SEASON REVIEW: ⁠CAROLIN SCHIFF'S TOP FIVE OF 2024

German gravel star Carolin Schiff (Canyon CLLCTV) penned this piece on her top five race moments of the year.

Carolin rose to prominence on the gravel scene after a long career in road racing and discovered her love for the off-road discipline almost by accident. 

After being talent scouted by Canyon, Carolin joined the Canyon CLLCTV in 2022 and hasn’t looked back since, taking a historic win at UNBOUND Gravel in 2023, along with victories in many of the other biggest gravel races in the world. 

This season Carolin has enjoyed another standout season, winning the overall 2024 UCI Gravel World Series and picking up her second title in the Traka 200 - one of the biggest and best gravel races on the planet.

But racing isn’t all about winning; it’s about adventure, friendship, fun, camaraderie, and pushing yourself and your machine to the absolute limits. In this exclusive piece, Carolin picks out five moments, and races that have helped define her 2024 season:

I did a small gravel race in Girona this year and I noticed that I wasn’t as good as some of the local riders when it came to riding downhill. I spoke to Canyon about this and they immediately arranged a downhill training camp for me. It was crazy. My teammate and I met up with Mateu Cavallé, a gravel and road technical coach based in Girona and we took on all the technical sections from Traka. 

We did each one again and again until we felt confident. He gave us lots of tips, videoed our techniques, and then analysed our positions. 

There was no hesitation at all and within a blink of an eye, we were in Girona and practising downhill off-road racing. It was so good, and I learned so much that I was able to put those new skills to the test and win the Traka 200 for the second time in my career. 

Before that camp, I was always racing and looking to exploit my rivals on the climbs because when it came to descending I was never that confident. Now I love them more than the climbs and that camp changed everything for me. I’m so grateful to Canyon because that camp was a complete game-changer for me as a racer.

As for the win in the Traka 200 this year, that was an important and massive moment for me. Many people from Canyon came to the race and helped make it a truly special and fun atmosphere. It was my favourite moment of the year.

Andreas Walzer was the one who trusted me in the first place and offered me the contract at Canyon. Then there’s Sascha Schmalenbach, our gravel manager and technical support on the team. He’s such a great guy and he embodies our teamwork. He works so hard and makes every dream possible. 

It’s because of the support around me that I’m here today and without the support from people like Andreas, Sascha and the rest of the people at Canyon my adventure in gravel would look very different. I’m very grateful for them, and every partner I have, and I can’t wait to get going in 2025.

I did a number of the UCI Gravel World Series races in 2024 and I really enjoyed the event in France. It was a wonderful course and one of my favourite races, and having won it back in 2023 I wanted to return to defend my title. I was super motivated by the time I made it to the start line and quite soon the race was reduced to just three riders - myself, this year’s UNBOUND Gravel winner Rosa Maria Klöser, and Axelle Dubau-Prévot from France. 

In the end, it was a super hard race and came down to a sprint between myself and Rosa. It was an uphill battle to the line and I had enough in the tank to take the win. The race came right after UNBOUND, where I was sixth in the sprint, so it was important to bounce back after that disappointment. 

The course itself was one of the best I raced all year. It had everything, from beautiful downhill sections to tough gravel parts that tested your physical and technical capabilities. 

Comparing my win this year to last year, I can definitely say that the competition was harder in 2024. Last year I was alone at the front and had a big gap on the second rider but this time around it was a much closer affair I could feel my technical and tactical side had improved significantly. I could even feel that my tactics for the sprint had improved since UNBOUND just a couple of weeks before. I made some mistakes in that sprint and after UNBOUND everyone said that the result was okay because I wasn’t a sprinter but I knew that I could finish fast and I wanted to show that in France.

This was a very last-minute addition to my race programme. I’d never done it before but with a week to go, I decided to put my name down. Like the race in France, the course had everything you want to see from a gravel race, with super fast downhills and it was up and down all day. Rosa was there too but crashed on the downhills and this was another race where my technical training really paid off. Jade Treffeisen, who I did the downhill camp with, and is my teammate and my favourite person in gravel races, was second so I was really happy to share the podium with her. 

Jade and I are very close friends and we do so much of our travelling together. Along with the downhill training camp we also had a trip to DT Swiss this year to test new equipment and when we travel together - which is most of the time - we always share rooms. I think we’re a good little combination and have a lot of fun together. 

I have to say that if it wasn’t for Jade I probably wouldn't have been at the race. She really wanted to go there and had been before and that convinced me. 

Winning in 2023 was nice but I’d become used to wearing the national champion’s jersey over the twelve months since, and I wasn’t in the mood to give it up to another rider. I have a nice team jersey of course but being the German national champion is always something special. It was a big goal to defend the title and once more I had a tough battle with Rosa. 

We had a hard race together and in the end, I came out on top but it certainly wasn’t a one-sided contest and Rosa put in a fantastic race effort. At one point, during the middle of the race, I was around a minute down on her and suffering from back pain. I wasn’t feeling good but I managed to dig deep, catch her and then take the win in another uphill sprint.

I honestly thought I was going to lose the jersey but after a very technical downhill I was able to make contact and I knew that if I had the legs then I could win in the sprint. 

The new jersey is stunning and maybe I’ll have an all-white skinsuit next year. It will go well with my Canyon gravel bike. 

Jade’s family have a lovely chalet in Switzerland so we headed there for a week and did some amazing training before racing Gravel Suisse as part of the UCI Gravel World Series. The landscape made it one of the most stunning races I’ve ever done with the Alps providing the perfect backdrop. 

I didn’t win this race, finishing second to Karolina Migon from Poland. I was with her until the last climb and at that point, she dropped me. It was a well-deserved win for Karolina, who raced really well but I was still content with his runner-up spot. 

The gravel sections were really demanding but we also had a lot of sections on the tarmac and those sections were a bit crazy because we were going between cars. If you’re in race mode you take more risks and that was a bit scary. 

My legs weren’t great that day because of all the travelling and racing that I’d done until that point and I took a short break from racing after Suisse, but the trip as a whole was one of the best experiences I had all season. 

We look forward to seeing Caro in action again in 2025.