Curtis White, Indeed, Did Something Special at Cyclocross Nationals

A deep dive into how Curtis White pulled off one of the most memorable Cyclocross Nationals wins in recent memory

Following the Sunday race at Pan-Ams, I was walking and chatting with Raylyn Nuss for a bit (conversations with your resident hobby-blogger are on the record, unless you say otherwise … y’all know that), and after talking about her great weekend of racing, the conversation turned to Nationals and specifically her teammate Curtis White.

She quickly said something to the effect of, you know what, Curtis is going to do something special in Hartford.

I was all for it. I mean, I wanted to see Curtis White win a National Championship as much as everyone else—maybe just because I was tired of asking Curtis White when he was going to win a National Championship.

I was, however, skeptical.

Eric Brunner had just run the table at the weekend in Falmouth. Three wins in three days. You love to see teammates sticking up for each other, but if you asked me, I probably would have said 80-20 in favor of Brunner.

Well folks, Curtis White did something special. I was wrong, Raylyn was right.

Since my skepticism was poorly placed, I wanted to do a deeper dive into how exactly Curtis White pulled off Sunday’s win in Hartford. Find out exactly how he met the moment and delivered a performance that we will all remember 10 or even 20 years from now.

Well, how did he get here? © Zach Schuster

Motivation

As a pseudo-journalist, Curtis White is a dream athlete. He is always willing to make time to talk with me, and he provides thoughtful answers that always have substance behind them. Some folks may find him to be a bit too SuperProMan, but I’ve talked to him enough—often after second-place finishes—that I’ve seen his personality come out and I always enjoy chatting with him.

One of the tougher interviews I can remember doing with White was following Nationals last December. He had come back at the end of the race to finish 2nd, but it was still another 2nd. His third-straight. He was visibly disappointed.

After Sunday’s race, White reminded me of that conversation. “I believe you asked, 'Does this motivate you for next year?' And I said, 'How much more fking motivation do I need?’”

The man makes a good point.

SB Nation (now Secret Base) has a series called “Untitled” where they look at great athletes who never won a title. I would never do that to Curtis, but it was definitely an idea I’ve had; taking a look at his near misses and what could-have-beens.

Finishing 2nd to Tobin in Asheville. Entering the 2017 U23 Nationals as an overwhelming favorite—he won 9 Elite races that year!—and crashing several times and finishing 6th. Flatting at Reno in his first Nationals as an Elite. Not being able to catch Gage Hecht in Lakewood and finishing 2nd. Missing the early move in Chicago and again finishing 2nd.

As White succinctly said, how much more motivation does he need? Like, seriously.

With Brunner’s confetti littering the ground, this sucked for White. © Zach Schuster

More importantly, I think those disappointments have made White stronger as an athlete. The triumph of winning is great, but growth as an athlete, as a person, comes through adversity, and lord knows, White has faced more than his share of adversity.

There were the Logan Owen years, like, a lot of Logan Owen years, but I think the last four seasons have provided the unquenchable fire that came boiling over on Sunday in Hartford.

After a successful first season as an Elite where he won three races and was in the lead group at Reno Nats, White had a monster season in 2018. After winning both days of Gloucester, he regained the Pan-American Championship in the memorable sprint win against Michael van den Ham. He capped that season with an epic 2nd-place finish against teammate Stephen Hyde at Louisville Nationals.

Things were looking up for White as he became a proper Elite.

In 2019, the year of Kenny v. Curty, White won 9 races when he had a nemesis at nearly every one of them. But if the 2nd at Louisville was a big step for him, the 2nds in 2019 started to suck. He came up just short against Werner in the epic mud race at Pan-Ams in Midland, and then he and Stephen Hyde were like 5 seconds behind Gage Hecht for most of the race at Lakewood Nationals but were never able to close the gap. Another 2nd at Nationals.

Last season, White won 4 races but then was dealt a brutal one-two punch of 2nd-place finishes at Pan-Ams and Nationals in consecutive weeks. And worse, after facing off against Werner and Hecht, two riders who White as good as or better, he now faced the reality of the mega-talented Eric Brunner as his new nemesis.

When Brunner ran roughshod through Falmouth and Northampton last month, it was easy to see several more years of White facing the same dreaded question about Nationals.

Such brutal motivation can go one of two ways. Last year’s result at Nationals easily could have thrown White into a funk, knowing he now shared a stage with one of the most talented American males to come through the sport in years.

