TCRNo11 Day 12 // Slow Progress is Better Than No Progress

Words by Jake Thorpe

Photos by Matt Grayson, Sam Dugon, and Tomás Montes

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Low Point, Keep Moving

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Late on Thursday evening, David Tschan (006) rolled through the archway of Zoom Beach Bar, wheels glissading along the sandy shore of the Black Sea, to round off Constanța’s podium. Completing a consecutive hat-trick of TCR GC finishes, David has improved his position year on year. 

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For such an understated rider, David made quite the entrance in 2021 when, on his inaugural self-supported ultra-distance outing, the Trans Am, the Swiss rider found himself taking 3rd place. A podium position in a 6,800 km quest across a different continent certainly boded well for his Transcontinental ambitions. But free-routing is a different beast.

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On his first TCR attempt in 2023, despite snapping at the heels of the leading pack early on, David was reduced to snail’s pace for 24 km on the third parcours, sections of scavenged garden hose lining his punctured tyres. His routing between sections of the split fourth parcours halted progress once more, producing punctures that no amount of garden equipment could fix. Arriving 21st to Thessaloniki’s finish line, it was clear that, with luck and good judgement on side, there was room for improvement.

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Improvement came a year later when, at TCRNo10, David arrived 6th to Istanbul. Better routing choices – opting, for example, to track a longer but flatter course through Bulgaria – saw him hold ground steadily in the top 10 throughout. But a crash on rough ground forced him to spend a stint in hospital, and food poisoning spelled faltering progress during the race’s final 48 hours. A top 10 finish was a success, but David had more in the tank. He wanted to know how much higher the rungs of his TCR ladder extended.

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The Clouds Clear

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This year, catching up with David in the wake of a torrential summer storm in Siena’s Piazza del Campo, it looked as if the answer to this question was not much. Dampened by the prospect of being unable to contest his coveted podium, with the four leading riders looking likely to make Sunday’s sailing without him, David was suddenly confronted by a motivational gulf. Riding 2000 km in 5 days, without quite understanding why, quickly becomes an uphill battle. 

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Thankfully, some remembered wisdom managed to permeate a clouded mind. During the tribulations of his first TCR, David had been spurred on by a message taped to his top tube. ‘Low point, keep moving’. Two years later, that same sentiment stirred once again. In the end, it was this dogged determination that delivered him to the finish line to realise a 3 year goal: a podium position in the TCR’s General Classification.

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Slow Progress is Better Than No Progress

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Back on the other side of the Adriatic, Ella Brown (299) had, unknowingly, also been making good use of David’s mantric mascot. After a collision on Wednesday night left her unharmed but shaken, Ella quickly composed herself, pushing on through the Apennines in the hope of making Friday’s crossing. Reaching Pacentro by early evening, she validated her brevet card before setting off again into the night. Echoing, curiously enough, Lael’s own predicament of the previous evening, Ella’s pre-booked hotel, by sundown, lay 50 km away – and refused to get any closer. Her alternative accommodation, however – a park bench just beyond the parcours – must have been comfortable. Oversleeping by 2 hours, the margin for making Friday’s ferry was narrowing; and, that morning, it narrowed considerably more.

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Taking a path less travelled towards the Adriatic coast, Ella found herself on a rutted stretch of tarmac and, in a momentary lapse of concentration, planted her front wheel firmly into one of its potholes, cracking the carbon rim.  Fortunately, having limped to San Salvo, a mechanic helped Ella to source a replacement and post her original wheel back home. Despite prospects of a Friday sailing looking bleak, in a display of astounding emotional economy, Ella converted her frustration at the avoidability of the accident into forward motion. Low point, keep moving. Arriving in Bari with an hour to spare, she too proved that slow progress is better than no progress. In the case of Ella’s race, this distinction made the difference of 24 hours.

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Patience: An Illusive Virtue

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No doubt wishing she had access to such a helpful mechanic, Cynthia Carson (137) was once again plagued by punctures on Friday. With the tables having turned on her brief lead, the American was once more laying chase to Jana Kesenheimer (001), back at the head of the women’s field. 

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Seeking the shade of a bus station, the American rider blew off steam, reeling off a list of all possible punctures and checking off her own luck against it. The accounting was clear: fortune had not been on side. Stuck struggling to inflate the day’s latest flat, Cynthia was clearly fed up with her recurring fate. Seating a tubeless road tyre with a hand pump requires the patience of a Tibetan monk. But patience, among those having just raced across a continent, is not often an abundant commodity.

