Day 12 // Who Runs the World?
August 2, 2026
Words by Jake Thorpe
Photos by Matt Grayson, Michael Drummond, Tomás Montes, and Sam Dugon
A Great Deal of Heart
And there we have it: our first official FLINTA category win. In a stroke of sublime timing, Sarah Bosslet (120) cruised into Kalamata as dawn broke, arriving just minutes before Skipper’s Café opened its doors for breakfast. Cupping a glass of iced water, she sat for a moment, taking in the end of her third continental crossing. Each had been significant, but this, surely, defied comparison.
Up on the parcours, Sarah had been battling a blustery breeze. “First I was crying because of that,” she explained, “and then I was crying because I realised, okay, I’m winning this.” Such certainty hadn’t always been the case. Despite having held onto a marginal lead since CP2, often mere minutes ahead of her closest chaser, Camille Albisser (270), just before Sarajevo’s control, she had suffered a bout of heat sickness. “I was sitting in front of the supermarket thinking, sh*t, maybe I’ll lose this now.”
The next few days were stressful: the tracker dominated, and enjoyment took a back seat. But as she drew out her lead, pushing on a little further into the nights, the joy of the ride slowly returned. By Greece, Sarah had stopped checking tracking altogether. “On the ferry, and in Patras, I felt a little bit like a tourist,” she explained. “I was even thinking about sitting down, having some fresh fruit.” But sense soon prevailed; the now infamous Finish Parcours awaited. Tackling the stretch in a continuous, fifteen-and-a-half hour push through the night, Sarah closed the final chapter of her race just as she’d written every other: with immense grit, stoic consistency and a great deal of heart.
Where’s the Beer?
“Yeah, nice moment,” Camille Albisser (270) remarked, as she pulled up to the applause of a balcony of fellow riders, “where’s the beer?” Arriving to claim a very deserving second position in our inaugural FLINTA classification, five hours behind Sarah, Camille has animated the race from the off. Through untimely punctures and currency challenges, all while riding in such close proximity to her closest competitor, she displayed the persistence and problem-solving of a truly deserving podium finisher.
Yet despite riding neck-and-neck with the eventual winner for nearly 4,000 km, Camille never lost sight of something beyond the competition, beyond the result: the adventure at the heart of the TCR. “I don’t stress myself too much about the tracker, the race, or whatever. I do what I like: cycling, discovering new countries, and I think for me that’s the result.” As far as the annals of TCR history are concerned, however, Camille’s race will be remembered as one of the most exciting contests the FLINTA field has seen in recent years.
Curbside Connection
Third to Kalamata’s tranquil shores to complete the FLINTA podium, Larissa Unsinn (346) bounded towards the finish line, beaming from ear to ear. Having started the race unsure whether she would even make the General Classification cut-off, Larissa had blown her own expectations out of the water. “My mum is super proud,” she grinned.
Her preparation had been unconventional. She only began planning her route in Trondheim, two days before the race began, and admits it might have benefited from a little more refining. Having hit rather too many dead ends for her liking, the importance of good planning was a lesson she hopes to carry forward into future races. Yet in spite of her last-minute routing, Larissa has ridden an exceptional race.
Just as she had earlier in the year, at the inaugural Lost Dot 101, Larissa steadily chipped away at the field throughout her race: tenth woman to CP1, fourth to CP2 and CP3, third to CP4, and now, third to the finish. For someone who, as she admitted on the Horten–Moss ferry, feels bad when she passes people, her strategy seems almost deliberately masochistic. At the very least, apologising every time she hoovers up another position must have been exhausting. And yet, the pure joy that broke across Larissa’s face as she arrived told the whole story: the discomfort was temporary; the achievement would last. A quick dip in the Ionian Sea – the prospect that had propelled her along the finish parcours – was the only thing left to tick off. After that: sweet, sweet rest.
Less than 12 hours later, however, Larissa was back, waiting in the small hours to welcome fellow FLINTA rider Lea Hamberger (404) to the finish line. Lea arrived exhausted. Having steadily increased the tempo throughout – recording the fastest category time between CP2 and CP3, and then again from CP4 to the finish – the only halt to her relentless progress had come in Korçë, just before the fourth control point, where she stopped to recover from an episode of acute sickness. Impressively, 20 hours later, she was moving again, posting a blistering time from Leskovik to Kalamata – three hours faster than the eventual winner.
Lea was clearly glad to see Larissa. The two sat on a curb as dawn approached, trading stories – a wealth of shared experience now connecting them.
