Melisa Rollins is hanging up her off-road wheels to embark on a top-tier road racing journey with EF Education-Oatly, having signed a two-year contract with the WorldTour outfit beginning in 2027.
The two-time Leadville 100 champion and reigning US cross-country marathon national champion said she felt like she had reached the height of her off-road career and is revelling in a career change.
“When the opportunity came for me to go and race for EF Education-Oatly, I was actually initially kind of like, ‘No, I think I'm really, really comfortable. I really like what I'm doing. I'm able to support myself. I feel like I've found a spot where I'm good,’" she said in a team announcement on Monday.
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"But then I thought about it more and wondered, is this the top? Is this where I want to be? Or do I want to try something new and really see what I'm capable of in a different discipline? Long story short, that's how I found myself saying 'yes' and giving it a whirl. That's super exciting.”
Having raced in a mix of road, gravel, and mountain biking so far in her career, Rollins won her first Leadville 100 title in 2024 and again this year. Last season, she won Chequamegon and SBT GRVL, and was third in the Life Time Grand Prix overall classification. This year, she also won the cross-country marathon national title and finished second at Little Sugar MTB.
"I started racing off-road. I always did the longer endurance races, and it just happened to turn into the Life Time Grand Prix series, so that really worked out for me," she said.
"That started as a hobby, so I’ve only been racing at the front of these races for the last two or three years, but once I started getting good, I feel like I’ve kind of reached the summit of my goals for the off-road races.”
She has already competed in Europe - Belgium and Luxembourg - several years ago with Virginia's Blue Ridge Twenty24 and said turning her attention back to road felt like a good choice, and she will relocate from Utah to Europe to compete exclusively on the road.
“It's not like I'm going in completely blind. I got the full experience. I got to race in Belgium when I was over there, and I feel like that's kind of special. I raced in Luxembourg, and I loved it," she said. "I just really liked that style of racing with a steep, five- to 10-minute climb. I think when there's something really hard in the course that makes it selective, that's where I found that I really enjoyed it.”
Rollins also said an injury setback this season inadvertently helped her prepare to step up to the WorldTour.
“I learned that you can overcome sadness and rise higher than you were before the setback. It takes trust, it takes dedication, it takes all the things that got you to the place where you were before the setback to overcome it. And with a new mindset, you'll become even stronger," she said.
"I think it set me up to make this move, actually. I'm not sure that I would have been ready for this had I not broken my elbow earlier this year and come back from it in such a strong and dominant way.”
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