KEVIN MCCALLUM: Pasio not one for going gently into the night

A year and three months ago, Ashleigh Moolman Pasio announced her retirement. Her time as a professional cyclist was done. Her race had run. It was time to get out at the top at the age of 36 and go gentle into the night.

It didn’t last long. The first half of 2022 was mind-blowingly good. A third at the Strade Bianchi was followed by fourth places at the La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, with top 10s at De Brabantse Pijl, Amstel Gold and Trofeo Alfredo Binda thrown in for good measure. Doubts began to creep in. Her level of racing was at the highest it had ever been.

By August, she had changed her mind and would return for another year ... maybe two.

On Tuesday, Pasio won the Durango-Durango Emakumeen Saria in Spain, a race she has wanted to win since she first took part in it back in 2010. She took 23rd 13 years ago, has finished fifth, sixth and, in 2022, fourth. A year and a few months after she said she was going to bow out of cycling she outsprinted a three-rider breakaway.

It was a result that went under the radar in SA, but then cycling often does in this country, fighting for space alongside what flavour ice cream Siya Kolisi is eating during his rehab from injury, how often John Dobson shaves his head and how many beers some PSL players have before rocking up at training. 

Without sounding like those on social media who say you “won’t read this in mainstream media”, you also might have missed that South African Alan Hatherly finished 10th in the opening race of the UCI World Cup mountain bike series in Nove Mesto in the Czech Republic on Sunday. Nor would you have heard that another South African, Candice Lill, so close to being a winner at the Absa Cape Epic in March, placed an impressive 25th in the women’s race, also on Sunday.

You may have heard the Giro d’Italia is on and has been a roller derby and roller coaster of a race, with crashes, snow, rain, Covid and a surprise leader in Geraint Thomas, the Welshman who has visited these shores more than once. Thomas got his first taste of a grand tour at the 2007 Tour de France with Barloworld as a 21-year-old. Eleven years later he won the Tour de France.

There are two South Africans riding in the Giro, Stefan de Bod and Ryan Gibbons, two of just three South Africans on the World Tour. Daryl Impey, the first South African to wear yellow at the Tour, is in his last year of a career that has entertained and delighted, built of grit and determination. He is on the long list to ride the Tour de France again this year.

Pasio will be hoping for more with her AG Insurance-Soudal-Quick-Step team. When she announced she would be joining the team she said she wanted to “share and talk” with the younger riders.

“Cycling is not only about riding hard. There is so much more to it like nutrition, your mental health and recovery. Living a life as a full-time pro is something you can learn and I can’t wait to share my life experiences with the team. 

“I can mentor the riders from inside the bunch. Not as their ultimate team leader from an ivory tower but always as part of the unity that the team comes across as. We rise by lifting each other. I am also looking forward to learning from them, despite the age gap.”

She has high ambitions. To wear yellow at the Tour de France, win more races and — she’s not confirming anything yet — maybe one more pop at the Olympics in Paris next year. It will be her fourth Games and her two top 10 places have her wondering if there is more to come.

“It’s that kind of feeling of like that 10,000 hours theory. Maybe one more Olympic Games, and that would be the one,” Pasio told Olympics.com recently. “I’m definitely not opposed to another year. If I’m totally honest, I’m more or less thinking it would make sense. I’m just taking it year by year, but Paris is next year. Why not?”

Why not indeed.