Welcome Clara Koppenburg to EF Education-Cannondale

The 28-year-old German brings strength, experience, and her ever curious, energetic mind to our new women’s team.

Clara is a constant student of her sport. Although she has been a professional for close to a decade, she is forever trying to learn more about cycling by spending time on her bike and speaking to smart, enthusiastic athletes and friends. That’s a big reason why she wanted to join EF Education-Cannondale.

“I know that we will have a lot of experienced riders who can teach me a lot,” Clara says. “And we’ll all learn from each other. The team has such a long history on the men’s side too. I expect that we will get quite a lot of positive vibes from the men and learn a lot. I want to keep growing as a rider. I look forward to having some strong teammates around me, so we can play our cards and really make life harder for some of the dominant teams!”

As much as Clara still wants to learn, she will, in her own way, teach too. Clara’s teammates will be able to pick up the most important skill of all from her: how to learn. Clara has had to acquire her own knowledge and skills on the go while racing for professional teams.

In 2014, she was offered her first pro contract just a few months after she had ridden her first races. Her athletic background helped. When she was a kid, Clara rode horses, played tennis and basketball, and skied, both alpine and cross-country. A talented runner, who raced all the distance events on the track, she studied sports science, which she loved, because she could earn half her credits by sailing or rowing or doing other outdoor activities with her friends from class. Her dad worked for a professional cycling team, but Clara never considered riding bikes herself.

“I sometimes went with my dad for a mountain bike ride and I really, really hated it,” Clara says. “The only thing I was going with him was for the coffee break or the ice cream afterwards.”

Then, just when she was finishing school, her dad invited her to a big race in Colorado. Watching the pros race up the Rocky Mountains, she saw a sport that seemed a world away from the off-road jaunts to cafés and ice cream shops she’d done with her dad.

“I was so amazed by how they raced and how deep they could go and how much they could suffer,” Clara says. “I truly fell in love with the sport and decided to start training. I was able to join a little training camp with Liane Lippert, who is now a super good pro, and she totally inspired me. She was three years younger than me, but I was her biggest fan. When she told me that she was doing bike races, even outside of Germany, that was incredible for me. I just thought, Wow! She said, maybe you can join my club team, and from there on, I did a few races with the club and then I joined the big team and never thought about doing anything else anymore. From the beginning, I just loved pushing myself to the limits.”

Clara was thrown into bike races against some of the best cyclists in the world and expected to perform. Although her early learning curve was steep, she kept climbing. By riding for her teammates and doing whatever job she ever was asked to do, whether it was setting tempo on a mountain col or sprinting onto cobblestones, she got faster and faster. The feedback loop that kept pushing her forwards as a racer couldn’t have been tighter. There were times when she had to put on a brave face and not get too discouraged when things went badly, but Clara possesses the kind of analytical mind that can always draw lessons from failures and victories, however small. She loves the games that she gets to play as a cyclist.

“My mom always says that I am a riding atlas,” Clara laughs. “Here in the Black Forest, I will say that from this point on this road, it will be 15.6 kilometers with 223 meters of climbing and will take you exactly 32 minutes, if you have a little headwind then maybe 33. I like the math. Whenever I am on the bike I am also counting or calculating. I like to know that if I have to train for four hours and ten minutes, I can come home after four hours and ten minutes, because I just know the roads so well. I may be a bit of a perfectionist! If I come home in exactly the same training time that I meant to do, I give myself a little, Oh good job Clara! But for me, the biggest thing is that I am outside every day, discovering new places. Even if I am just here at home in my beautiful Black Forest, I am just so happy and feel so privileged to go out and challenge myself, while seeing beautiful views and breathing beautiful air.”

EF Education-Cannondale general manager Esra Tromp is as impressed by Clara’s performances on the bike as her positive outlook.

“Clara is a great climber,” Esra says. “And she is also a really positive person. I like that a lot about her. She has a positive mindset and a positive character, which will be important to have in the team, especially when fighting for GCs for example. She sees opportunities and doesn’t dwell on setbacks, and has a really great racing style. She likes to be active in a race, which I like, and brings a big engine to our climbing group. She has already had some great results in the mountains in big races, so we hope to help her develop for the future.”

For the coming years, Clara has set an ambitious challenge for herself. She wants to stand on the podium at a grand tour. In the past, she has won the Setmana Ciclista Valenciana - Vuelta Comunitat and finished second at the Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardèche, and this year, she was second at the ReVolta. Clara just enjoys stage racing and wants to see how much better she can get at races that are a week or more in length.

“I think stage races are just super interesting with all of the tactics and having to perform every single day, especially if there is a TT. That just makes them really interesting for me. Stage races really show whether a team can work together for a long time, so I would like to get better in GC riding. And I want to get even better at climbing and work on my punchiness. For sure, a goal is to be on the podium in one of the big, grand tour races, even if next year it is just on a stage, and then long-term it is for the whole GC. Otherwise, I just want to learn and develop as a rider with teammates and help them to achieve their own goals.”

Ten years into her professional career, Clara is more motivated than ever. She will get ready for next season at home in Germany, where she lives near her beloved Black Forest, just outside of Basel. When this busy season of racing is done, she is looking forward to spending time on the wooded climbs that she knows so well, spending evenings swimming down the Rhine with friends all the way to Basel’s city center, and trying out some difficult new recipes in the kitchen. She is already famous for her vegan banana bread, which is one of her favorite pre-ride snacks.

Before long, it will fuel a lot of training, because Clara wants to race better than ever next year for EF Education-Cannondale. Join us in welcoming her to our team!