That’s Coryn Labecki.

Watch “One to go,” our latest Explore film presented by Wahoo, celebrating Coryn’s unparalleled career through archival footage, conversations with her close-knit family, and catching up with Coryn herself throughout the 2024 season.

She may be hanging up her racing wheels, but this sport has always been part of who she is. Growing up, she never missed an opportunity to ride, especially with her dad. So when her dad turned 50, he knew exactly how he wanted to celebrate: by taking the family to Europe for a bit of tourism and a lot of riding.

“My dad had gone to the Tour de France the summer before with a bunch of buddies, so he’d had a taste of what it was like to travel in Europe with bikes,” Coryn says. “He rode up Alpe d’Huez and everything. That’s what gave him the idea for the family trip.”

When the foursome – 13-year-old Coryn, her younger sister, mom, and dad – arrived in Paris from California, there was a classic family vacation hiccup.

“We were supposed to have rented a minivan but it was just some kind of hatchback,” Coryn laughs. “We had this double bike bag and all this checked luggage and I remember the only way the bike bag would fit was in the footwell of the backseat, so me and my sister ended up sitting sideways in the backseat with our legs toward the door, scrunched up like a little ball. That was the only way we could fit us and the bikes and the luggage in the car. We drove seven-plus hours to the Pyrenees like that.”

But scrunched legs didn’t hold Coryn back. At this time, she had only been riding for a couple of years and was still new to racing, but she was excited to take on the iconic climbs with her dad.

“We did the Col d’Aubisque, the Tourmalet, the Col d’Aspin. Gosh, there are more but I just don’t remember. Oh, we did Col de Soulor also,” she says.

“The riding itself was really cool. I was starting to follow the Tour de France at that point so I kind of had an idea about these climbs but it didn’t really dawn on me what we were actually doing and how impressive it was. I was just a kid, just riding along with my dad while my mom and sister drove in the car behind us,” Coryn says.

While a 13-year-old climbing the Pyrenees is impressive, Coryn wasn’t considered the family hero. That title went to her mom.

“With my mom doing all the driving in the stick shift rental car with my sister while my dad and I were climbing so slowly, I think it was definitely stressful at times for my mom. The running joke was that my dad only married my mom because she knew how to drive stick shift. That trip really put her to the test but she proved she could do it. She and my sister were a great follow crew.”

As Coryn and her dad passed the kilometers, sometimes they talked, sometimes they rode in the silence, but mostly she just appreciated the time with her dad.

“I enjoyed the riding,” she says. “But maybe I was also enjoying the fact that I was dropping my dad and he was the one suffering while I waited for him at the top! I absolutely teased him about getting dropped. That was one of those memorable moments in a kids’ life when the tables had turned and I was stronger than him.”

“Riding in the Pyrenees with my dad helped solidify our relationship. At that age, I wasn’t much of a knucklehead yet. I was still listening, following, being a good kid. My dad was really supportive of me enjoying cycling and getting into it. We had a really good relationship and I think we got closer for sure,” Coryn says.

Her home training roads in California offered a challenge, but could not compare to the massive mountain climbs Coryn first encountered in the Pyrenees. Still, she remembers the riding being as smooth as can be.

Years after that family trip, Coryn lost her dad.

“When I look back, I’ve developed an appreciation for these climbs and that trip,” she says. “It means a lot. I got to recon the Tourmalet when I was 13 with my dad and I got to do it again 20 years later in the Tour de France Femmes. It’s really special. It reminds me that my dad had prepared me well for life.”

When Coryn learned that the Tourmalet would feature as a summit finish in the penultimate stage of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes, she knew she wanted to share it with someone special.

“My mom and sister weren’t able to come out for the stage but my husband Nate was out there on the Tourmalet so it was nice to share that,” Coryn says.

“I didn’t have any particular flashbacks during the Tour's Tourmalet stage. I was just trying to survive and thanks to the weather, I couldn’t see a single thing. I really had no clue where we were with all that thick fog,” Coryn recalls. “There was one moment when the sun broke out at the top of the Col d’Aspin. I think it was my dad trying to break through the clouds and give me a little hope that there was just one more climb left. And then I never saw the sun again that day.”

Watch “One to go,” the latest Explore film presented by Wahoo, only on the EF Pro Cycling YouTube channel.