Contesting Two Categories
Despite the podium having filled up over the course of the day, the race within the FLINTA field is far from cooling off. Having held a firm fifth since Anna Carlqvist’s (273) unfortunate scratch in Bosnia, Nicole van Batenburg (029) had rather begun to like her new position. However hard the Balkan heat tried to dampen her spirits with a ceaseless inundation of sweat, Nicole remained upbeat. “It’s my own choice to cycle in this heat, so I just have to make the best of it,” had been her enduring mindset. In any case, the roasting had its benefits: permission to consume ice cream at a rate that soon saw the Birdman’s record go the way of the dodo.
But unexpectedly, in Albania, her new position became all the less secure. “Apparently there’s this other FLINTA rider who I didn’t know about, who has all of a sudden become really fast,” Nicole explained. Behind Nicole, Katharina Wirth (199) was gaining ground. Boosted by her revised strategy – sleeping a little less, riding a little harder, bivvying a little more remotely – in the hope of intensifying the spectrum of emotion she felt along the way, Katharina had inadvertently opened the taps. “I was safe in fifth position, sleeping a lot, even doing a bit of alarm snoozing, but now I have to be a bit more efficient,” Nicole concluded.
Last night, however, that plan unravelled. Oversleeping her alarm by 3 hours on the shores of Lake Ohrid, Nicole allowed Katharina to slip by. “I’m very annoyed with myself,” declared the Dutch rider, as she made a frantic stop at the fourth control. “I mean, it doesn’t matter that much, but I liked being in fifth!” Clearly, for Nicole, it mattered enough to temporarily abandon her other category ambition: the ice-cream leaderboard. “I don’t have time to get any, now, I’m in a hurry!” she called as she passed Control Car 2 on the road.
Fate or Fortune
For some, however, the contest is less about positions – or the consumption of chilled confections – and more about defeating anything that dares stand between them and the finish line.
Hélène Fromenty (134) is well aware of how callous the road can be. Several weeks before the race, she came off her bike on a long training ride, injuring her wrist in the process. For a while, her race hung in the balance, but a swift recovery saw Hélène back in the saddle in time for Trondheim. Her partner Stefan, however, was less fortunate. A crash just a week before the Grand Départ forced him to watch his own Transcontinental hopes for this year slip away.
Now, Stefan will be joining Hélène in Kalamata. “That’s the race within the race,” Hélène joked at CP4. But the French rider is determined not to rush. Riding ever more carefully as the finish line approaches, she admits, “it’s close, but it’s not that close; I would hate to scratch so near to Kalamata.”
Also riding against fate rather than for fortune, Jana Kesenheimer (010) – now unable to contest a GC position – has her sights set on a race finish with her partner Christian Holweck (014). The pair have enjoyed Albania, but it’s clear who’s beating the drum. “It’s ok for Jana,” Christian laughed, “she’s very happy going at her 85%.” It seems he has, more often than not, been playing catch up. “We’ve been joking that I’m his TCR guide,” Jana explained, before Christian chipped in, “like if you book a famous mountaineer to take you up the Matterhorn.” Both seemed in good spirits, lining jerseys and socks with ice-lollies to brave the broiling of the Balkans.
By this evening, however, fate had, once again, stepped in. After another relentless roasting down the Peloponnese, Christian had come down with heatstroke, forcing the pair to stop and rest in a hotel in Ancient Olympia. So close, now, to the finish, it would be devastating to call time at this stage.
One Pedal Stroke at a Time
Also suffering in the heat a little further back in Bosnia, Mike Hall Bursary rider Luca Bessems (214) has been spending most of her rest stops with her head in supermarket freezers. Now delving deep down the Balkan peninsular, Luca has found that exploration into parts previously unknown has been a reminder of just how much of the world she still has to discover. Problem solving has been the theme of her race so far – from navigating around the network of banned roads in Central Europe, to communicating a gluten intolerance without a common tongue. It’s largely been successful. The only slight hiccup? A frantic late-night call to a Slovakian hotel manager to report a missing shower, only to discover that she'd unintentionally barricaded the bathroom door with her bike.
Through the journey so far, Luca has learned that there are many ways to approach the race: part of the experience of your first TCR is discovering which one appeals to you. “For a while, I thought I had to push harder to be doing the TCR properly,” she explained. But now, as she makes steady progress towards CP3, Luca is beginning to understand where her edge actually lies. “My strength isn’t being the fastest,” she concluded. “My strength is adapting, solving problems and continuing, one pedal stroke at a time.”
Ever since this realisation, Luca has been flying. “I’m having the time of my life in Bosnia,” she beamed, in a dispatch from the saddle to Race Director David Ayre. “I was so nervous to go to Eastern Europe,” she admitted, “but the people here are so kind.” Having managed to tap into a band of deep mental stability, Luca says scratching has never crossed her mind. The race has already taken Luca on a transformative personal journey; she’s grateful that she will get to enjoy it for another week yet.