This year’s Karpas MTB Race in Vršac was one of those races that tests your mind far more than your legs. It was raining nearly the entire time. The trail was full of mud, wet rocks, and roots you had to cross carefully, because one wrong angle was enough to slip and end up on the ground together with your bike. By my own standards, I started the race pretty unprepared. I believe many people would have given up the moment they saw the weather conditions. To be honest, I asked myself several times: “Why did I even sign up for this? On top of everything, I had a minor injury that made it difficult to shift gears properly. You never realize how much you need your thumb – until you injure it 😊 That meant extra caution, slower climbs, and much more energy spent than I had planned. But that’s also the whole point of races like this. They force you to learn how to stay calm when things get difficult. How not to panic. How to keep going even when you’re no longer sure how much strength you have left.

Start, stop, dig the wheels out of the mud. Start again. Your glasses fog up, the rain keeps pouring. At one point, I came across another cyclist whose chain had fallen off. Happy that I knew how to fix it, I stopped to help so he could continue the race as well. Nothing extraordinary – probably something anyone on the trail would have done. But moments like that are exactly why I love cycling. No matter how much we all ride our own race, somehow we always recognize each other when things get hard. People stop, help, ask if you’re okay, wait an extra minute even while fighting their own battle.

Cycling teaches us endurance, discipline, and how to push our limits. But it also reminds us that sport means very little if we forget about each other along the way. Because reaching the finish line matters. But staying human along the way matters even more.

Yes, I won third place. But some victories go far beyond the stopwatch.