Just last year, German rider Carolin Schiff was considering stopping competing in cycling altogether. Then riding on the road for UCI Continental team, Andy Schleck-Immo Losch, she’d had a season plagued with injury and was concerned about the risks that come with competing in the women’s professional peloton.
“Road cycling was too dangerous for me with all the crashes,” she explains. “Last year, I was injured the whole season and I wanted to stop cycling completely. I wanted to just do it like a hobby and go back to my normal job full-time again.”
It was one phone call from the world-renowned German bike brand, Canyon, that changed everything. New for 2023, Canyon was setting up its gravel ‘CLLCTV’ (collective) and was looking for riders to be part of it. Schiff’s domestic results in both road and cyclo-cross had put her on Canyon’s radar and they offered her a chance to ride a comprehensive gravel calendar in the upcoming season.
“I used to do triathlons and I trained for them with road cycling and cyclo-cross during winter,” Schiff says. “I think that’s a good combination for gravel because you have the technical skills and the power from the road. Canyon called me and they asked me if I would like to race gravel for them. And then I thought about it and decided it was a great opportunity. We arranged everything and now I’m here. It’s crazy.”
It’s true that since she decided to take up gravel racing, Schiff’s progression in the discipline has been meteoric. Crazy, in fact, is an apt description for the last couple of months of the 37-year-old’s career. It kicked off with a victory in a UCI Gravel World Series race in Berja, Spain, where Schiff won the women’s race solo by almost 15 minutes. Then came the Traka 100, one of Europe’s premier gravel events and with it another dominating victory for the German woman. A few weeks later in another UCI Gravel World Series race in Aachen, Schiff took second place, beating Team SD Worx rider Lorena Wiebes who finished in third.
Schiff during the Traka 200 2023 (Image: The Traka)
Gravel racing in Europe is one thing, but it’s a known fact that the off-road discipline was born in the United States. Much of the terrain in America is tailor-made for fast gravel races on wide stretches of open farm tracks – a very different style to that seen in the majority of European gravel races which tend to be more narrow and technical. The popularity of gravel racing…