"Keep at it, keep at it, keep at it". The words circle in your head - round after round. "Keep at it!" Two more laps. Keep at it. One more round. Keep at it. The last hill. Keep up the pace. You can see the leading field of the world's best female racers on TV from behind. Right at the back: Ricarda Bauernfeind.
Bauernfeind talks about sticking with it
She wants to keep at it. No matter what the cost. Her legs no longer want to. But her head does. When you talk to the young cyclist from Eichstätt about the World Championship race in Wollongong last September, she talks about "sticking with it". She doesn't talk about the joy, the triumph, the bronze medal that she won as a result of her tireless perseverance.
A feat of will from Bauernfeind
The then 22-year-old took two bronze medals in the U23 category at her first major world championships - in the individual time trial and in the road race, which the U23 and elite categories contested together. In the latter, the young woman rode the longest bike course of her life: 164 kilometres. "I was scared of the distance beforehand," she says looking back. In the end, after a tough race, she finished 20th, 13 seconds behind world champion Annemiek van Vleuten.
The fear was conquered. And also the doubts as to whether she was suitable for professional cycling. But it was a diversion that also gave Bauernfeind the opportunity to compete in the newly created class for up to 23-year-olds, which celebrated its premiere at the last World Championships. The two medals made her talent strikingly visible to everyone. "She has provided good arguments as to why we need this category," says Ronny Lauke, her team manager at Canyon//SRAM Racing.
Ricarda Bauernfeind: Stage win at the Tour de France Femmes
Ricarda Bauernfeind's story is that of a cyclist who slowly developed her talent and her body, who first had to overcome self-doubt and find out what she herself wanted in life. And not what others want from her. The World Championship successes were a feat of willpower and either an impressive comeback or a great start to a promising professional cycling career.
The young woman from the northernmost corner of Upper Bavaria, from Eichstätt, had almost been lost to German cycling. Now she is seen as someone who can compete at the very front, as she impressively demonstrated with her victory in stage 5 of the 2023 Women's Tour de France. But she doesn't want to read something like that - because it means pressure. Pressure, just like will and desire, is an important topic in Ricarda Bauernfeind's life.
Ricarda Bauernfeind: The ambition was visible early on
"She showed grit and ambition. She's going to be something," Bodo Schwager remembers an athletics test organised by the cycling association in 2012, where the then twelve-year-old caught his eye. The others had to pass the test; Bauernfeind wanted to test herself and be good. And Schwager, head of racing at RSG Ansbach, gave her a reward of ten euros - it was a small investment in what could have been a great future in cycling, a gentle attempt at recruitment; in any case, the beginning of a long, trusting collaboration in which money played no role.
The young athlete quickly achieved success. Countless medals from German championships hang above her desk in her childhood bedroom. She was a member of the junior national team for years and came third at the European Championships in the team pursuit and madison. "She has a will to succeed. When she sets her mind to something, she sees it through," says Schwager, who has been an important companion for many years. Left behind, fought back. Persevered. That's how he experienced her.
So it's all the more astonishing when you find out: It wasn't so long ago that she no longer wanted to. No longer having to keep up. No more rushing from race date to race date. No more having that unpleasant feeling: "I thought I would disappoint people close to me; that I wouldn't fulfil their expectations. I know that was wrong," she says looking back.
Her parents tended to hold her back. When her brother, who was five years older, started cycling, she wanted to do it too. "But my parents thought it was too dangerous for me," she remembers. When her little sister jogged up a mountain with her older brother during a family holiday, her parents were at their wits' end - their daughter's talent and determination had won them over. On the way home from the holiday, after a short shopping stop in Munich, a Scott racing bike was in her luggage.
Ricarda Bauernfeind - Comeback by Zwift
But his enthusiasm for cycling waned over the years. The great nervousness before the races was unpleasant. Fun and relaxation were neglected. Bauernfeind needed time for herself after graduating from high school, had to find out exactly what she wanted and decided to fulfil another wish first: "I always wanted to be a teacher," she says, and during the pandemic years she pushed ahead with her studies for a vocational teaching degree in sport, nutrition and home economics and is now almost finished.
After years of studying in Munich, she has been living in her childhood bedroom in the Eichstätt district of Rebdorf again for a good year now, usually driving her trainings in the basement, where she can see the Eichstätt Willibaldsburg or the old arm of the Altmühl flowing quietly through the panoramic windows.
Two standard training programmes are sufficient
But most of the time during training, she doesn't look outside or at the large poster congratulating her on her bronze medals, which her mum had printed for the reception back home and which now hangs on the wall right in front of her Smarttrainer. All she can see is the screen of her laptop and the wattage displayed there: currently 170. She can do this for hours - she's not missing anything. She just wants to keep up - with the number.
Two standard training programmes are enough for her. During training, everything stands still, only her legs rotate at high speed. She completes up to three hours of intensive interval programmes in this way - against the wall, as it were. She says: "I like to battle." Not necessarily with others, but mainly with herself. Bauernfeind doesn't want to be better than others, she just always wants to be better than herself.
More than everything is not possible
Sometimes it runs an all-out interval - and wants to outperform the next interval. Of course you can't do that. You can't do more than all-out - especially not if you're already exhausted.
