For the past five years, Canada’s Maghalie Rochette has been a member of the Clif Pro Team mountain bike and cyclocross team. During that time, she has accomplished a lot in her young career, including a fifth-place finish at the 2017 World Championships and a Canadian National Championship in 2016.
On Saturday, Rochette announced she will be racing for a privateer program in 2018/19 to focus specifically on cyclocross. Rochette has had success on the mountain bike with the Clif Pro Team, but as we learned when we talked with her about her “CX Fever” program last year, cyclocross is her favorite of the two disciplines.
Her new program is called, appropriately, “CX Fever.”
Maghalie Rochette will be racing on a Specialized CruX for her new CX Fever program in 2018/19.
Rochette will be riding a Specialized CruX with SRAM components, Roval wheels and Challenge tires. Other partners of her program include Clif Bar, TenSpeed Hero, Giro Cycling, Oakley, Feedback Sports and Horst Engineering.
Rochette’s 2018 season will start this Saturday at Rochester Cyclocross, and she will race in North America through the Pan-American Championships in Canada in November. She will then head abroad for a three-month European campaign.
Rochette said the following about why she chose to start a privateer cyclocross program:
It’s February 2017 and I just finished my first ever Elite Cyclocross World Championship. I finished fifth. 15 secs from the podium. 36 seconds from the winner. For a 43 minute race, that is 0.05% off a podium finish 0.1% off of the winner’s time.
There is not a day since that I haven’t asked myself “what if.”
What If I committed 100% to cyclocross?
What if my racing and training schedule focused on racing cyclocross at the highest level?
What if I partnered with some of the best people and companies who shared the same passion for cyclocross?
What would happen, then?
Expect to see more of the CX Fever pepper in the coming years. © Cyclocross Magazine
