Catherine Colyn secured one of the biggest wins of her career when she won the Swartberg 100 gravel race in Prince Albert at the weekend. The race is part of the 2023 UCI Gravel World Series and attracted a large field.
It couldn’t have been a better result for Catherine winning the UCI Swartberg100 Gravel Race as well as the Queen of the Mountain award just after announcing her partnership with Energy Innovation Holdings(EIH). With 170km and 2900m of climbing, this race was super important for Catherine to test her form building up to leaving for the USA for the LifeTime Grand Prix at the end of June.
Catherine dug deep to stay with the lead pack for the first half of the race knowing that the first move would come only 25km into the race up the first climb. Watching her Garmin for distances to the top of the climb she gritted her teeth and pushed on to get over the top with the chasing bunch of men knowing the next few kilometres were going to be fast with a tail wind. She used her road racing experience to be comfortable in the bunch. This was where she initially made a break from the other women.
Catherine stuck to a structured nutrition plan to ensure she was fuelled, especially leading into the final climb. At 140km before hitting the Swartberg Pass, Catherine stopped at the water table to refill her bottles and let the bunch go as she has had previous experience with the pass and knew it is where the race could be won or lost.
If you blow on the pass, you can lose a lot of time. Catherine settled into her own tempo watching her wattage that she was comfortable with to make it over the top. Descending from the pass was a bit hair-raising as there was no road closure and it was pretty busy with cars going both up and down the pass whilst trying to descend at speed kept Catherine literally on her toes trying to safely navigate to the bottom.
There were no time splits so Catherine was still unsure on where the other ladies were but wasn’t leaving anything to chance and just hammered the pedals for the last 10km where she was riding by herself tapping out an average of 40km/h for the final 10km to the finish line.
Crossing the line in a time of 5:54:51 would not only see her winning the Elite Ladies category but was also good enough to finish 21st overall on a day when the course record was smashed – Catherine’s average speed over 170km was 28,8km/h. Catherine’s consistent effort over Swartberg Pass also earned her the title of Queen of the Mountain.
“It took a while for it to all sink in, even with everyone coming up and congratulating me and standing on the podium it was still a disbelief or dream-like feeling, but waking up on Sunday morning and seeing that UCI medal was when it really hit and I was like ‘we did it’!
“We did it as there are so many people that helped me to get to this point from family, friends, riders, coaches and sponsors – it was really cool to be able to give everyone a win especially with the announcement of Energy Innovation Holdings(EIH) becoming my title sponsor ahead of my journey to the USA for the LifeTime Grand Prix. This win and performance has definitely silenced any doubt I had in my mind and I’m really looking forward to heading overseas to give it my all at the series,” said Catherine.
“I have always maintained that winning isn’t everything as there is so many factors to getting it right but flip it is an awesome feeling when it all comes together!” she added.
As much as Catherine wants to soak up this first UCI win it is already time to start focusing on this weekend’s King Price Race2theSun in Johannesburg!
Source: One Movement
