Going Hard When the Going Gets Hard: Clara Honsinger's Memorable Day at Gavere
Clara Honsinger's 4th place finish is the latest step in the U.S. Champ's steady growth as a successful cyclocross racer.
Last season, one could argue Clara Honsinger shocked the world when she dethroned 15-time U.S. national champion Katie Compton at Lakewood Nationals, but for anyone who has followed Honsinger’s growth in U.S. cyclocross, the accomplishment was anything but shocking.
If any word describes the newest U.S. Women’s National Champion, it is probably the word steady.
After growing up in the legendary Cyclocross Crusade series of Oregon, Honsinger began racing on the U.S. domestic circuit in earnest in 2017. Honsinger got her first real national “result” in Iowa City when she finished 2nd at the Saturday night race before that year’s Jingle Cross World Cup.
She capped that campaign with a 2nd in the U23 race in Reno, and then followed it up with a U23 championship of her own in the mud in Louisville.
Of all years, being steady is probably most important in this most bizarre of cyclocross seasons. While her Euro competitors got started racing in early October, Honsinger was States-side biding her time getting ready to get thrown into the middle of the cyclocross season. As Rebecca Fahringer explained when we talked to her, being ready to go in those circumstances is challenging.
Last season marked the culmination of a three-year journey on the national scene for Honsinger’s Oregon-based Team S&M CX team, so it proved the perfect time for the young star to join the Cannondale p/b CyclocrossWorld team that includes mainstays Kaitie Keough and Curtis White as well as another young star in Katie Clouse. With no domestic season, the program headed up by Stu Thorne was able to devote its energy to helping Honsinger, Keough, and White navigate the European season.
After a slow start at Leuven and Merksplas a month ago with results down around 20th, Honsinger cracked the top 10 at Urban Cross Kortrijk and then finished 6th at Superprestige Boom on a challenging, technical course.
Honsinger credited her good form just a few weeks into her Euro campaign to a little mix of fitness and finesse. “I was lucky to be able to spend the summer in Colorado doing a nutrition internship with Skratch Labs. We had a solid training pod there and put in some big, hard days to build a solid base,” she explained.
When I wrote about Honsinger over two years ago, I titled the post “A kid from Oregon,” riffing off the “Just a kid from somewhere commercials.” To her credit, when I saw her at Jingle Cross a few weeks later, she remarked, “I’m always just a kid,” which hinting at how she got the nickname Lil’ Clara from her friends at Portland’s Sellwood Cycles.
Digressions aside, Honsinger’s Oregon roots have also played a huge role in making her the technically proficient rider she is today. “On the skills side, I spent a lot of time riding my local trails on my cyclocross bike,” she said. “I live on the wetter side of the mountains in Oregon, so lots of roots and mud to slip and slide through.”
One of Honsinger’s best results of her cyclocross career was at Namur last year on one of the worst days possible for a cyclocross race. Cold and wet with puddles on the course, Honsinger rode strong throughout and came away with a 6th place finish in absolutely gnarly conditions. Success on a brutal day? Just another day at the office for the young Oregonian.
“I think I'm good at going hard when the going gets hard,” Honsinger said. “Pushing up hills, versus flat, fast courses.”
While Honsinger could kind of sneak up on competitors last year wearing the orange and blue of her Team S&M CX trade team, this year one would think it’s a bit tougher now that she is sporting the Stars-and-Stripes while racing for the Cannondale p/b CyclocrossWorld team.
One would think, she explained. “I think a lot of the cyclocross world still thinks Katie wears the jersey,” Honsinger said. “I have been called ‘Compton’ a few times during pre-ride, and a veteran racer on the start line asked if it was my first UCI race.”
Honsinger worked hard to earn that jersey, so she has every right to take such slights as an offense. Clara being Clara, however, it’s just more motivation to keep moving forward. “To me, this demonstrates that, while the jersey is special, the rider's palmares and reputation supersedes the kit,” she explained. “I'm still working on making my own name and results list.”
Steady Growth at Gavere
In last week’s weekend preview, I had noticed Honsinger’s tendency to ride well on technical challenging courses and mused that Gavere would play into her strengths. To her credit, Honsinger acknowledged that even though yeah, she might be good at courses that favor the “mountain bike-sters,” she has a more complete rider profile as a goal.
“While I acknowledge that I might be suited for one course more than another, I try to ignore any extrapolation before a race. Ultimately I want to be able to get a good result at any race in any condition,” she explained.
Gavere is one of the classic European cyclocross courses. Set at a Belgian military base, the course features challenging off-cambers on the top of a hill, one of the most challenging descents in cyclocross, and an iconic, challenging climb out from the bottom of the forest. The race is typically a November event, but moved a month later, the track still had that slick, wet November vibe. One might say it was the kind of day and the kind of course where going hard when the going gets hard is a preferred skill to have.
