MARK ETHERIDGE: Switzerland just right for Madelaine as she reaches for the mountains

In 2014 SA’s Madelaine le Roux was crowned African Youth Games triathlon champion in Gaborone, Botswana. Almost 10 years later, she has seamlessly glided (like the ever popular 3-In-One oil) from three codes into one.

Gone are the competitive aspects of swimming and running and she now focuses exclusively on cycling at the very core of the sport, the UCI World Cycling Centre (WCC) in Aigle, Switzerland, where she and eight other women from all corners of the globe are nurtured at Mon Sejour (the cyclists’ residence) to hopefully graduate to the highest level.

Just recently she raced under two helmets (not literally) at the world road cycling championships, the mixed team trial event for the WCC and then the elite women’s road race for SA.

Now 26, Le Roux will freely admit she is the very epitome of sports junkie. “If I had my choice I’d just do sport, sport and more sport,” she admits. “But after I matriculated I went to ETA Sports College in [hometown] Bloemfontein and did a sports conditioning and sports massage diploma. Although I wanted to focus on sport I realised that I’d one day need an income, so went to Free State University and got an educational degree, where I majored in English and biology.”

All her spare time was dedicated to sport, though, as she tried to break through into the half-Iron Man triathlon distances. “I did everything, but people started telling me to focus on my cycling as that was where my strength lay. But my impression was that one sport wasn’t enough. I was used to training three times a day, sometimes more — what would I do with all the spare time?”

Covid-19 then cooped her up at home in Bloem and she became a human hamster. “I got a treadmill, which I managed to break, borrowed an indoor trainer, ran up and down our driveway of about 20m — ran a half-marathon entirely on the property one day.”

She later got into the Zwift virtual racing scene and though still dreaming of a pro triathlon career, reality was setting in — without an extremely rich family or high-powered sponsors it would be virtually impossible.

The switch to cycling only came late in 2020 when she was recruited by local team Cycle Nation but there were still few races. “I went a bit crazy with training, I probably overtrained so, so much. I was training 30 hours plus per week, doing 1,000km plus indoors and outdoors and I burst onto the local scene and was suddenly doing so well that antidoping teams came to our house so, so many times to test me.”

It was teammate and 2012 Olympian Jo van de Winkel who promised to get in touch with fellow Olympian and SA’s best road cyclist, Ashleigh Pasio, for some help with getting her to Europe.

“I can remember it like yesterday,” Le Roux says. “I sent my CV to Jo on the Monday and that Thursday I was sitting in the darkness for dinner [courtesy of load-shedding] and got an email from World Cycling Centre asking for a Zoom meeting the next day because there was a place in the team — I just freaked out ... I had a job for the next year.”

Moving on and Le Roux is in her second year at the UCI WCC, where she spends roughly nine months a year. She says the adaptation was immense.

“The difference between racing in SA and Europe is like fruit and vegetables. Back home if you get 20 riders in a peloton it’s considered big. Over there that wouldn’t even be a race. Here [in Switzerland] the average-size peloton is 100 plus riders and recent world champs in Glasgow had 200.

“Also, in SA we just don’t have climbs and descents that come anywhere near what Europe offers, so I’ve had to seriously work on my bunch-riding skills and my descending skills — partly because I only started pure cycling so ‘late’ in my career.

“But I’m getting there and finally made a breakthrough by finishing ninth in a UCI 1.1 category race, the Alpes Gresivaudan Classic this year.”

That race was over 130km with upwards of 3,000m elevation and it was ground-breaking for Le Roux. “I was climbing these huge ascents with all these big riders, my heroines, people like French national road champ Evita Muzic.

“And in the Tour de Suisse I found myself alongside former world and Commonwealth champion Lizzie Deignan.”

She feels frustrated that her numbers in training are not yet translating into top results but realises it’s all a process. In this regard she is helped by Durban-based psychologist Kirsten van Heerden, who assists so many of SA’s elite athletes and constantly reminds her that less can be more in terms of training.

And Le Roux also has only good memories of manager/coach Viv Williams, a national age-group champion in her own right, at those African Youth Games back in 2014. “We still stay in touch — she’s one of the best people I’ve ever met and like a second mom to me.”

Le Roux was part of the SA team for the recent UCI Cycling World Championships in Scotland and lapped up the experience.

And though it hasn’t always been the case, she says Cycling SA really came to the party. “All we had to sort out was our flights to and from Glasgow and otherwise everything was sorted, which was great, we had seigneurs, sports massage, etcetera, so a real step in the right direction.”

She knew the extremely tight and technical course in Glasgow would be a true test in her support role for SA No 1 Pasio. “In this case it would have been to get into the early break but one of the weaknesses I’m working on is my positioning within the peloton and from the start I just couldn’t get into the right position. Some races I get it right, others not so much but I do hope that before Ash decides to retire I’m able to help her achieve the top result she’s been working for at world champs.”

Le Roux is hoping to have the option of returning for one more stint in Aigle in 2024, and will discuss it with the centre’s coach, but knows it’s soon going to be make or break whether a big European team signs her up and gives her a regular salary and top racing experience. There are now two big teams interested in her. 

“I can’t thank the World Cycling Centre enough — if it were not for them I’d probably be sitting in a classroom somewhere in Bloemfontein rather than having this interview.”

Despite winning a couple of high-level Swiss races (all of them higher than anything in SA) 2023 has been particularly tough for her in terms of homesickness and stress as mom Corné had a lengthy battle with cancer when she was last in SA.

“The girls in my team have become like sisters to me and the house-mother, Janine Johns, comes from Durban so I get to speak her home language sometimes.” However, Le Roux’s accent these days is a myriad from all the nationalities she comes into contact with.

“I run the accommodation for athletes coming to train at the centre. We have males and females from all over the world — in track, BMX, the women’s continental road team and also mountain bike,” says Johns, whose husband Tyrone was manager of the SA BMX team at the 2014 Youth Olympics.

“Maddie is such a nice person to have around — she loves to help, she’s loving, caring, very respectful and her parents can be very proud of the beautiful young woman [inside and out] that she’s becoming ... she’s a pleasure to have around. Also, us being South Africans and Afrikaans-speaking, we do talk a lot,” Johns added.

On her mom’s condition Le Roux says: “She’s much better recently, thankfully. She had chemotherapy, surgery, radiation and everything went successfully, but it’s still very stressful and wish I could be with her as she’s feeling very ill with the new course of chemo.”

For now, though, Le Roux is fighting with every cell to relax her need to train, gain recognition and finally turn effort into excellence! Don’t bet against her!