Everything is in order in the small cycling world in the basement. It's warm and dry. She can't catch a cold like she can when training outside, she can't be endangered by drivers, fall on gravel, be challenged by other cyclists or get a flat tyre. She virtually sets her own training conditions on the online platform Zwift - just like in a laboratory.
She is only interested in the numbers, the watts. This is how she has kept fit, training almost exclusively online to get in shape ahead of her third place at the 2021 German Championships. With the help of the virtual training platform, she has matured into a professional cyclist and earned herself a contract with the Canyon//SRAM pro team. Her successes in recent years are primarily based on her enthusiasm for virtual cycling - also because it fitted in perfectly with the demands of her studies.
Training on eight square metres
For years, Bauernfeind only needed a training area of eight square metres. That was the size of her room in the student flat share in Munich-Schwabing: bed, desk and racing bike on a Smarttrainer, 450 euros rent. You could just about open the door. "My flatmates thought it was interesting what I was doing," she says - when the sound of the training equipment hummed from her room again at seven in the morning.
One hour at full throttle before going to the lecture. She lost around ten kilos in weight. Tougher races, a more conscious diet, "cutting out the odd chocolate bar", she says, it sounds very simple. And she looks healthy, which is worth mentioning, because her female cycling colleagues have massive problems with not overdoing it when it comes to weight management.
The sprinting track specialist of the junior years has become an enduring climbing talent. The young woman, who says that she hated mountains for a long time as a cyclist, now calls herself a climber.
Bauernfeind withdraws notification
It could have all happened faster. But in autumn 2019, Bauernfeind sent an email to national women's coach Andre Korff in which she declared her intention to withdraw from the squad and the national team. And when she qualified for the final round of the top twenty in the Zwift Academy, an online competition where you can win a professional contract, she withdrew her application.
It went too fast for her, she wasn't ready yet. All she really wanted to know was whether she could do it - cycle with the best. But she wasn't ready for professional cycling yet. It wasn't until 2022 that she was persuaded to do a test year in the jersey of the Canyon//SRAM Generation junior team. The test was successful and fun, and now she wants more.
Going our own way
Bauernfeind has gone her own way, at her own chosen pace. Accompanied by a small circle of supporters such as her brother-in-law and Mario Vonhof, the Bavarian state coach. Vonhof says that his athlete needs to train outside more often this winter, even in poor conditions.
Her coach and mentor also thinks that a sports psychologist could help her get even further ahead in the future and free her from self-doubt. Bauernfeind shakes her head at the idea. Not with her. "I prefer to work things out with myself," she says. "Rici has a strong will," says Schwager, who believes he has understood how to deal with her: carefully, in an advisory capacity, without pressure.
Team boss Lauke about Bauernfeind
But it's probably not the case that she wants to put her head through the wall. "She's very tidy for her age," says team boss Lauke, who has promoted her to the Canyon-SRAM World Tour team for the new season after a year on the training team. Tidy - that seems to be the key word. If you try to understand Bauernfeind, you come to the conclusion that there must be a lot of drawers in her head. And that other people had better not rummage around in them without being asked.
And as a rule, only one of these drawers should be open, each one is tidied up and closed before the next one is opened. The fun of cycling versus the seriousness of life and thoughts about a professional future; squad plans versus the urge for freedom when growing up; student life versus sacrifice for sporting success - there were probably several drawers that could not all be open at the same time.
Prospects after professional cycling
And so the cycling drawer was closed for the time being. Especially as the usual prospects in cycling were not tempting for the graduate of an arts high school. "I didn't see myself in the police at the age of 50," says Bauernfeind. Many German female cyclists live off sports promotion positions with the police or the Bundeswehr.
Bauernfeind likes it when she can teach young people something and feels grateful in return. Now she is about to complete her bachelor's degree, she has a perspective besides cycling. "That has given me security," she says. Now she is ready for cycling again. Unconditionally.
Bauernfeind loves to bake
So the 23-year-old Bavarian has stuck with cycling, in her own way, on her own path - successfully avoiding the pressure to be straightforward. She wants to do what she enjoys - and that includes baking. She has baked an apple pie for the TOUR guests, the eggs are provided by the hens outside in the garden. She would love to bake every day, even though she doesn't eat any of it herself - she is working on her final thesis on the knowledge of competitive athletes about carbohydrates. She knows that sugar drags you down as unnecessary body weight if you don't burn it off. And she wants to get to the top.
While the parents talk about their daughter's youth over coffee and cake, the cyclist gets up, clears the table and puts the dishes in the dishwasher. She should be at the centre of the conversation. But she prefers to tidy up in the background. She doesn't talk about how she was faster than former world champion Lisa Brennauer in the individual time trial at the German U23 championships; not a word about her ride up the Col du Soulor in the women's Tour of the Pyrenees, when she came second on the longest mountain she has ever ridden in her life; not a word about her par force ride in the Tour of Ardeche, when she completely tore the peloton apart.
He has rarely seen anything like it in women's cycling, says Vonhof. "The worst thing I can imagine is that others think I might be arrogant," says the athlete herself. And therefore prefers not to talk about her successes. "Sometimes it's too good for this world. You have to be a pig in cycling sometimes," emphasises coach Vonhof. Too good? Ricarda Bauernfeind simply wants to be the best Ricarda Bauernfeind possible. But in a way that suits her. There are other ways to keep at it.
Andreas Kublik
Editor