If there is one knock to be made against Honsinger right now, it undoubtedly her starts. Currently ranked just outside the top 10 of the UCI rankings, Honsinger has been garnering 2nd row starts for these European races. She got off to a good jump off the line on Saturday at Scheldecross, but had the effort derailed when another rider went pinballing into her. On Sunday, Honsinger got off to a typical start, sitting in around 25th after the holeshot.
“We're working on it,” she said about her starts. “Seriously, so much start practice!”
With Denise Betsema starting fast and Lucinda Brand trying to catch her, the front of the race got off to a blistering start yet again. After one lap, Honsinger was still well back. Although we did not catch a glimpse of her watching at home, knowing what we know about the rider who has come to be known as Lil’ Glowplugs on the Media Pit, it was a fair assumption that she was calmly and quietly working her way through the field. It was more a question of just how far forward she would make it.
That proved to be the case, as a lap later, Honsinger was all the way up to 9th, just a few seconds behind a group of 4 that included 3-time world champion Sanne Cant. “I found that I was able to make up the greatest amount of time on the power sections and then really focused on relaxing and riding smoothly through the technical descents. Having that extra moment of recovery allowed me to put it all out on the climb,” Honsinger said about moving forward through the field.
In the third of five laps, Honsinger drew closer to the Sanne Cant group, but still entered the bottom of the steep climb a few seconds behind Cant, Manon Bakker, and Christine Majerus. By the top of the climb, she was the first of those four riders to enter Pit 2. “The places that I was able to make up the greatest ground were up and over the power climbs,” she reiterated. Little surprise for an athlete who grew up on the lush mountains of Oregon.
At that point, Honsinger was in the mix to finish 4th through 7th. Even if she finished 3rd out of that group, it would still tie her best-ever Euro result. No worries, she was better than her competitors on the day, so Honsinger soon quickly and casually dropped that accomplished group of riders.
“When I caught them, I found that I wanted to ride faster than the pace they were setting,” she explained. “My goal was to go as fast as I could and see what place that would give me.”
With 2 laps to go, Honsinger was still 34 seconds behind the current World Champ Ceylin Alvarado, who was sitting in 3rd place. They do say anything can happen in cyclocross, but 34 seconds on the World Champ, even if she was on an “off” day, is a big ask.
Undeterred, Honsinger still kept cranking forward. The section before the finish of the Gavere lap was a long, bumpy drag that runs parallel to the start/finish straight. Although at home, camera angles can be deceiving, it was still apparent that as she pulled onto the long stretch, the Stars-and-Stripes could see the rainbow stripes up ahead of her. And on this day, rainbows meant the final podium position. In that penultimate lap, Honsinger had cut Alvarado’s advantage down to 20 seconds.
If the one word to describe Honsinger is “steady,” then two words that describe her as an athlete are “steady growth.” Since Honsinger’s name first quietly broke onto the U.S. national scene at Jingle Cross in 2017, save for a few hiccups here and there, she has shown steady progress as a cyclocross racer with every month and every race.
It’s not much of a spoiler to say that although anything can happen in cyclocross, the best on Sunday afternoon at Gavere for Honsinger was a 4th place finish. Maybe a bit frustrated because of some mistakes she said she made, Honsinger was able to take that forward look toward getting better.
“At least I can identify the areas in which I can improve and practice them,” she said. “I think I would be more frustrated if I felt that I was riding a perfect race and had nowhere to make improvements.”
Athletes often like to play things close to the chest when it comes to revealing their expectations for themselves and the results they are able to obtain. For example, for all we know, Tom Pidcock probably full well knew he was capable of beating Mathieu van der Poel this season, but after he did shock the cyclocross world at Gavere, he was still borderline speechless.
Honsinger no doubt has her own expectations of what she is capable of. We have already seen the growth mentality and focus on the process and not results that Honsinger has, so 4th place? Maybe not the biggest of deals.
Ok, so maybe it was a result worth celebrating, if just for a day or two. “Fourth does feel like a success, and I am glad to earn a solid result,” she said. However, that growth mentality that has fueled Honsinger’s steady rise in the sport was quick to follow. “Ultimately, the goal is to practice and improve my riding,” she continued. “Results will only follow.”
By the time you are reading this, Honsinger’s attention has undoubtedly turned to the Citadel of Namur and the site of her impressive 2019 ride. The going is always tough at Namur, and if the rain that is currently forecast holds, it might just be a day for cyclocross racers who go hard when the going gets hard.
Lest you think a near podium at a Euro race is going to get to the U.S. Champ’s head, the only thing she will be thinking about is riding hard—and maybe that dreaded start.
“It's another race with a whole new set of variables. My expectations are always the same—to race to the best of my capabilities.”