Marlen Reusser is getting ready to start her first season with SD Worx, embracing the competition for team leadership roles in the talent stacked squad as it will provide the opportunity to explore different roles.
Reusser, who made the move to the Dutch team after a successful season with Alé BTC Ljubljana, explained that outright leadership was not something she was looking for in her negotiations with new teams.
“I had many offers from teams,” she said. “And some teams, for sure I would have been the clear leader, but I chose this team because I want to learn something and I want to play different roles. I’m not 100 per cent leader, sometimes I will help the team and try something for the team.”
Rather than feeling the pressure of riding amongst names like Demi Vollering and Lotte Kopecky, Reusser is looking forward to carrying less of the responsibility for success in 2022.
“It’s not so nice if, you know, you’re the only leader and everybody is looking at you and you have to perform each time,” she said, referencing the situation in which she often found herself at Alé BTC Ljubljana. “I think it’s more fun and interesting like this [at SD Worx].”
Reusser has already made a mark on the peloton and has quickly become one of the best time triallists, winning the silver medal in Switzerland at the UCI Road World Championships in Belgium last year. She is still a very recent convert to professional cycling at 30 years of age, having only started racing in 2019. Despite her impressive results, Reusser is aware she still has a lot to learn.
“Every race I do, I learn things,” the Swiss rider said. “You can see my slope of improvement in the last three years I’ve been doing this. So many things are still happening, I can’t say ‘I’m going to win this’ or ‘I’m going to do that’ for sure. I know I’m very strong and I can do nice things, but first of all I want to learn and try and play the game.”
Though Reusser has shown her physical strength in the peloton, she says the mental side of cycling has been one of the steepest learning curves.
“I’ve learned so many things, but most of all about me,” she said. “It’s a stressful life, with a lot of pressure that you put on yourself or people put on you. So you learn to regulate yourself and to understand what stresses you, what is not stressing you. You learn to read yourself.”
Going into 2022, though, Reusser seems more positive than ever with her new team.
“From what I’ve experienced so far I’m really, really happy. It’s almost embarrassing how happy I am.”
