Amity’s Unbound

This article originally appeared on Velo News

In April, Amity Rockwell won the Traka 360, perhaps Europe’s most prestigious gravel race. She’d spent the month prior living and training in Girona, where “in typical Amity fashion I was immediately relying on so many people for so many different things, whether it was taking me out on rides and showing me routes or working on my bike or making me coffee,” she said.

Despite the route mysteriously vanishing from her bike computer when she was still some two hours from the finish, Rockwell relied on a combination of pre-riding knowledge, the background map on the computer, and the Komoot app on her iPhone to beat Sarah Sturm by 45 minutes in the 360-kilometer race.

At the finish, where rain mixed with champagne formed a sticky film on her dusty skin, Rockwell fell into the embrace of many of the people who she’d relied on over the past month. I assumed she would be too cracked to speak or too emotional to crack a smile. But, really she just seemed content.

Later, she told me that, aside from the personal revelation that her endurance runs deeper than she’d previously known, the win reinforced one of the things that had drawn her to gravel in the first place.

“I felt immediately adopted by the community there who were endlessly generous with their time and their love. So winning was the best way I had of saying thank you, as cliche as that may sound. It was this big declaration that community is not some buzzword but really the framework that keeps this discipline so rewarding and meaningful beyond athletic achievement.”

It was, she said, “the biggest blessing of my season, in the most unexpected way.”

On the eve of Unbound Gravel, Rockwell is in Emporia, Kansas, a place that has also provided her many blessings, notably the career that followed her 2019 Unbound Gravel victory. In the post-Covid 2021 edition, she placed second, which helped clear up any uncertainty that she was on the right track becoming a pro bike racer.

In some ways, returning in 2023 after another year-long hiatus, feels parallel to the 2021 return.

“It’s been just long enough away to not have a clear picture of how I fit into the current scene,” Rockwell said. “Sometimes gravel appears to be moving and changing so quickly that missing a single year can make you feel pretty isolated in terms of what the scene is like or who the competition is or if anybody still believes in your odds out there. But in a way that's been a comfort to me, since I was able to come back and succeed in 2021 despite feeling robbed of that perspective.”

Rockwell’s 2022 hiatus wasn’t due to a global pandemic, however. Three weeks before Unbound last year, Moriah Wilson, her good friend, was murdered in Austin, Texas.

Although the entire gravel world was stunned by Wilson’s death, and the subsequent revelation that the suspect was Kaitlin Armstrong, former pro Colin Strickland’s girlfriend, only two riders of note didn’t show up to Unbound last year -- Rockwell and Strickland.

Rockwell told me that there wasn’t one particular reason; “I just couldn’t,” she said.

“Losing Mo, the first few months I honestly didn't think I'd return to cycling, at least not in a competitive or public space anymore. Continuing to show up felt like condoning all that I knew to be horribly wrong in the space. As the initial shock wore off I was able to see what made it worthwhile for me, namely the unshakeable bonds between myself and the other women, and cling to that, but it really wasn't until this year that I felt any certainty surrounding my future as a bike pro.”

Although Rockwell was part of the inaugural Life Time Grand Prix series last year, it wasn’t just Unbound that she skipped. In July, Crusher and the Tushar came and went. She wasn’t at Leadville in August.

Later in the summer, she went to Canada to race the BC Bike Race and and BCBR Gravel, but her presence didn’t really bat a media eye. Her absence at the marquee races was accompanied by silence on social media, a space she’s always been protective of.

While most people chalked Rockwell’s decision to drop out of racing up to grief, there was more to it, she said. Something she’d been grappling with for years.

“For me, Mo’s death laid bare a lot of what, deep down, I already knew to be true about the race scene -- namely, the pervasive misogyny that lends itself to men in power overlooking the transgressions of other men who make themselves out to be heroes. It was a big confirmation that cycling is and remains a boys’ club, and I was tired of pretending I could shift things in a significant enough way to make it worthwhile for me to continue.”

“All that aside, ultimately I was uncomfortable grieving in a public way, and there was no avoiding that. The continued sensationalization of her death in both cycling media and more mainstream avenues made it especially clear that this was something I was better off working through in a more private and compassionate space.”

Eventually, Rockwell contributed to the media coverage of Wilson’s murder by agreeing to an interview with the New Yorker. The article laid bare the feelings she’d been sitting on -- that there was a power imbalance in cycling, the “boys’ club” that even gravel, the younger, hipper discipline of drop-bar racing, hadn’t managed to shake.

While Rockwell’s talent and results propelled her into the gravel spotlight, she said that staying there -- or getting the light to shine brighter -- came at a hidden cost. That gravel’s ‘feel good’ vibes masked a more troubled ecosystem for female racers.

“Sure, structural changes like equal prize money and equal coverage go a long way, but ultimately most of the people in positions of power are men and much of the attitudes among them remain biased, consciously or no,” she said. “There's often a big show of giving equal time and space to women but there's an obvious difference between doing that for brand advancement reasons versus a real desire to see us succeed.

“As with everything, it's not a black and white issue of an individual being good or bad, but rather men looking on as other men continually take advantage of women who are in a position of needing their leverage and influence in a system biased towards chummy male relationships.”

Taking time away from the major race scene last year gave Rockwell time to reconsider how she wanted to navigate gravel going forward and more importantly, who she wanted to have relationships with. Deepening bonds with other women -- whether athletes, brand folks, or promoters -- became fundamental. So did strengthening ties with long-standing sponsors like Easton and forgoing partnerships with those who weren’t as supportive.

It was a process of rebuilding in a sense, and it wasn’t until late in the year that Rockwell started to have conversations with her sponsors about what 2023 might look like.

“Luckily, most of them were at this point more friends than business partners and had already played emotionally supportive roles during my time away, so there was an understanding,” she said. “From there, things just sorta started falling into place and I didn't have a plan B so I went with it. I really wanted to try; I realized I couldn't up and quit without knowing if there was still something in me that still wanted it.”

After a winter spent deep in the snow-covered mountains around Lake Tahoe, Rockwell began to stitch together the semblance of a plan that would help her answer that question. She decided not to sign up for the Grand Prix this year -- “it would prioritize races that I'm not as excited about as other races” -- and set her sights on more mountain biking. She planned the month-long trip to Girona. Yet, she knew she’d go back to Emporia.

Now, on the eve of the 200-mile race that she won a very long four years ago, Rockwell exudes the same sense of contentedness that bloomed around her in Girona after the Traka. She’s just not covered in champagne -- yet.

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