wound up winning the National Collegiate Cycling Association road race championship that year, and has successfully defended her title twice.
The problem with swimming was that the races weren’t long enough. Abbott swims the longest event – 1,650 yards – which takes her less than 20 minutes. Clearly her aerobic engine is better suited to endurance challenges that last more than three hours.
“There never really was an event that was long enough, and I could never quite get up to speed,” Abbott said of swimming. “Knowing that from my history of swimming makes the fact that I’m better at cycling make a lot of sense.”
Triathlon? No way, she says.
“I already have two sports I love,” Abbott said. “I don’t need a third.”
When she gets back from this 2 1/2-week trip to France and Germany, she goes back to school until the UCI road world championships in Stuttgart, Germany, on Sept. 26-30.
“It’s just a super-exciting thing to think about,” Abbott said of worlds. “There’s one way to look at it, where you just sort of take it in stride, you’re like, ‘This is just another race.’ You go to nationals for the first time and that’s a big race, you go to a World Cup for the first time and that’s a big race. It’s just part of the progression.
“At the same time, you realize it’s something special.”