Instead, those disappointments fueled White’s fire and motivated him to look inward to improve his game. He has, and continues to, make massive strides in his bike-handling ability. Barriers were an issue, and he worked on those. I have no doubt he worked on the snap needed to match Brunner’s big moves.

And most importantly, I think, all those disappointments made him incredibly resilient. Like how much more can you throw at White that he hasn’t already shrugged off and overcome?

Resiliency

One of my first memories of seeing Curtis White race was the U23 National Championship race in Hartford. White was the odds-on favorite to win that race, but with the course covered in snow, one mistake led to pressing, which led to another mistake, and then another, and at the end of the day, he was well out of the running in 6th place.

That was a long time ago, and White was a younger man then and it thus illustrates how far he has come to become a tough athlete who is largely immune to the chaos swirling around him on the ‘cross course.

That example of 2017 Hartford is perfect because I think ‘cross resiliency comes in two different forms that were both present on that epic day nearly 6 years ago. One is obviously the conditions. When things get ugly, how do you approach keeping a level head and dealing with the uncertainties? The other is how you deal with setbacks when they occur during a race

Back in 2020 after the infamous World Cup Dendermonde, I wrote about how Wout van Aert won that race by “embracing the suck.” Like Wout, White has made embracing the suck part of his calling card as a cyclocross racer.

It is hard to work on this skill here in the U.S.—how many truly awful races are there?—but White has made the most of his opportunities. One that immediately comes to mind is the 2018 Supercross Cup. Raced in a mix of snow, mud, rain, and everything else, White literally ran away with the wins both days in truly terrible conditions.

Not everyone was fortunate enough to be able to race during the pandemic season, but White got his longest and fullest campaign of getting his face smashed in by Euros and dealing with the Belgian winter. Just as Wout dominated at that Dendermonde race, White had one of his finest performances, finishing 13th and getting stronger as the race slogged on. You just cannot get that kind of experience here in the U.S., and it is clear White made the most of it.

One of the biggest things that stands out in the rivalry between White and Brunner is their ability to embrace the suck, as it were. In the last two seasons, Brunner has struggled when conditions turn ugly. At Day 2 of Cincy in the rain last year, he was a non-factor after winning the day before. At Day 2 of Rochester this year, he again had an off-day.

Meanwhile, White won what is probably the non-Nationals race of the year in a epic duel against Vincent Baestaens on an absolute beast of a day on Day 2 of Charm City back in October. White and Baestaens had like one million lead changes, but White kept his composure in the awful conditions while forcing Baestaens to make the final mistake.

White showed his resiliency with a win on a terrible day in Charm City. © Bruce Buckley

As the ‘cross caravan got set to head to Hartford, the multitude of Curtis White supporters were no doubt religiously refreshing their weather apps, hoping to see some kind of bad weather in the forecast. Because as we learned in the biggest way on Sunday, when the weather turns ugly, White is at his best.

The other type of adversity White dealt with at that race in Hartford back in 2017 was things going sideways out on the course.

One of the beautiful things about cyclocross is the battle riders face to create order amid the chaos of a ‘cross race. To be successful in that effort, you need to be able to keep a calm head when things go wrong—mechanicals, mistakes, other people’s mistakes. When things go sideways, you need to immediately bounce back and focus on fixing the problem, not making it worse.

For better or worse, White has gotten a lot of experience in tough racing that has forced him to remain laser-focused or get beat. First it was his teammate Stephen Hyde, then the epic battles against Kerry Werner, and now it’s Eric Brunner.

When you think about White as a ‘cross racer, one of the first words that comes to mind is “unflappable.” He has made steadiness a fundamental part of his racing, and that means—with the exception of maybe GO Cross Day 1—he has been in every race this season.

There were a lot of factors that went into White’s win on Sunday, but his ability to take Brunner’s punches and keep him within striking distance was the axis around which everything turned for White in Sunday’s comeback effort.

Improvement and Putting it All Together

The third component of White’s Nationals success doesn’t necessarily warrant its own section, but he has made massive strides as a technical rider. White was never a bad technical rider, per se, but matched up against Hyde, Werner, and now Brunner, he does not have the technical gifts those riders do.

But, White has a hell of a work ethic, and he has put in the work to improve his technical skills. The pandemic winter was a crucible that forced him to get good fast or face a miserable season thousands of miles away from home, and he’s put in tons of work in the forests of Western Massachusetts. If you watched the race, you know where this is going. But we’ll get there eventually.

If we are all being honest, the biggest wild card for White’s chances in Hartford was the weather. Brunner showed throughout the season that if it’s dry and fast, he has that extra gear for those big attacks that White can’t quite keep up with. But if conditions got ugly, all bets would be off.

