mari holden

Mari Holden (b. March 30 1971) is an American cycle racer who won the World Time Trial Championships in 2000 after winning a Silver medal in the Olympic Games Time Trial in Sydney, Australia that same year. She also won six U.S. National Cycling Championships, including becoming the first American woman to win three consecutive U.S. Time Trial Championships (1998–2000) and scoring a rare double by winning both the U.S. Time Trial and Road Race Championships in 1999.

Biography

Holden's initial foray into competitive athletics was as a triathlete. She was a two-time member of the U.S. Junior World Triathlon team, and was named Junior Triathlete of the Year in 1991 by the Triathlon Federation USA. That same year she finished seventh in the Junior Triathlon World Championships. She began cycling with a club in high school as part of an overall fitness program centered on triathlon, and did not make competitive cycling her athletic focus until 1992 when she moved to Colorado Springs and began training with the U.S. National Cycling Team, initially to improve that aspect of her triathlon. At that time, she also transferred to Colorado State University where she majored in philosophy. After finishing sixth in the U.S. National Time Trial Championships in 1993, Holden was forced to sit out much of the 1994 season with a compression fracture in her back. She came back strongly the following two years, winning the U.S. Time Trial Championships both years (1995 and 1996). The 1996 event was part of the U.S. Olympic Trials competition to select members of the U.S. Olympic team. Olympic selection that year was based on overall performance in a series of time trials and road races, and although Holden won both of the time trials, she did not fare so well in the road race portion of the competition and thus failed to qualify for the Olympics. Holden's results that year highlighted a problem for her career. Whether fairly or otherwise, she had gained a reputation as a time-trial specialist who did not have the kind of all-around riding skills necessary to rise to the very top in her sport. Over the next few years, Holden raced in Europe in order prove herself on the international stage and to develop as a complete rider. In 1999, she clearly demonstrated her success in this endeavor by finishing second in the strong Women's Challenge against an international field and finishing in the top 10 in the Grande Boucle, one of the toughest and longest women's races of all time. The following year, she had her biggest racing successes, winning a Silver medal at the Olympics, followed by a victory two weeks later in the World Time Trial Championships in Portugal. That same year (2000), Holden was elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the U.S. Cycling Federation as the elected female athlete representative, a post to which she was re-elected in 2004.