Micaiah Besler tearing up oval track
Former national-level diver chasing a spot at junior world championships
When Saskatoon’s Micaiah Besler burst onto the Canadian oval-track cycling scene, she caught many onlookers off-guard.
They wondered exactly who this stranger was and where she had come from.
Besler and her bike didn’t drop from the sky, but many thought as much after the cycling newcomer seemingly popped up from nowhere.
“I told her that she was going to turn some heads and she did,” said Houshang Amiri, Besler’s Victoriabased coach who started working with the teen at a cycling camp in February 2016.
“Right from the beginning, she had great potential, like I see in many athletes. She was one of those athletes who believed in herself and believed in the coaching and followed the program to a ‘T’ and it paid off.”
Saskatchewan doesn’t even have a track on which to train, so ovaltrack cycling is virtually unheard of in the province.
Also, junior cyclists usually develop through the cadet ranks and do not instantly appear on the national scene like Besler did.
“The coaches who approached her at nationals were like, ‘Where did you come from?’ ” said Besler’s mom, Melanie.
“They expect to see you as a cadet and there’s a U-17 category, right? And she wasn’t there. She came out of nowhere. She turned a few heads at nationals, which was really good. We’ll see where it goes from here.”
Besler — now being considered for Canada’s national team at the 2017 UCI junior track world championships in Italy — has been recruited by the B.C.-based Tag Cycling Race Team.
At nationals, the 17-year-old Besler helped the Tag Cycling squad capture gold in the junior women’s 500-metre team sprint final and four-kilometre team pursuit final. Besler also won a silver in the junior women’s 15-km point race final. She placed fifth in the 7.5-km scratch race final and sixth in the 500m time trial final.
Amiri said Besler has the athleticism, work ethic, drive and determination needed to excel in the sport.
“She has all of those things. She’s got athletic ability because she was a diver. She has a strong core and flexibility component that elitelevel athletes need. She improved quickly. It was very surprising to many people. It’s all about getting the right fitness. She has that fitness plus technical ability, which she gained through those training camps. She made the package complete.”
CYCLING NEOPHYTE
Besler is still rather new to the sport.
Up until last year, she had not done any competitive cycling, period. Like most youngsters, she rode her bike in the neighbourhood or on the Meewasin Trail, but the thought of racing was totally foreign to her.
She began competitive cycling in 2016, making Saskatchewan’s provincial team and competing at 2016 road-racing nationals.
Before that, she had been a national-level diver.
After devoting seven years to competitive diving, she and her parents made a decision to leave the sport, which had become a mental grind.
“My parents were wanting me to try something else, so that is why I did cycling,” said Besler, a Grade 11 student at Centennial Collegiate in Saskatoon. “I decided it was time to move on.”
Besler went out to compete in the 2016 B.C. provincial championship, which was her first real competitive test on the track. She did fairly well, but then came home to no track to train on. She returned to Burnaby, B.C., for a training camp over the Christmas holiday break. She kept Amiri as coach.
“He’s absolutely amazing,” said Melanie.
Besler’s family drove her out to B.C. for the western Canadian championships in February. This was her second race and another chance to get on the track.
“She kicked butt, to much of our amazement,” recalled Melanie. “She shocked us. We didn’t realize how strong she was. She did really well there, so we decided to do nationals and, of course, she excelled there.
“She really has not had a whole lot of track training or time on the track, but she’s just a very strong, aggressive, fast learner, so that’s where she’s gotten so fast so quickly.”
Last week, Besler flew to Vancouver and drove down to Washington to compete at a race with Tag Cycling.
“It’s expensive — there’s a lot of travel and expenses — but we kind of feel it’s all well worth it,” Melanie said. “There are so many lessons learned through sport and it keeps them out of trouble. Some parents have said it’s better to pay now than later, that it keeps them out of trouble.”