# Marlies Mejías will Prestige Challenger Escambray Mountain Bike

**Date:** 01/11/2022

Cuban Marlies Mejías announced that she will race in the Challenger Escambray Mountain Bike scheduled for the 21st to 23rd of this month in the impressive setting of those mountain ranges in the province of Sancti Spíritus.

"I feel honored by the invitation from the Los Manigüeros group and although I am not in my best athletic form I want to support the beautiful idea and the effort they are making to promote this sport in my country," said the "all-terrain" athlete of the national cycling team.

Marlies, who turned 29 years old last December, returned to sport in August 2021 after almost three years without competing because she was enjoying another much-desired stage of her life, being a mother.

Her debut took place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in August of last year during the Pan American Road Cycling Championship with a victory in the individual time trial of 20 kilometers in the elite women's category.

In that same neighboring country she participated in a mountain bike race and took top honors among the competing women.

Then last November she achieved a notable ninth place in Michigan, United States, where outstanding competitors of world level competed in a demanding 75 km stretch.

After a year-end break, the Queen of the Central Caribbean Games Veracruz-2014 resumed her preparation to face this cycle in which she has legitimate aspirations to return to stellar levels and attend Paris 2024, which would represent her third Olympic Games.

The girl from Güira de Melena was eighth at the London 2012 event and seventh in Rio de Janeiro 2016 in the multiple track event called omnium.

The "all-terrain" Cuban cyclist displays medals on the track and in road racing from Pan American Games, continental championships and world cups.

Combative promoter of stage races, she was part of the Weber Shimano teams from Argentina in the 2016-2017 season and the Twenty20 from the United States in 2017, a team from the elite UCI Women's Team world category.

"But I also love mountain biking, so I plan to race all three stages of the Challenger Escambray and do my best effort," she said.

Marlies is not unknown in the mountains. In 2017 she was the outstanding women's champion in the International Titan Tropic run through the hills of the northern area of Pinar del Río, where she even finished ahead of a good number of men.

The "all-terrain" Cuban female cyclist displays medals on the track and road in Pan American Games

The Challenger Escambray organized by Los Manigüeros has the support of the provincial sports authority of Sancti Spíritus, its cycling commission, and the companies of Campismo Popular and Gaviota S.A. in that territory.

The first stage on January 21st will have 35km; on the 22nd the longest and most difficult day will be held over 70 km and on the 23rd it concludes with the 30 km stretch from Topes de Collantes to Playa Ancón.