Rosa Maria Klöser - about the person
Rosa Maria Klöser was born on 24 June 1996 in Geilenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia. Klöser only started cycling as part of her doctoral studies at Copenhagen Business School, together with her partner Paul Sandmann.
In her first gravel season, Klöser finished third three times in races organised by the UCI, finishing 28th at the World Championships in Italy in 2023. In 2024, she finished third at the Traka 200 (Spain), second at 3RIDES in Aachen and won the Unbound 200 in the USA. In June, she took part in the German Road Championships for the first time and finished ninth.
Rosa Klöser feels remarkably clear-headed as she enters the 450 metre long home stretch in Emporia, Kansas. "I was strangely calm. Normally I'm more of a lively type, but at that moment I was very deliberate." The 27-year-old from Germany, whose name hardly anyone here knows, has been thinking, looking closely at the home straight and studying the interests of the group with which she is racing towards the finish of the 200 miles of the Unbound Gravel. On the left of the nine-strong leading group, American competitor Paige Onweller pulls ahead - and then Rosa Klöser makes her move. "I thought we were already a bit closer to the finish," recalls Klöser, who starts more than 300 metres before the line and simply pulls away. "You can feel if someone is behind you, and in the last 100 metres I felt that there was no one there."
Rosa Maria Klöser wins Unbound 200
With a lead of several bike lengths, she races to the finish line, past the photographers and support staff. Her mouth is wide open. There is an emotional breakdown at the finish line, Rosa Klöser throws her arms around her boyfriend's neck, who has just finished the men's race, she is overwhelmed, tears welling up. Because she had come from nowhere and had also overcome a major setback in the race. Now she is the winner of the most prestigious race on the gravel scene.
Half a day earlier, shortly before six in the morning, Klöser felt really overwhelmed for the first time. "There must have been 100 photographers in front of the start line, it was a real media hype," she says. "I thought, this event can really change your life." Hardly anyone in the scene or in the media knows the young German, whose place of residence is Copenhagen. She joins the ranks of the elite female starters who have been given their own women's start time in Kansas, a real women's race without the distorting effect of the men in front and behind.
Big names at the start of the Unbound
Meanwhile, big names are called up. Tiffany Cromwell, Sofia Gomez Villafane, Haley Smith and last year's winner Carolin Schiff in the German champion's jersey. When Schiff celebrated her victory at the Unbound in 2023, Rosa Maria Klöser had only just tried out a few gravel races. And just a year earlier, at the beginning of 2022, the young woman with the long, dark brown hair had never taken part in a bike race.
Everything happens very quickly in the career of Rosa Maria Klöser, who comes from Übach-Palenberg near Aachen, studied in the Netherlands and Denmark, is recovering on a Monday in July on the edge of the Lüneburg Heath at her boyfriend's parents' house, researches and teaches in Copenhagen, attends a conference in Dublin, spends four months at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston in between and is now making a furious rise in cycling. This is the story of a woman who collects top marks in economic studies, lectures on political interventions in markets and makes a fool of seasoned street professionals. "I don't know her," says a top female gravel rider, even though they have raced against each other several times. A story that women's cycling still makes possible.
Reaching the finish line bareback
What sounds like a smooth ascent does not work without resistance in practice. Sometimes a bike goes missing, sometimes things get bloody. But that doesn't put them off. Nor does the fact that you sometimes have painful experiences. She gets stuck in. And she says she is perhaps a little more brash than others. In the short time she has been on the bike, she has collected a few scars. The weekend before the TOUR interview, she misjudged a piece of grass during the race in Poland, her leg and elbow bled profusely, and there are still dents in her helmet. She broke her collarbone on the road, and in her first big gravel race, the Traka in the Pyrenees, she crossed the finish line without a saddle. But she got there.
Klöser is determined. And she can deal with setbacks. She showed that at the Unbound. Klöser had established herself in the leading group in Kansas and then made a mistake. She rode too close to the woman in front, she says, and after around 200 kilometres she missed a stone, which was fatal for the front tyre, which tore in several places. Thanks to good preparation, Klöser had inserts in her tyres to protect the rim in the event of a puncture. She was still able to stay in the leading group. "It was really spongy, especially downhill on stones, I kept hitting the rim, it was scary," she recalls. On one climb, Klöser decided to try again with air from a tyre cartridge. Patching the tyre was out of the question, as sealant was leaking in several places. As a result, she lost two minutes to the front of the field by the next refreshment point - but thanks to a very quick tyre change from her outfitter, she got back on the hunt. "Then I set off and I knew I had nothing to lose. I was proud to have been in that leading group beforehand and thought: no matter what happens now, you've shown the world."