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Castaway

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For Jocelyn Roth (272), however, who reached the shores of the Black Sea at dawn to take 4th place, the push to the finish had required little else. Despite his prominent position in the race’s standings, the Swiss rider admitted that, for the last few days, he’d hardly felt as if he were racing at all. Instead, drawing parallels with the famous French TV show Koh-Lanta – whose survivalist premise sees contestants left stranded on their own desert island – Jocelyn described the final push as a case of “last man standing.” In essence, he mused, classifying the race as a whole, there’d been a bike race, a boat race, and then a game show.

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The next participant to survive his marooning was Christoph Strasser (002). Christoph arrived at the finish line’s beach bar at dawn, in the liminal space left by the departure of last night’s revellers, before the new day’s merry throng took up position. Given space to reflect on the race – one that had, more often than not, in recent years, seen him atop the podium – Christoph expressed nothing but admiration for the new generation of riders pushing the bar ever higher. 

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Recalling his bewilderment at the rhythm of Victor Bosoni’s (232) race early on, Christoph described arriving at a hotel to find the young Frenchman’s bike already outside. When Christoph left the following morning, Victor’s bike stayed put. “I thought something was wrong”, he explained. But the next night, Christoph saw on tracking the very same sight. That’s when it twigged, Victor could sleep longer, leave later, and still pass Christoph on the road. “I’m 42”, the Austrian acknowledged, “I can sustain this, but I’m not getting any quicker.” 

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It will be interesting to see how things unfold for the veteran racer. Not one to take too readily to dirt, and with his pacing lending itself so well to longer races, the Transcontinental has, in recent years, been his playground – the stage where Christoph comes alive. Experience has always carried weight in the TCR, but as the new crop of riders begin to gather a wealth of their own, the playing field will tilt ever more towards those who can match strategy with speed.

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A Final Surprise

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This year, in the women’s field, it was Jana who struck this perfect balance. First woman to each control, the German returned to reclaim her title of the fastest woman to cross the continent. 

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While Cynthia had, for a moment, edged ahead in Bulgaria, Jana had no problem sticking to her strategic guns, trusting, in the end, that her rhythm would prevail. Refusing to ride impulsively, she maintained a healthy detachment from race tracking throughout – so much so, that by the finish line, she remained in the dark about her position within the General Classification. Already aware that she was the fastest woman, Jana was taken aback by the realisation that her achievements extended into the prized territory of the top 10. Often self-effacing regarding her triumphs, Jana was able to admit that, this time, she felt “a little bit proud”.

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Big Dreams, Broad Impacts

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While not in the way they’d first hoped, the race’s beloved tandem pair, Gavin Towers (376a) and Tom Butcher (376b), also finished their race on a high. Announcing their decision to scratch from the top of the Tourmalet, the duo revealed mixed emotions. On one hand, travelling almost 1,500 km across Europe to finish atop one of the highest Pyrenean cols, having ridden as one conjoined pair all the while, can be classed as nothing short of a success. On the other, the pair had begun with bigger dreams. The call of Constanța, it seemed, still resonated. 

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But Gavin and Tom can take solace from the fact that the result of their race was far from binary. Having worked with the race organisers to find a creative solution to enable Gavin, a sight impaired rider, to take to a TCR start line has opened a door to many who might once have thought the race out of reach. Showing up, for the pair, was already job done. And the tenacity they’ve displayed on their journey since has only gone to solidify their impact. We wish them both well on their collaborative adventures to come.

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Scratch Report

Su Lei (126) – Rider scratched 15:24 CEST 9/8 via WhatsApp due to time constraints.

Farid Rehila (320) – Rider scratched 14:46 CEST 9/8 via WhatsApp due to missing CP cutoff.

Tom Butcher (376b) – Rider scratched 11:57 CEST 9/8 via email due to saddle sores.

G Towers (376a) – Rider scratched 11:57 CEST 9/8 via email due to saddle sores.

Till Luhmann (239) – Rider scratched 10:28 CEST 9/8 via WhatsApp due to missing CP cutoffs.

Alexander Kuehn (042) – Rider scratched 8:28 CEST 9/8 via email due to heatstroke.

Paul Leyseele (074) – Rider scratched 4:17 CEST 9/8 via email due to medical reasons.

Andy Booth (190) – Rider scratched 21:16 CEST 8/8 via WhatsApp due to saddle sores.

Mike Healy (017) – Rider scratched 18:25 CEST 8/8 via WhatsApp due to a crash involving a car. Mike is safe and has no broken bones but can’t continue riding.

Robert Karoly Szasz (219) – Rider scratched 16:52 CEST 8/8 via WhatsApp - no reason given.

Stefan Lachinger (099) – Rider scratched 16:33 CEST 8/8 via email due to fatigue.

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