A Wausau mountain biker made it to the UCI World Championships in France, then crashed. That's not the end of the story.
She was dazzled, awestruck and nervous when she lined up on Aug. 28 with the best mountain bikers on the planet.
This is it, Wausau native Lauren Lackman was thinking to herself. She was ready to compete in the cross-country UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Les Gets, France.
Starting an international top-level race was one of several goals she made for herself when she 15 years old. Her chance came three years after she landed a spot on the best college cycling team in the country at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction. It came less than a year after she won a collegian national championship.
Lauren, 21, was racing in the U23, or under age 23, category, which allows elite young racers to compete directly with each other. But because she had competed in only a few races under the umbrella of the UCI, the international cycling association, she was lined up at the back of the pack.
This was a heavy disadvantage in a race that needs a fast and strong start.
The gun went off and immediately Lauren was in a swirling eddy of cycling chaos. "So many people were in front, and people were trying to make passes, and people ended up colliding," she said.
She hit a mangle of bodies and bikes and launched over her handlebars into a fence. She wasn't hurt, but costly seconds ticked by as she disentangled herself from the fence and got back on the bike.
"I was a little shocked at first," Lauren said. "I had never gotten into a crash at the start before. I was a little shaken up."
Meanwhile, her competitors were cruising away from her in the most important race of her career so far.
She won the women's division in a 24-hour race. She was 13.
Bikes have always been part of Lauren's life.
She is the daughter of Randy Lackman, who owns Rib Mountain Cycles, and Zara Lackman, a chiropractor. When she and her younger brother, Jack, were little kids they could often be found in the store. (Full disclosure: I've been a customer of Rib Mountain Cycles since 2000 and have watched Lauren and Jack grow up since they were toddlers.)
It wasn't immediately apparent that Lauren would someday be a national champion mountain biker.
"I didn't get off training wheels until I was 7," she said. "I was tentative."
As Lauren and Jack got older, and developed cycling skills, they could tag along with Randy on his mountain biking outings in places such as Houghton, Michigan, and Moab, Utah. For Lauren, that meant entering the 24 Miles at Nine Mile (now called the Wausau 24), a 24-hour mountain bike race, when she was as young as 10.
Lauren started out racing as a relay team with one other rider. She transitioned to riding the entire race solo. When she was 13, she won the women's division outright.
Randy started telling stories in the shop about how Lauren would grit her way through tough times in the race. Once, when she was especially suffering, he told her she needed to stop the race. She refused.
Lauren doesn't really view those events as races now. For her, they were more adventurous rides. But when she started them, she would let nothing stop her from riding to the finish. Meanwhile, she developed her aerobic capacity and the mountain biking technical skills she uses today.
Pivotal moment leads to lofty goals
Despite Lauren's 24-hour racing experience, Randy said there was a distinct pivot point in his daughter's competitive journey, occurring when she was in middle school. Lauren had raced for a year as a cross-country skier in a program under the Wausau Nordic Ski Club, but didn't enjoy it that much.
"She didn't like the stress of racing," Randy said.
But Lauren told her coach she would race the next season and felt obligated to honor the commitment. She decided to have more fun with the sport and to make deeper friendships with her teammates. That all eased her competitive worries.
But the most important thing that young Lauren realized during that ski season was that the hard work she put into training pays off in races. She approached training and racing with more discipline and drive, which, to her, was also fun.
At the end of that season, her cross-country skiing coach told her she should make specific goals, write them down and look at them before training and racing.
Lauren had started riding on the Wausau area's NICA (a high school league) mountain bike team in addition to skiing. She wrote down that she wanted to be the top varsity rider on the Wausau area's NICA mountain bike team, and "top 10 in the state" for skiing. She wrote that she eventually wanted to compete in college, and race mountain bikes on an international level.
By the end of the next season she had met the initial mountain biking goal and took third place at the state's cross-country ski meet.
"She learned that all you have to do is do all the training," Randy said. "And it worked for her."
She trained her way to the top, but still has higher goals
Lauren got a cool reception when she first visited Colorado Mesa University. Her resume included state wins at the high school level, but those didn't much impress the coach there. Some of the best young riders in the country competed there, young people who already had national and international races on their resumes.
So Lauren decided she needed to race in higher-level competitions and perform well enough to sway coaches at CMU to accept her. She entered the Wisconsin Offroad Bike Series of races, which are run under the US Cycling umbrella. Her results impressed the coaches enough and she joined the team.
She's a junior at CMU now and has been competing in every cycling format there is except for BMX. That means she raced on the track, road, in cyclocross and all forms of mountain biking — downhill, cross country, dual slalom and short track. At the national races last year, she won the omnium event, the conglomeration of all the disciplines, similar to a decathlon in track and field.
National champion, another goal met.
"It felt pretty great," Lauren said. "I like it because it shows my consistency."
As Lauren gained experience and notched ever higher race results, she was invited to race at the international level, representing the USA in international competitions in Canada and in the U.S.
Another goal met.
This summer's international racing, in addition to the World Championship at Les Gets, included World Cup races in West Virginia (11th place), Mon Saint Anne in Canada (sixth place); and Vai Di Sol, Italy, (22nd place).
"I've been wanting to make the Worlds forever," Lauren said. "All my hard work, it paid off. I made it. There were definitely ups and downs, but it has always paid off in the end."
There's more to do, though. "I'm still going off the same list I wrote down six years ago," Lauren said.
What's left? The Olympics, she said, and "definitely making it on a pro team. It's the biggest stage."
An intense focus came after the crash
After her early crash in the World Championship cross-country mountain bike race in Les Gets, Lauren extracted herself from the fence, checked over herself and her bike, and got back on.
The race seemed to be a wash. A good start in a mountain bike race is so important, and it's difficult to overtake and pass other athletes. And there she was, in last place.
"I just zoned in. I thought to myself, 'Well, now you can only go up from here,'" Lauren said.
She started to ride hard, but still in control.
"I never have been as focused as I was in that race after that crash," Lauren said. "I approached it kind of analytically, focusing on the course itself. I was catching group after group. I was constantly reevaluating where I was in the race. I never zoned out."
In the end, Lauren was able to place 26th out of 57 finishers. It was not her best race in terms of the result, but she thinks it might have been her best race ever in terms of performance.
"Even after the race, our skills coach came up to me and he said, 'You were so focused,'" Lauren said.
Mountain biking requires deep fitness, but just as important is technical skill, choosing routes, or "lines" through rocks, roots and single-track curves.
Lauren said she felt on in all facets of the race. "There were a couple of rock gardens (areas of the trail with rocks to negotiate through) with multiple line choices," she said. "I knew going into them where I was going to hit it, and how hard."
It felt great.
And now, Lauren wants more.
Contact Keith Uhlig at 715-845-0651 or kuhlig@gannett.com. Follow him at @UhligK on Twitter and Instagram or on Facebook.
This article originally appeared on Wausau Daily Herald: Lauren Lackman of Wausau raced in UCI World Championship mountain bike
