The story below is a preview 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.
Visit Virginia's Blue Ridge
The VBR TWENTY24 team bikes along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
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.
Visit Virginia's Blue Ridge
The TWENTY24 team trains along Botetourt Road.
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. It’s 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.
Visit Virginia's Blue Ridge
The team is already winning plenty of medals.
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.”
Want to learn more about Team TWENTY24? Check out the latest issue, now on newsstands, or see it for free in our digital guide linked below!
The story above is a preview from our March/April 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!