By chance on a racing bike
Four years ago, Rosa Maria Klöser would never have imagined that such experiences would even be within reach. At the time, her boyfriend was already studying in London and she was in Copenhagen to study economics, but because of the coronavirus lockdown, they were looking for a place where they could spend time together. Paul Sandmann's parents live in Lower Saxony, south-east of Hamburg, and the couple settled down there. Rosa had her first experience of road cycling on a bike with a 61 mm frame that was far too big for her and belonged to her boyfriend's father. She liked racing bikes, but "the real reason why I bought a racing bike was because my bike was stolen," reports Klöser.
Her city bike had been stolen in Copenhagen. She took a leaf out of the book of many commuters who cycle through the city on racing bikes. So she looked for an entry-level bike. The price was 1200 euros. "That seemed insanely expensive to me," she says. She would soon realise on rides in Copenhagen that this sport is very "capital-intensive", as Klöser says. What followed was a crash course in a sport that others had been practising since their teenage years. Klöser installed Strava and chased the best times. She bought a smart roller and also trained indoors. At the beginning of 2021, she took part in her first Zwift race from her student room in Copenhagen. "I'd never raced with other women before. There were only five or six participants - but I won. And when I'm successful, it's even more fun, of course."
She turned to a club in Copenhagen and found orientation in group cycling there. And in 2022, she took part in her first outdoor race. She won in the B category on her first appearance. "I was totally shocked because I didn't understand anything about race strategy and tactics," she recalls. In the late summer of the same year, she also took part in the Cyclassics in Hamburg with her boyfriend Paul. She won the 94.8-kilometre women's race and finished eighteenth overall. "You have a lot of slipstream there, if you ride a bit smart you can save a lot," she says, making a pretty big success easy to grasp.
The real reason I bought a road bike was because of a bike theft.
Passion: optimise
Rosa Klöser loves to "dig into topics", as she says, and she has this in common with her boyfriend Paul. He is doing a doctorate in mechanical engineering at Imperial College, but it remains to be seen whether he will continue his career in science or in a company. He has a choice. He, too, only got into sport with the coronavirus and is now achieving excellent results in elite gravel races, leaving him no time for anything else besides research and sport. Klöser studies sport in the same way that she studies her professional and university subjects. She watches many races, including the Tour de France, to learn from the riders' behaviour. She collects information on the material and carbohydrate complexes. She is meticulous in her approach and has a talent for observation that takes her further. Together with Paul, she optimises her riding position and they analyse watt values. "In the coming months, they want to improve the rider's aerodynamics, and wind tunnel tests are also a project.
My passion is working with students, giving lectures and supervising Master's theses.
Perfectionism is at work here, which also extends to other fields. When the two of them see the TOUR photographer's equipment, they ask a lot of questions. Because they want to equip themselves with suitable cameras, which is part of being an athlete in the influencer age. The fact that Klöser rides on gravel at all came about by chance. On a trip to Girona in spring 2022, she had problems with the gears on her now much more expensive aero bike, Paul and she went to a workshop, where they met Dutch gravel pro Piotr Havik. He invited Rosa and Paul on a gravel tour and was impressed by Rosa's talent. Klöser remembers the following sentence: "Maybe you should think about becoming a gravel pro."
A year later, Klöser rode her first season on gravel. She finished on the podium in three UCI races. In Halmstad, Sweden, she was only beaten by cycling legends Marianne Vos and Annika Langvad. "A few brands contacted me and said they thought it was cool what I was doing." One season later, Klöser is much further along. She is something of a sole trader in gravel sport, has well-known outfitters and - especially in the summer - can fully commit to this life. Her university in Denmark has given her a month off so that Klöser can travel to the gravel events during the hot phase without thinking about university. Because otherwise that is the centre of her life. Klöser has had a successful journey through the university landscape; she is doing her doctorate on the decarbonisation of the shipping industry - which is more about the general question of how political intervention in the economy can lead to greater sustainability and greener corporate structures.
She had previously completed her Master's degree in Supply Chain Management. She quickly jumps to this other field in conversation and could also give an ad hoc lecture on it if you let her. It would be just as exciting as talking about sport. Above all, she likes what she still has to do as part of her doctoral position: "My passion is working with students, giving lectures and supervising Master's theses," says Klöser.
Rosa Maria Klöser between sport and promotion
So she moves between two worlds. At her boyfriend's parents in northern Germany, however, everything currently revolves around the sporty Rosa. She is taking her new fame with her. After the Unbound victory, there are new sponsorship talks and they are working on deals for next year. Klöser also made her mark at the German Championships on the road. She finished ninth between World Tour pros. For her, road cycling is just as much a project for the future as a career in economics. "Yes, definitely," she replies when asked whether she is currently living her dream. "I didn't follow a classic path, I didn't think as a little girl that I could become a professional athlete - but in everything I do, I'm always totally focussed on the cause."
She should have her doctorate by the beginning of 2025. Her research topic interests her enormously, which is good for the time afterwards. And her name is now known in cycling, which is good, because she definitely wants to focus on this part of her life for a few seasons. "It's a great structure for my career."
