Anne Terpstra plows through the mud to bronze at European Championship mountain bike in Munich

Anne Terpstra on her way to bronze.Statue Klaas Jan van der Weij

It looks like cyclocross, so muddy the mountain bikers cross the line at the European Championships. Their bicycles are covered in a thick mixture of mud and blades of grass and their legs are carved from stone. The layer of clay that is caked on it shows at the ankles still wet and dark, just below the knee already hardened and dry.

Quickly cleaned

While Olympic champion Jolanda Neff addresses the press as a half-statue, half-man, Anne Terpstra quickly wipes the mess from her legs and face. She has to appear third on the podium, having won silver in the previous two editions of the European Championships. Also quickly cleaned are Loana Lecomte and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot. Both Frenchmen had quickly driven away from Terpstra in the 30-kilometre race.

Initially Ferrand-Prevot was in the lead. The 30-year-old is a celebrity on two wheels. Seven years ago she was in possession of the rainbow jersey in road cycling, cyclo-cross and mountain biking. She was unlucky in Munich. On the slippery paths at the Olympiapark, her muddy chain fell off and she was messing around for a minute and a half before she could definitely continue. Lecomte had already caught up with her by then and the 23-year-old would never give up her lead again.

In advance, the course was estimated as quickly by the participants. The Olympiaberg, an old dump where the rubble of the heavily bombed Munich after the Second World War was deposited, offered steep climbs, but otherwise relatively few technical challenges. Some artificial obstacles had therefore been erected here and there: a water trough with stones to represent a stream, two wooden bends and – most complicated – a rock strip.

Smooth course

When the rain curtain slowly pulled over the Olympiastadion forty-five minutes before the start of the race and drenched the adjacent hill with water, the character of the 4.2 kilometer long lap changed. Because of the danger of falls, the boulders were removed. What remained was no longer a fast, but above all a very heavy and slippery course. Before the start, a number of riders quickly let some air out of the thick studded tires, because a softer tire offers just a little more grip in wet conditions.

Especially the narrow paths that were built in three hairpin bends to the top of the mountain were treacherous. In the first round the mixture of clay and sand was still reasonably passable, but after the forty participants had ridden over it, the top layer had deteriorated into a kind of sticky soup, which adhered to the tires. As if they no longer had a profile, the riders slid from left to right.

Winner Lecomte therefore invariably chose the grass side to drive up, taking the bends well. Yet she could not prevent the dung from ending up in her chain, between the sprockets and the gear unit. She, like the others, accepted a water bottle at each refreshment station. Not for thirst, but to clean those parts as well.

Point of attention

Plowing through the mud is a specialty. And actually not one that Terpstra owns. “That’s a point of attention.” She is most at ease when it is bone dry and dusty. Then she forces her bike through the technical passages. This is not possible on a spongy surface. If you push the pedals too hard, there is a risk that the rear wheel will slip. If that happens, the momentum is immediately lost. ‘That shouldn’t happen now. So I tried to ride those sections a little less and still have enough speed to drive those sections.’

An advantage for Terpstra was that she could take advantage of the background of national coach Gerben de Knegt. He was a skilled cyclo-cross rider and explored the course together with the women. On the tricky slippery climb, he smoothly jumped off the bike and ran upstairs. That is a regular ingredient in cyclocross, but mountain bikers prefer to keep the shoes clicked into the pedals. ‘If it had been dry we could have driven there, but now I thought: I’m doing such a nice Gerben move.’

She practiced them extra this year on dealing with wet conditions. As the opposite of a fair-weather cyclist, she actually started training when it rained. She lives in Pleussen, a small Bavarian village on the Czech border. The rocky ground there never really gets soggy, so she wasn’t really used to the sucking mud of the European Championship track. All the greater was her joy that she made it onto the podium. ‘If you normally have a hard time with it, that’s great fun. Especially in a match where the pressure is high.’

In the lead

There are two more important appointments on Terpstra’s schedule for the next two weeks. Next week the World Cup in France and the week after the World Cup final in Italy. It is mainly the last game that the Dutch has set her sights on. She is in the lead in the World Cup standings and wants to keep it that way.

Personally, she thinks the World Cup jersey is more beautiful than that of the championships. “It’s more difficult to win the World Cup, because then you have to perform for nine weekends and you can’t have a single miss.” That is the prize for the most consistent and versatile driver, she believes. For someone who always drives in front. Blubber or not.

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