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The Maglia Nera is the award for the last rider at TCR to finish within the General Classification time cut off. I was TCRNo7’s last GC rider by 13 minutes so was delighted to see this recognition revived for 2025. Those who do succeed at finishing at the pointy end of the race display inspiring feats of human endurance, but for many of the rest of us, we are merely trying to keep our shit together long enough to make it to the finish rubber side down.
My road to last place was not littered with bad luck and misfortune, in reality my only mishap was being underprepared and overly ambitious in my capabilities at my first ultra.The signs were there; attaching brand new bottle cages in Burgas, foregoing a bivvy bag for a hammock with no insulation and mistaking a windproof for a waterproof are not things done by someone who has sufficiently prepared. Blissful ignorance can carry a young woman a long way; across Europe in my case.
The first control point came on the first day at Buzludzha Monument, Bulgaria in the middle of two days of long parcours to keep riders off the main transit route from Burgas to Sofia and in the villages. Powered by fizzy drinks and bread I made it to the Serbian border in the middle of the third morning to tackle the second parcours which was the roughest of 2019. The initial gravel climb was gentle but never ending and required my emergency energy gel to make it to the T-junction at which point it became glaringly clear would be the beginning of the real rough stuff. A parked media vehicle halfway up the climb and a strategically squatting James Robertson indicated that the rest of the path would not be rideable. Much less was hike-a-bike than expected but it certainly wasn’t a place you would opt to take a road bike.
At least one rough parcours is par for the course at TCR nowadays; descending off Besna Kobila dodging the rocks and a storm to CP2 was the most thrilling moment of my TCR. The next highlight was the soothing marshmallow pink sunset on Corvara in the Dolomites after a great day’s progress and the best ice cream of the trip. Neither of these moments which I cherish dearly have any relation to my ranking, they are mine to relive whenever I so wish.
It was only at the final control point at Alpe d’Huez it began to dawn on me that making it to Brest within the time cut would be a challenge. There are much less stressful ways to finish TCR than booking it across France facing a headwind and the consequences of my own faffing as I had let time slip through my fingers like sand through an hourglass. Nonetheless, in the absence of a good excuse for my tardiness, a GC finish was the only option. And so, with my arms on the aerobars and nose to my stem, I pedalled as fast as my tired little legs would carry me from the Alps to Brest with a mere 13 minutes to spare. You would expect an 800km ride across France to be full of good memories and stories but I pull a blank when trying to recall anything from this last leg.
An unnerving deja-vu moment whilst hitchhiking across France a few years ago means I must have absorbed some of the surroundings from a very unremarkable part of France. I spotted a familiar excellent riverside bivvy spot and a rummage through Strava told me I had in fact been to this pretty nameless village before.
The nature of being the last few riders means we’re racing the wrong end of the clock. I will always celebrate the recognition of those further back in the pack whose stories are not ones of exceptional physical endeavours in comparison to those at the front of the race, but they are impressive in the grand scheme of non-professional sport. Cycling across a continent is most people’s finest achievements and produces a depth of intangible changes to ourselves which only those closest to us may witness.
The revival of the Maglia Nera is accompanied by the introduction of the Maglia Arancia, a jersey for the rider with the lowest cumulative time on the parcours. Albion will be awarding these two riders with bespoke jerseys and cargo vests. You can see them before they're awarded in Romania in many kilometres time. The introduction of these riders will add even more excitement to what is already set to be a TCR for the history books.
The anarchic team here at DotWatcher brought up the possibility somebody could, in theory, be eligible for both maglias: the fastest slowest rider. We dismissed it instantly as it won't happen, of course. The DW team are never ever wrong. Never.
The desperate act of a woman woefully underequipped. A Lidl somewhere in France.
