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The media see Niki
Gudex as one of the beautiful people. We love her for being
a downhill champion. If we were shallow, we'd be like the
men's magazine FHM,
which named Australian national downhill series champion Niki
Gudex one of the world's 100 most beautiful women. Or we'd
be like Inside Sport
magazine, which dubbed her "sexiest sportswoman."
But at Bicycling,
we're deep thinkers.
We know the real
story is that, finally. the sport of mountain biking has found
a successor to Paola Pezzo, the Italian glamour-hammer who
wrapped up two Olympic mountain bike gold medals before retiring
in 2000. Unlike, say, tennis, which has been stuck with the
hapless Anna Kournikova, our sport's idealization of femininity
sat atop the podium. That was cooler than Pezzo's gold lame
shorts.
A former elite level snowboarder, Gudex
was recovering from a trampoline training accident in 1999
when some friends convinced her to try a downhill mountain
bike race. She burst out of the start gate on a Cannondale
F1000 hardtail equipped with SPD pedals but without matching
shoes to click in - and won the Sport category anyway. Within
two years, she was the pro Australian national DH series champion.
Along the way, the 24 year old has defied
a stereotype - the one about skinny cyclists being lousy downhillers.
The slight, 5 foot 4 Gudex weighs just 110 pounds - her Foes
DH Slammer weighs more than one-third her body weight. In
her first international competition, she finished a more than
respectable 21st at the 2001 World Championships in Vail,
Colorado.
Which only goes to show the woman's chops.
Next year she'll compete in cross country racing, an endurance
sport better suited to her body type. If she can power that
light weight frame up steep hills, her prodigious downhilling
skills could be devastating. Not that she'll give up downhill
altogether. Gudex plans on racing both XC and DH at the Australian
national series, and possibly at the Sea Otter Classic. After
that: the NORBA and World Cup circuits.
"I'd like to do both DH and XC for
as long as possible," she says. But her newest sport
is likely to win out. "I'd like to be at a level high
enough to compete in Athens at the 2004 Olympics in cross
country," she says. We think that would be beautiful.
Profile: Joe Lindsey.
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