Rebecca Henderson (Orbea Factory) may have just taken a 12th consecutive elite cross-country title in a row on Sunday at the GWM Mountain Bike National Championships, but it was pain rather than joy plastered across her face as she slumped to the ground clutching her shoulder immediately after overcoming Isabella Flint (Cervélo Australia Off-Road) in the sprint that decided the tight battle.
The 33-year-old was feeling the impact of a crash in the opening lap of the race and after medical checks the reason for her pained expression was crystal clear – it turned out that she had raced to victory in the brutal wet and windy conditions with a fractured shoulder.
“In a nutshell I’ve fractured this shoulder but it’s pretty good news because the ligaments and everything is all good so no surgery is required so that’s a really good outcome,” said Henderson in a medical update Instagram post on Wednesday.
“The thumb has a possible small fracture – it's hard for them to say yes or no which I guess is a good outcome in itself – and the scaphoid is fine so no surgery. It’s just still really sore and I can’t use it so I guess I will recover in good time.”
The injuries, however, mean that Henderson will have to wait a while before launching into the UCI Mountain Bike World Series, set to get underway in Brazil on April 12-14, and will also miss out on the valuable points on offer at the Oceania Championships this weekend.
"No Brazil is a huge hit for me I made some big commitments to myself late last year that I was going to go all in for Brazil," said Henderson.
The rider from Canberra spent seven years with Primaflor Mondraker but after the squad closed she has shifted to Orbea Factory Racing for 2025 and Brazil was set to be her first World Cup with the new team. Henderson had hoped it might be the start of an upswing, with the rider who had spent years in the top few spots of the XCO world rankings having finished tenth in the UCI XCO World Cup Rankings in 2024.
"I just wanted to be back at my best, to see what was possible," said Henderson. "I worked really hard to also put a different support network around me to help me be the best I could possibly be."
"There’s been a lot of effort behind the scenes for that and I felt like I’ve been training as good as ever. I’ve been training really hard ... and it was about time for me to be accountable to myself for the goals I had set so that’s really hard to have that ripped away, but it is what it is," said the rider, concluding that she would now instead reassess, change the goals and continue working.
