Shayna Powless on Cycling Esports Worlds (and More)

February 25, 2022

Shayna Powless is a professional bike racer and a lot more than that. Besides road racing for the L39GION of L.A. team she's a former national champion mountain bike racer. She's racing in the Cycling eSports World Championships on Zwift February 26th upcoming (that's tomorrow, Saturday, as of this writing, 10am EST).

L39GION is pronounced Legion, this ultra-popular team consists of the Williams Brothers most notably, and also Freddy Ovett (son of Olympic champion runner Steve Ovett), and of course Shayna Powless. But there's a lot more to Shayna as you'll see, so, let's just get to it!

SLOWTWITCH: How analogous is Zwift racing to outdoor racing?

SHAYNA POWLESS: I consider Zwift its own discipline. Racing indoors is more of a mental challenge, you don't have the wind or any stimulus, like you do riding outdoors. Indoors is more challenging. Zwift races are much shorter, between 20 minutes and an hour and they tend to be full gas from start to finish. Also, the draft effect is accentuated on Zwift. If there's a gap in a race it's so much harder to close it. Then there's power-ups. Knowing the courses is important so that you know when to use a power-up. It's very game-like in that respect.

ST: Are you a better Zwift or outdoor racer?

SP: Pretty even.

ST: Are you surprised at how much better, or poorer, your competitors are when you race them on Zwift versus outdoors?

SP: Good question. I know some who're only Zwift racers; they specialized in that. When they go outdoors it doesn't go as well. But I've had teammates where the only races they did were on Zwift, even though we were on the same team. That was their specialty. But Zwift is a useful tool if you're an outdoor racer, because it's tougher. It makes you mentally tougher, because of how hard the races are. It makes you mentally and physically tougher. Those gains have carried over to outdoor racing.

L39gion provided Wahoo KICKRs so thankfully I get to continue on Wahoo [Shayna moved from Wahoo-sponsored Twenty24 team, where she was for 5 years, to the L39gion of L.A. team for 2022]. But I'm now on Hammerhead for head units [SRAM purchased Hammerhead recently, so, some SRAM athletes are now Hammerhead athletes]. We [all competitors] were provided Wahoo KICKR V5 trainers for the [Esports World Championship] race.

ST: When you ride or race are you on a [KICKR] Climb?

SP: It's something that I love training on, but I opted to not use it for Worlds. No KICKR Climb.

ST: I think I remember that you came up in high school as an XTERRA racer. I remember talking with Emma Pooley at Tour of California, during an invitational time trial with an all-star field and I remarked that it seemed like a fair number in the field came from triathlon and she corrected me. "No. We all came from triathlon." Because triathlon was the lower cultural barrier to entry. Is that how it was for you? Because you started as an XTERRA racer, then a national champion Mountain bike racer and now here you are today. How did that happen?

ST: Where I really found my passion for cycling was in triathlon. Cycling was my best sport. My transition to cycling came from having a blast in NICA racing. [NICA is the very popular high school mountain bike race leagues across the U.S.] I got a couple of state/national titles, and had a lot of fun doing it. That was the turning point. Triathlon was where it all started for me, gravitated to cross country mountain biking, and in my junior year [of high school] I stopped triathlon to focus on mountain biking.

ST: And then to road?

SP: Then to road in 2017. I'd just graduated from college. I wanted to follow in my brother's footsteps; he made that same transition that I did a couple of years before. I was intrigued by the team aspect of road.

[Shayna's brother Nielson Powless rides for the Pro Tour team EF Education-EasyPost and has ridden in all three Grand Tours].

ST: You and your fiancé both come from Indigenous heritage. Did that play a part in your meeting, or was it just luck?

[Shayna Powless is engaged to professional football nose tackle Eli Ankou, from Canada originally and now playing for the Buffalo Bills. They met while both were in college at UCLA.]

SP: Pretty much luck. Super random encounter. We sat at the same table in the campus dining hall and started talking. The rest is history. After a month of knowing each other I found out he was Native as well.

ST: You're both equally eloquent, strong advocates for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Sometimes instinct suggests who took the lead and who followed, but in this case, with you two, I can't tell. Both of you are just great. Eli is terrific to listen to, just as you are. How do you come to this burden you carry for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women?

SP: Both of us being indigenous, we both feel that the MMIWG [Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls] crisis hits pretty close to home and has affected both of our communities. Both of us being Native professional athletes we both felt we should use our platforms to give voice to this crisis. Most people don't know about it. It's unfortunate that more people aren't aware of it. Native American women are murdered at a race 10 times the national average. Homicide is the third-leading cause of death among women 10 to 24 years old. Three out of four native women experience violence in our lives, from the Department of Justice.

[Shayna and her fiancé Eli have their own foundation, Dreamcatcher Ride for MMIW, where supporters pledge per mile Shayna rides during 2022.]