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UNPAVED: Sharing Perspectives

30 janvier 2025

In this video, CADEX-supported gravel racers Tessa Neefjes and Matteo Fontana contemplate and discuss some of the experiences that unite them.

Only a racer truly knows the feeling. Mornings spent contemplating weather conditions. Countless hours spent training alone. Lingering moments of self-doubt. The mental tools needed to stay calm, before and during competition. The importance of focusing on the process as much as the outcome.

For Liv Racing Collective athlete Tessa Neefjes and Swatt Club gravel pro Matteo Fontana, there is a duality inherent in their shared lifestyle, a constant push and pull between the intensity of their sport and the beauty of their daily life experiences. Through this digital dialogue of voicemail messages, they discuss their insights and experiences—lessons learned and to be shared.

Long hours on the bike are like mental therapy, Fontana says. Visualizing a race is an important part of the pre-race routine, Neefjes shares. Thinking about friends and family helps with motivation during the waning hours of a six-hour race, Fontana divulges. Racing is preferable to training, Neefjes explains, because it’s a poker game on wheels, every race another opportunity to play her hand.

In a gravel race, Fontana says, anything can happen, adding that one of the biggest lessons he’s learned is that it’s never over until it’s over—to never give up.

Neefjes, who finished second overall in the 2024 world rankings, knows about resilience and self-belief. In 2016, at age 19, she was hit head-on while on a training ride by a truck driving on the wrong side of the road, resulting in 16 broken bones. While her doctor told her she would likely never return to cycling, her parents gifted her a bracelet with the word “believe.”

“Sometimes, if am having a hard moment in a race, I am looking at my top tube or at my bracelet, and I think, ‘okay, it’s never going to be harder than that moment,’” she tells Fontana. “When you are in a position where you’re thinking it’s all over, or ‘it’s not possible for me,’ it’s all in the mind, and you have to believe in it, work hard for it. Love the process and you can reach so much. For some reason, a lot of races I won with this in mind.”

In a grueling and demanding sport such as gravel racing, it’s critical to remember that embracing the journey matters as much as concentrating on the destination—and that there are others going through similiar trials and tribulations. Sometimes, it helps to be reminded.

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