The Red Bulletin August 2020 (US)

While Dygert was struggling through
her season of darkness, her marriage was
falling apart. Dygert acknowledges that
she had married too young, and that,
ultimately, her career “just mattered
more.” This past January, the divorce
was finalized. By that time, Dygert had
relocated from Washington to Idaho to
be close to Armstrong.
“I don’t regret marrying Logan,”
she says. “It wasn’t the right decision.
Training with him helped form me into
the rider that I am. I appreciate Logan
and his support. I will always love him as
a friend, and he is someone I will always
stay in touch with. But I think he and
I both knew that it was for the wrong
reasons. I appreciate all that he has done
in my life. I wouldn’t take it back.”
And that’s Chloé Dygert—not wasting
time regretting mistakes or setbacks.
She’s too busy chasing the next victory.
Though she hasn’t lived with her
parents for seven years, Kate
Courtney’s childhood room remains
untouched. Ski racing medals, pictures
of horses and a Macklemore poster hang
on the walls. Scattered on the ground
are boxes of bike-racing gear. Her
mother, Maggie, refers to her daughter’s
bedroom as “shipping and receiving.”
Courtney grew up at the base of
Mount Tamalpais, the birthplace of
mountain biking. She found cycling as
a youngster, riding on tandem with her
father, a former hedge-fund analyst, to
get pancakes on Sundays. She still rides
with him often, while Maggie, a retired
employment attorney, is her agent,
helping negotiate sponsorship deals.
Courtney grew up ski racing and
running cross-country. She began bike
racing as a freshman at the Branson
School, a prep school. In 2012, at a
junior World Cup event in the Czech
Republic—her first international
competition—she finished 10th. Six
weeks later, in Windham, New York, she
became the first American junior woman
to win a World Cup event. She was 16.
FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT:
DYGERT HAS AN OBVIOUS EDGE
WHILE COURTNEY IS ALL POLISH.
The next year, racing as a junior, she
won a national title and finished sixth at
the world championship. Heading into
2014, as she moved into the under-23
category, she signed with Specialized
Racing. It made sense; she’d ridden
Specialized bikes her entire life. The
most promising American mountain
biker, adorned in stars and stripes, would
be bonded with the storied bike brand.
The only drama in Courtney’s career
thus far was her surprise split from
Specialized late in 2018. Publicly, she
was a rising influencer with an infectious
smile, posting with the upbeat hashtag
#sparklewatts. Yet privately, she had
grown unhappy with treatment by team
management, which favored established
Europeans such as 2016 world champion
Annika Langvad of Denmark.
In the week before the 2018 world
championship, Courtney and her mother
32 THE RED BULLETIN