Of fear and glory: this is Mavi García, Spain’s leading female rider
April 19 th 2023 - 13:00 [GMT + 2]
A former figure skater, runner and duathlete, she only turned to cycling at age 31. Eight years later, she is enjoying the prime of her career as a rider.
An internationally renowned climber, Mavi García is the undisputed number one rider in Spain as she has claimed the last six national championships at stake.
There are seven Spanish riders competing in UCI Women’s WorldTeams. Five of them are part of Movistar Team, the sole Spanish WWT squad, and devote most of their seasons to team duties. They are Alicia González, Sheyla Gutiérrez, Sara Martín, Lourdes Oyarbide y Gloria Rodríguez. Meanwhile, Basque rider Ane Santesteban is the leader of Australia’s Jayco-AlUla every time the road goes uphill. Over at Liv Racing-TeqFind, in the Spanish national champion outfit both in time trials and road races, there is Mavi García. She has already sat for three seasons amongst the top15 riders in the world… and she first took part on a cycling race just eight years ago.
During her childhood, Mavi García (1984, Marratxí) was into figure skating. It was her thing – so much as to be part of the Spanish national team. She however grew tired of it as she found it hard to balance sport, studies and life. It was too much and she decided to hang the skates in her wardrobe at age 16. It marked the beginning of eight long years without doing much sport until that time when she signed up for tennis classes. She already had a full-time job in the hospitality industry, yet she found some spare minutes to warm up before her classes by jogging around the courts. Someone told her she was very fast, that she should give running a try – and so she did by signing up for a mile run. Mavi finished in third place. Standing on that podium changed her life.
After a few years running, Mavi’s brother encouraged her to take on duathlon. It was thanks to this sport that she got a taste of glory, as she claimed three medals in different World Championships. She also got to know the pleasure of riding a bike, as much as to wonder how she could make a living out of it. A friend of hers called the Spanish cycling federation to find out, and got the whereabouts of Bizkaia-Durango as a response. The Basque team invited Mavi to a training camp. On the very first climb of the very first training ride with her conjectural teammates she was the very first at the summit. They immediately welcomed her on board.
It was the beginning of a story that nearly ended less than a year later. In her maiden race with the Spanish national team, Argentina’s Tour de San Luis in 2016, she crashed hard and harsh on her face. Her nose was broken, and several teeth too. It went to underline how she was yet to learn all the skills that most riders develop in the youth ranks. Yet now it would be even more difficult, because her weakness had now been supplemented with fear. “Back then I was death scared already at every start line, my heart beating as fast as if we were already racing,” she admitted years later. Mavi stood her ground, though, and learned to tame her heart, her mind and her bike. That very year she claimed her first Spanish National Championship with a long-range attack – her trademark.
It was now time to quit duathlon and fully focus on getting a contract to become a real professional rider. The creation of Movistar Team in 2018 granted her a spot that was a reward to her efforts. After a couple of years, she changed outfits to join the Italian WWT squad Alé, which later became UAE Team ADQ. It was in this three-season spell that she defined herself as an endurance, climbing rider. An aggressive one – sometimes out of strength, sometimes out of sheer lack of belief in her own potential. She claimed victories, like a stage of the Vuelta a Burgos and the Classic Lorient Agglomération, and suffered defeats, like this Amstel Gold Race on which she attacked too early and later finished 6th yet missing the energy she had wasted on a pointless move.
Anyway, if there is a landmark race for Mavi García’s career is the 2022 Giro Donne. She was in the best form of her life and went head-to-head with Annemiek van Vleuten – the woman some define as the GOAT in women’s cycling. Together they put the race upside down on a hilly stage to Cesena. Van Vleuten finished as the overall winner, and Mavi ended up very happy with her third position – the kind of result that sets a rider’s status in the peloton.
Last winner, Mavi García signed for Liv Racing-TeqFind, a long-standing Dutch team which wanted her to be its leader in both one-day and stage races. At age 39, the rider from Mallorca is on her prime. She has already collected eight national titles, included the last six in a row – both time trial and road races in the years 2020, 2021 and 2022. Mavi is a woman to watch on every race she takes part in, as she will be this week in the Ardennes classics and also from May 1st at La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es.