The challenge is huge: tackling the 24-hour Rad am Ring race as an individual starter is definitely a top sporting achievement and in itself a great highlight of any cycling career. Online retailer bike-componentsthe organiser of Bike on the ring and TOUR are topping this by offering a premium package worth a total of around 10,000 euros, for which almost 400 cyclists have applied. The package includes: a complete set of cycling equipment including a racing bike from Factora personalised bike fitting, training support by PMP Coaching with former professional cyclist Christian Knees and exclusive support at the bike-components camp event.
Rad am Ring 2023: Starting place for Leila Künzel
After reviewing all the applications received, Leila Künzel from near Leipzig was selected. She felt a bit like a star when she was welcomed at the bike-components headquarters in Würselen near Aachen. She had just completed a tour of the impressive bike-components warehouse and received a box full of cycling clothing and accessories for the 24-hour Rad am Ring race. Afterwards, she spent about an hour adjusting her new Factor racing bike with biomechanics expert Sebastian Klaus and then had a chat with former star pro Christian Knees, who will be coaching Künzel together with his partner Torsten Weber in the coming months.
24-hour race Rad am Ring for the birthday
Now she is sitting opposite me in a meeting room in an interview, wearing new racing gear and socks, and laughing. She doesn't regret not following her first impulse a few months ago. Back then, in December 2022, Leila had received a WhatsApp message from a friend at home in Leipzig. She had sent the ambitious triathlete a link to the TOUR competition for Rad am Ring, without comment. "Nah, it's my birthday that weekend in July, I'm not doing that," the amateur athlete thought to herself at the time, with an eye on the opportunity to compete in the 24-hour Rad am Ring race on the weekend of 21 to 23 July.
Leila Künzel, blue eyes, long, blonde and plaited plait, talks freely and cheerfully. "Fortunately, I then thought about it again." The native of Saxony-Anhalt likes sporting challenges, and apart from swimming in the triathlon in Roth, she didn't have any goals on her calendar for 2023. "24-hour race, that sounds exciting," she then thought and quickly submitted her application for Rad am Ring.
First highlight after the coronavirus pandemic
She likes challenges. She used to be an ambitious runner, for example in the marathon in Berlin. In 2007, relatively late in her life, she took up the sport of triathlon. "Yes, it was relatively late, but I'm not completely talent-free," she says confidently. It started with an Olympic distance in Leipzig and led to "all the long-distance races that appeal to me" and two participations in the Ironman in Hawaii in 2015 and 2018. "I've always had goals and they are also important to me in sport," says the 43-year-old. That's why she's been missing something in recent years - in 2020, at the start of the pandemic, she still had starting places for the long distance in Hamburg and Copenhagen. But after the competitions were cancelled that year, Leila tended to move into the virtual space.
She is a co-founder of the "Fräulein Triathlon" network, a large community of female triathletes online. This association arose from a training group that she had established together with other women in Leipzig. Back then, she remembers, it was still something unusual for a whole group of women to take part in a triathlon competition together. This turned into a network that opened up the competitive approach to women together. "In 2017, I suggested to the girls that we publicise the spirit of joint training among women - they liked it just as much as I did. Today, we are the largest women's triathlon community in Germany," reports the athlete.
The triathletes not only exchanged ideas under coronavirus conditions, but Leila and her fellow triathletes also organised virtual competitions. In this way, they were able to utilise their good training form at least to some extent and inspire many women to take up the sport or encourage them to try it out.
"It's going to be a good summer"
When she received the email from TOUR in March, Leila Künzel was pleasantly surprised. "Just cycling for 24 hours?" She hadn't expected to be selected for Rad am Ring. Her joy and thirst for adventure quickly took over and she agreed. Leila is now convinced that she can cycle. When she started triathlon, she read a report in TOUR about Mallorca as a training destination. Three weeks later, she travelled there herself, rented a place to stay in Paguera and prepared herself for challenging training laps. In the days that followed, she rode parts of the coastal classic again and again, covering a lot of distance and metres in altitude. "That went pretty well." Cycling is also her strength in triathlon.
You don't have to motivate her to train, says the Leipzig native. That's why she's looking forward to the 24-hour Rad am Ring race and the journey there. She knows that she has to prepare mentally for a 24-hour effort, she knows that ultra-distance bike training is different from triathlon preparation. But none of this puts her off. She is looking forward to her birthday on the eve of the 24-hour race and the descent in the Fuchsröhre. "It's definitely going to be a good summer."
