Chloé Dygert has three Olympic medals - one of each colour - eight elite world titles in track cycling and two on the road. So why is she so frustrated and displeased with her career lately?
The 28-year-old's body and mind are riddled with scars from years of injury, her most serious being the nearly career-ending crash at the 2020 UCI Road World Championships where the sharp edge of a guardrail sliced through her left quadriceps.
Since then, Dygert has accomplished more than most cyclists ever can in their careers - she won the time trial title at the 2023 Worlds in Glasgow and two Olympic medals. But her victory at Worlds was by a thin six-second margin ahead of Australia's Grace Brown as opposed to the 92-second walloping she gave Anna van der Breggen in 2019.
After more than four years of setbacks - surgeries on her leg, a couple of cases of COVID-19, a bout of Epstein-Barr virus-induced fatigue and surgery to correct a heart arrhythmia - Dygert is in Australia for the Santos Tour Down Under hoping to rekindle her road career after finally having an off-season with relatively good health.
"This is the first winter I've had injury-free and healthy. So to be here first race, and then to be healthy, I'm really happy and looking forward to being with the team," Dygert said in the Tour Down Under pre-race press conference.
"Last year I didn't really have the season that I wanted. I just wasn't able to be who I wanted to be in the races that I competed in - I just wasn't getting the results that I thought I should be getting with the work I was putting in. I'm happy to say we did a lot of reflection and trying to figure everything out, and we figured out the issues. So we're really looking forward to this season, and I do hope that it's going to be that kind of comeback season after five long years after my accident."
It's not that everything is perfect, though. She is facing another surgery on her injured leg and another to fix a problem with her nose - the result of running into a door.
"There's always something going on," Dygert said. "They're just things that I have to live with and then go through - but that's just part of it. I can either falter or push through, so I'm pushing through as always."
Dygert was forthcoming about the cost of pushing through the litany of misfortunes that have befallen her since she burst onto the scene by winning dual titles at the 2015 Road Worlds in Richmond, Virginia.
When asked if she was proud of her results in 2024 - bronze in the Olympic Games time trial, gold in the team pursuit, silver at Worlds behind Lotte Kopecky - Dygert was brutally honest.
"I don't want to downplay how absolutely amazing it is to be at those events and to race at the highest level. But it has been very hard, mentally, in the past couple of years. I'd say I struggled more last year than I did any other year with my injury," she said.
"We figured out some of the issues that were going on, but it was very hard for me to even accept the results that I have had. I am proud, but I'm not at the same time. We don't work as hard as we do to just participate. We don't work hard to get second place, you know? That doesn't take away from the riders that are better on the day. For me personally, the goal is to win. It always is to win. That's everybody's goal."
Although her past four years have been Sisyphean, Dygert is still looking ahead to the next four, culminating in the Los Angeles Olympics, now that she feels she has solved a major problem on the bike - her position on the time trial bike was off.
"I feel kind of silly for not being able to figure it out sooner," Dygert admitted. "It was just one of those things - we couldn't figure out why I was producing power on my road bike but not on my TT bike. So we did a lot of reflection, a lot of looking back at previous positioning and everything. And so we think we've come up with a good, solid plan for the upcoming season."
Even though Dygert has had success on the road, she hasn't been able to compete over a full season since she turned pro in 2020 with Canyon-SRAM, and that puts her at a disadvantage. It has also hampered her progress almost as much as her injuries.
In 2019, Dygert took a clean sweep of the four stages and GC at the UCI 2.1-ranked Colorado Classic, overall wins in the 2.2-ranked Joe Martin Stage Race and Tour of the Gila in the same year as well as the Pan American Games and World time trial titles. Since then, she's shown flashes of that brilliance with a stage win in the RideLondon Classic and her second World title but she wants more in 2025.
"I want experience, I want to see where I can be fitness-wise. I still feel like there are a lot of unknowns with me as a rider. I still don't feel like I've ever hit my full potential just because of everything going on, injury-wise. This year, I really just want to focus on trying to be the best I can be on and off the bike, for my teammates, for myself, for the team in general."
Toward that end, Dygert travelled to Australia early, reuniting with her now-retired track coach Gary Sutton, clocking up the kilometres, and developing a more positive outlook.
"If what happened last year didn't happen, I don't think it would have made me the rider I am today, and that's pushing me forward for the seasons ahead and towards the next Olympic Games. I am, in a way, very frustrated and not happy with how [last] year went, but I can sit here today and just be really excited for the year to come."
