Olympic-Bound Biking

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The story below is from our March/April 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you! 

The VBR TWENTY24 team adds to the region’s cycling resume.

Virginia’s Blue Ridge is America’s East Coast Mountain Biking Capital, ordained by the local organization of the same name, and a Silver-Level Ride Center® as designated by the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA). The TransAmerica Bicycle Trail comes through Botetourt County and the Blue Ridge Parkway is a favorite for many on two wheels. 

On local greenways or byroads you’ll find bikers clad from head to toe in serious-looking riding team outfits and expensive safety helmets – as well as more casual riders with lower-end bikes. The Catawba Valley and Botetourt County are favorites for those looking to get serious miles under their belt as they take on a challenging series of rolling hills. A growing inventory of designated bike lanes has helped turn Roanoke into a Bronze Level Bicycle Friendly Community according to the League of American Bicyclists.

Early last year came perhaps the cherry on top of the bicycling sundae that the valley has become: Team TWENTY24, considered America’s premier women’s cycling team, announced it would relocate here from Idaho. The base of operations is Camp Bethel in Botetourt County – right in the middle of those rolling hills – a mix of professional athletes racing on a variety of surfaces (road, gravel, mountain biking), Zwift eSports competitors and a junior team consisting of several dozen girls as young as nine. Multi-time Paralympic medalist Jamie Whitmore is on the squad as well. The goal: to prepare for Olympic, national and international competitions. 

The team that formed in 2005 with a focus on the 2012 London Olympics is now VBR TWENTY24, sponsored by Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge (Virginia Tourism Corporation is the other title sponsor), with an eye towards the 2024 Paris Olympic games and other major events. TWENTY24 athletes, a diverse group that does most of their training where they live across the country, are already winning medals competing in the US and abroad. Its diverse in ethnicity and what else they might be pursuing in life — one team member wants to be a NASCAR racer, at least one other an engineer for example.

Hamare Yamashita, 18, lives in Pennsylvania but will be back in Virginia’s Blue Ridge this March to train with teammates. “You climb these hills and see all these beautiful mountains, which you don’t really see in Pennsylvania. It was really refreshing.” She also says motorists seem more willing to share the road here than in Pennsylvania. Yamashita specializes in road and track races and is a junior team member. She does cyclocross “for fun.” Roanoke has hosted sanctioned cyclocross races, which feature a variety of surfaces over a short course layout.

Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge president Landon Howard says, “it’s given us an opportunity for our brand to be taken all over the world,” noting that three-time Olympic medalist Jennifer Valente won a Veladrome (track cycling) competition in Europe late last year and was called to the podium as a member of VBR TWENTY24,  where her jersey proudly proclaimed, “Virginia’s Blue Ridge.” In 2022 the team scored around 60 wins and 70 podium finishes notes Howard, “which is really unheard of.” As of late last year, the medal haul for VBR TWENTY24 included nine world and national championship titles.

The team’s general manager and a former professional cyclist herself is Nicola Cranmer, who was persuaded to relocate the base of operations here from Idaho, functioning as a non-profit under the TAM Cycling name. She oversees more than three dozen professional and junior athletes, who come to Virginia’s Blue Ridge at least several times a year for training camps and events like the USA Cycling Amateur Road National Championships, which return for a second year June 13-17. “Whenever we’ve brought new athletes to the area, they are always incredibly impressed. It’s perfect training terrain whether you are a road cyclist, a mountain biker or a gravel rider. It has everything.”

BR TWENTY24 has also become a UCI registered team (Union Cycliste Internationale) again, the governing body worldwide for cycling federations, which provides entry to major professional competitions in Europe and elsewhere internationally. “It’s an exciting time,” says Cranmer, a British native.

Shelley Olds worked with Cranmer to help get the women’s team off the ground almost two decades ago. She is now the race director for VBR TWENTY24. Olds road raced for the US National Team at the 2012 London Olympics and was a member of the inaugural Twenty12 squad. “It’s long overdue that cyclists [or] anybody who enjoys riding their bike, whether it’s on mountain, road or gravel, that they would know about this area. It’s like a hidden gem.”

The former soccer standout at Roanoke College has also returned to her alma mater to launch a co-ed competitive cycling team. “The school is behind this program, they want it to be successful, to be able to recruit and bring athletes into the college. And I want us to be competitive at the national level.” Olds has big plans for growing the program, including the availability of scholarships. As for her involvement with VBR TWENTY24, “it’s kind of like destiny when I knew [Cranmer] was here. It’s been this reunion, winding up back in the same place.” 

Olds first took up cycling like many athletes do, to help stay fit outside of the sport they competed in. Witness UCI professional team members Dani Morshead and Laurel Quinones, both of whom rowed competitively in college. “I felt like our goals matched up for the 2023-24 season,” says Morshead about her decision to sign with TWENTY24 in December. She had worked with Nicola Cranmer on a previous iteration of the national team. Morshead has set her sights on the 2024 Paris Olympics, “if things keep going well.” Her late 2022 visit where she biked with teammates on the Blue Ridge Parkway “was stunning.”

Quinones rowed for Division 1 Columbia University and now works in New York City. She took up cycling in earnest just a few years ago when the pandemic shut down athletic events and the gyms where she liked to work out. “I’m really new to the sport but I’ve always been very athletic and competitive.”  Quinones is targeting the U.S. Nationals this summer in Tennessee, for road racing and time trials. It’s a long way from those days of cycling “on a hundred dollar bike from Walmart. All of a sudden, you’re in Virginia on a team. The [Blue Ridge] Parkway was the perfect place to ride.”

Kristine McCormack, the Outdoor Experience Manager for Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge (and a mountain biking enthusiast herself), noted the team’s “exceptionally good winning season,” in 2022. “People are seeing our brand; they’re seeing Virginia’s Blue Ridge.” As in TWENTY24 rider and Cuban native Marlies Mejias winning a criterium time trial event (Crit in racing parlance), where the announcer on a livestream was screaming as Mejias crossed the finish, “Virginia’s Blue Ridge TWENTY24! Virginia’s Blue Ridge TWENTY24! It’s doing exactly what we hoped when we became the title sponsor for this women’s professional and development cycling team.”

A company based in Colorado recently published its first East Coast guide to gravel biking (fire roads, unpaved byways) centered on routes in this area. “They heard about what was going on with cycling in our region,” notes McCormack, “and thought we would be a good fit.” That gravel guide is available at local bike shops and online at bikevbr.com.

VBR TWENTY24 puts a further spotlight on the Roanoke area as a cycling mecca at all skill levels, something the destination marketing organization has been striving to attain in recent years. “People all over the world are seeing Virginia’s Blue Ridge,” notes Landon Howard; “these young ladies are exceptional people. They’ve got the drive to be winners.”

Virginia’s Blue Ridge TWENTY24: 2023 Team RosterUCI Roster (as of December 2022)

  • Jennifer Valente (USA)
  • Laurel Quiñones (USA)
  • Nicole Steinmetz (USA)
  • Melisa Rollins (USA)
  • Dani Morshead (USA)
  • Marlies Mejias (CUB)
  • Caileigh Filmer (CAN)
  • Emily Ehrlich (USA)
  • Sofía Arreola (MEX)

UCI Junior Trainees

  • Homare Yamashita (USA)
  • Samantha Scott (USA)

The story above is from our March/April 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!