Melisa Rollins rolled off to a strong start of her new season with the Liv Racing Collective by taking second in January’s RADL GRVL in Australia, but her trip across the globe didn’t end as well.
Rollins crashed at the 100km Otway Odyssey mountain bike race in Victoria in late February, and it turned out to be fall that meant instead of heading into the US season with the advantage of southern hemisphere summer of racing to give her a head start, she’ll now be missing out on her planned opening event, Mid South Gravel, while facing an extended injury break.
“I truly wish this could be a post about how excited I am to get the season going with Mid South Gravel this weekend… but unfortunately I won’t be racing for a little while,” said Rollins in an Instagram post this week. “Two weeks ago at the Rapid Ascent Otway Odyssey I launched myself off a little roller and smashed into the landing at full speed — I hit the ground so hard that I literally vomited.
“After many hospital visits it’s clear I have a broken left wrist but I’ve been having some intense nerve pain in my right hand/forearm as well which I’m still in the process of diagnosing.”
It is a challenging position for last year’s second-placed rider in the Life Time Grand Prix series to be in just a month ahead of the opening round, the Sea Otter Classic on April 10, particularly in a year where she has embraced the privateer path for off-road racing with a shift to the Liv Racing Collective, making the jump from BlueRidge Twenty24.
Despite finishing second at the six-event Life Time Grand Prix series in 2024 it wasn’t the easiest of starts for Rollins in 2024, who came tenth at the opening round at Sea Otter and sat out the second round, Unbound, however her August win at Leadville Trail 100 MTB was the turning point.
If Rollins is absent from Sea Otter this year it will not rule her out of the series, as one round can be dropped, but she would needs to be back for the Unbound 200, where she finished fifth in 2022, to be eligible for the series rankings. Unbound is on May 31.
“I feel pretty lucky that I’ve been able to Gumby my way out of some nasty crashes throughout the years mostly unscathed, so I figure it’s about time my luck ran out. And though I thought I could escape trainer time this year with a winter trip to Australia, I guess that won’t be the case,” said Rollins.
“See ya when I see ya, gravel.”