As a resident embracer of the suck, I find it hard to believe that White wasn’t hoping for terrible conditions on Sunday. After some early-week rain turned the course muddy, conditions were relatively dry leading into the weekend. Temperatures dropped on Sunday, causing the ground to freeze, but as the morning progressed, conditions weren’t the worst.

But then the snow started falling. Beautiful beautiful snow. Well, maybe.

Remember, snow and Hartford didn’t go so well for White six years ago. But on Sunday, the heavy flakes that started to fall at the end of the Elite Women’s race caused conditions on the course to deteriorate just a little bit more, playing into that strength White has honed since that disappointing day.

The stage was certainly set for White to prove Nuss prophetic. A home race in New England, hundreds if not a thousand fans cheering White on, snow falling to the ground. Fifteen years of Cyclocross Nationals worth of motivation. You literally couldn’t script a better story.

It wasn’t going to come easy though, and Brunner was the first to go on the offensive.

The move came at the end of Lap 3. It wasn’t an attack by Brunner, but a mistake by White not getting clipped in after the Stephen Hyde Off-Camber and being unable to ride the Stephen Hyde Victory Hill. Brunner rode the section and opened up a quick 8-10 second gap.

At this point, we had all seen this story before. Brunner gets a gap and then Brunner extends his gap to put the race out of reach.

Brunner was off the front with a gap in the last third of Sunday’s race. © Zach Schuster

The next two laps, however, the gap really wasn’t getting any bigger. Brunner was struggling to find spots to unleash his trademark power, and White didn’t panic. Instead, he put in a herculean effort to keep Brunner within striking distance.

On our Cyclocross Radio Media Pit episode this week, Bill coined the term the “Anything Can Happen Zone” for what White did. There was no guarantee that anything would come of it, but White turned himself inside out to keep Brunner close in the hopes the race leader would make a mistake. It certainly didn’t hurt that White was facing another year of mulling over another 2nd, so he had all the motivation in the world to go as deep as humanly possible.

Anyway, spoiler alert. Anything did happen.

Brunner’s crash was a bit of a bad break, bouncing out of a rut and losing his front wheel. However, I have always believed that 75% of being good in bad conditions is convincing yourself you’re good in bad conditions and embracing the challenge. You have to be 100% dialed and focused on the course and the task at hand, and in his post-race interview, Brunner talked about not being totally mentally into the race. That didn’t necessarily cause his crash, but it certainly opened the door for such a mistake to occur.

White, however, was able to keep his focus and stay clean, even while he was “breathing through his eye sockets,” trying to keep Brunner in that Anything Can Happen Zone.

White turned himself inside out in the hopes of bridging back up to Brunner. © Zach Schuster

We are now in the penultimate lap and White has caught Brunner on the hill. We have seen how motivation and resiliency kept White in the race and put him in a position where he could possibly even win. However, to bring things full circle, it was White’s improved technical abilities that brought home the dream victory.

White was still behind Brunner after the third run-up and descent on the hill. Knowing that if you want to win the biggest race of your life, you have to lay it all out there, White found a way to remount his bike halfway down the exit descent, stay upright, and use sweet sweet gravity to coast back up to Brunner and then take the lead. Brunner slipped out in Lap 1 trying the move, so it was certainly a gutsy decision that probably would have put him out of the race if he slipped out.

Once in the lead, White rode like a man on a mission. Through every section, he was just better than Brunner. The twisty corners at the end of the lap, the off-camber, the first descent. Brunner was on his back foot throughout while White was confidently riding through features that were not easy to ride through.

Then came the move.

White held the lead going into the series of run-ups and descents, setting him up perfectly to deploy the move he ad-libbed the previous lap. After the final bend of the final descent, White put his bike into place, hopped on, and went careening down the slick sidehill.

Brunner, meanwhile, was stunned. He hastily tried to remount, and was successful, but he did not exit the section with the speed that White did, which opened up a gap.

White had maybe 3 seconds on Brunner, but there was zero, none, no chance that White was giving up that lead. None. Not happening. An entire lifetime of disappointing results, fans cheering him on at every corner, and the jersey he had been chasing for so so so long pushed him forward through the driving snow.

Curtis White did it. He won Nationals. It was epic. It was special. It was beautiful. It was everything we love about this sport.

He did it. Wow. © Zach Schuster

Of course, the realest victory here is that never ever ever again will the hobby-bloggers of the world have to ask Curtis White when he’s going to win Nationals. Because he won Nationals.