TCRNo11 Day 15 // The Flight of a Phoenix
August 12, 2025
Words by Jake Thorpe
Photos by Matt Grayson, Sam Dugon, Tom Gibbs and Tomás Montes
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Migratory Modifications
The species once spotted in dribs and drabs skulking around the streets of Santiago is now regrouping in its migratory home on the Romanian shores of the Black Sea. Their features, on the journey, have shifted; sun-striped limbs and sun-cracked lips, salt-slicked hair and salt-stained skin have become their new distinguishing marks. Their bikes’ freehubs are louder and their tyres flatter, while their own gaits are stiffer, and their feet a little wrinklier.
These riders have become crepuscular creatures, shrinking away from the midday sun, or spending long days lounging, prostrate, on beach bar beds. But occasionally they rouse as another approaches. Whoops and claps thicken the air. Their numbers accrue.
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Rising From the Ashes
By early evening on Monday, the latest arrival was Sarah Bosslet (203), 6th FLINTA rider across the line. Concluding a truly transformative journey – the internal leaps made in the process dwarfing the external bounds that her ride had connected – Sarah was welcomed by a throng of riders, race organisers, and Romanian beach-goers to Constanța’s shoreline. As her clock was stopped and her brevet card stamped, tears flowed, the overwhelming emotion of the journey welling up and spilling out onto the sands of the Black Sea’s shore.

Sarah’s partner Mohit was hit and killed on the roads of Chile in February, during a record attempt of the continent’s north-south axis. “Six months ago, I didn’t think I’d be able to ride my bike again”, Sarah reflected. The pair had met a year ago on the finish line of TCRNo10, having concluded the ~4,100 km route just 4 hours and one position apart. Cycling had been their common thread and, for Sarah, returning to the saddle alone felt an impossible task.
But on the TCR, she wasn’t alone. Mohit had been by her side throughout. The picture on her top tube, a remembered word of encouragement, a sight, a smell, a thought, all had carried him along on her journey across a continent. “When I ride my bike,” Sarah shared, "I feel close to him. Without him, I couldn’t have done it.”
And through every turn of her pedals and revolution of her wheels, each border crossed, each country left behind, Sarah began, piece by piece, to reconstitute. “I’ve found myself again”, she concluded, on the finish line, “I know that I’m strong, I know that I’m a fighter and I think, without the race, I wouldn’t have known that.” It’s no wonder her one-word summary of the TCR this year was “self-discovery.”
The 46 Stages of Enlightenment
Besides Mohit, Sarah had felt the energy of fellow rider Esther Lloyd (193) fortifying her along the way. Just as Cynthia Carson (137) and Steven Davis (330) had been sustaining one another with messages left at control points throughout, so had Esther been buoying Sarah with messages of encouragement addressed to “the strongest rider I know.”
Having not met en route despite having ridden a race of such proximity, the two had hoped their arrival in Constanța might coincide. In Bulgaria, however, Esther had suffered a seized pedal. Having limped her bike for 50 km on Sunday evening to reach a town on the southern banks of the Danube, Esther was forced to take a prolonged rest while waiting for bike shops to reopen on Monday morning.
A twist in the tail at this late stage of the journey can be a struggle to overcome. Clearly frayed by her ride’s unexpected protraction, to add to Esther’s woes she lost her second pair of bibshorts from her saddle bag on the approach to Pyce.
In celebration of the 100 TCR Women, Esther has uploaded a video clip for every 100 of her own kilometres ridden across Europe. The penultimate installment of these dispatches began with a sigh. “I am so over this.” The Balkans had been tough on the New Zealander. Reaching the Finish Parcours, Esther had dreamt of nice, easy riding to take her towards the shores of the Black Sea – a beautiful sunset, some time, perhaps, to reflect on the internal journey of the last 4,500 km. Instead, she was greeted by headwinds. However tough the end of her own race was proving, Esther still managed to send a note to Sarah, to be read by Race Coordinator Hannah when the German finished that afternoon.

“To the strongest rider I know, congratulations. Your ride with Mohit, in his honour, is beyond words. I’m so thankful our dots met.”
The next despatch from Esther – her 46th – was short. A headlamp speeding over the gravel of the Finish Parcours was narrated by a gleeful voice announcing “4,600!” Two hours later, Esther had arrived – a continent crossed – and clasped a well-deserved beer in hand, bought by her new friend Sarah.\
Evocative Eyewear
Esther’s sentiments on the final century of mandatory riding into Constanța chimed with the experience of some other riders. A little bashfully, Erik Price (273), 40th rider across the line on Sunday night, admitted the next morning, “I was really really grumpy yesterday. Really grumpy.” Having assumed, looking at the map, that the Finish Parcours would be a “nice, paved river path”, Erik soon discovered that the route along the Danube-Black Sea Canal was, in fact, an arduous patchwork of rough gravel and stagnant water. Progress had been slow.
Yet in the same way all of the cracks that form during the TCR are smoothly rendered by the passage of time – leaving only a solid sense of accomplishment, decorated with some of the journey’s highs, in riders’ memories – by the time Erik once more hit tarmac, he “could feel the rose-coloured glasses forming in front of [his] eyes.” After a beer at the finish line, some food and a solid night’s sleep, Erik was already reflecting on his experiences altogether more fondly.
Chewing over the choices he’d made during his first TCR, Erik mused that he ought to have taken the scenic path a little more often. “There’s really no point in going the fast, direct, highway route”, he concluded. Nevertheless, his direct routing didn’t make too expeditious an impression. For Erik, the one-word description of his race was simply “long.”
The Old Bosoni Backtrack
One rider to have taken Erik’s routing advice – however unintentionally – is Ross Gray (291). Having planned from North Macedonia, like several others, to approach Serbia through Kosovo, Ross had chanced his luck at the diplomatic mood of the Kosovo-Serbian border. In the end, however, it wasn’t foreign frictions that scuppered his departure from Kosovo, but domestic ones.
Having entered the country through a local border just north of Skopje, Ross had failed to secure himself an entry stamp. At the exit border, then, it wasn’t the Serbian authorities challenging Ross’s entry, but the Kosovan authorities contesting his departure. In the realm of passport-related mishaps, only one remedy exists: the Bosoni Backtrack.

Retracing his steps, Ross was forced to forge a 150 km detour back through the mountainous terrain of Kosovo’s North-Macedonian border, eventually arriving back on route in Southern Serbia. But like Bosoni, Ross was unflappable in the face of his misfortune. The diversion was swallowed with remarkable equanimity, and the Brit continued on his way towards the Black Sea as if nothing had happened.
Pigheaded Cows
Perhaps Ross had heard Christoph Strasser’s (002) advice, broadcast to all riders still on the road, from the sandy shores of Constanța’s hottest beachfront haunt. “If you’re tired, or your emotions are negative, it just helps to know, this is the way it should be. Everybody has them.”
Christoph’s preferred method to process these emotions – demonstrably successful, considering his two GC victories – is to shout. Shout at your bike, shout at your body, shout at traffic, terrain, weather or a stubborn cow that refuses to budge. Whatever the process, just “let it out of your mind and out of your body.”
Because, as Christoph concludes, and as Ross will no doubt discover, when all’s said and done, “the joy happens out there, on the road, not at the finish line.”
Scratch Report
Andries Van Leeuwen (382a) – Rider scratched after 48hrs no contact/movement.
Matteo Castella (292) – Rider scratched 12:37 CEST 12/8 via WhatsApp due to time constraints.
Cheryl Bard (290) – Rider scratched 10:42 CEST 12/8 via WhatsApp due to time constraints.