Racing cyclist Coryn Rivera Labecki was born on August 26, 1992, in the city of Garden Grove, California. She grew up in the nearby city of Tustin. Both of Coryn’s parents were Filipino immigrants; her father Wally Rivera had been born in Tondo, a district of the Philippines’ capital city of Manila, and her mother Lina was from the City of Tuguegarao, which is 302.1 miles (486.1 kilometers) north of Manila.
Coryn’s high-profile ambitions and pursuit of athletic excellence as a champion cyclist were reflected in an interview with USA Cycling, the multidisciplinary governing body for bicycle racing in the United States. “What you do in life echoes in eternity,” she said when asked during that interview to share her favorite quote.
The pivotal figure for Coryn’s ultimate embrace of cycling as her passion and profession was her father, a laboratory scientist who had been a motocross racer. “I was always an active and competitive kid growing up,” she recalled in an interview posted on the Team EF Coaching website. “I used to play soccer in early grade school and my dad put me on the back of [a] tandem for road rides.”
By the time she was nine years old, Coryn had acquired her own bicycle and was tagging along with her father and his friends on their informal group rides. She eventually began outpacing all of them during those rides. Coryn’s indisputable competitive streak, coupled with her formidable pedaling skills, soon motivated her to take part in the races for younger cyclists at the Redlands Bicycle Classic. This event, which is held in the city of Redlands in California, has the distinction of being the longest continuous invitational series of cycling stage races in the United States.
Coryn competed in an open race at the Redlands Bicycle Classic and “she just crushed everybody,” according to Wally Rivera in an interview with WORLDteen magazine. “She had to race with older kids – 16-year-olds sometimes and she was just nine or ten, and she kept winning,” he further recounted. Coryn later recalled in her Team EF Coaching, “I was hooked on racing and the rest is history.”
Over the next few years, Coryn sustained her laser-like focus on cycle racing. She turned professional at the age of 16. A major milestone in her continued growth as a cyclist took place during her years as an undergraduate student at Marian University in Indianapolis. It was there that Coryn continued to refine her cycling abilities under the direction of coach Dean Peterson.
“I’m grateful for my time at Marian and for Coach Dean,” she said in a 2021 interview with the Indianapolis-based Criterion. “At that point in your life, there’s a lot to learn — going from a kid to an adult. It helped shape me as an adult. I don’t think I’d be where I am today if I didn’t go through everything I did at Marian.”
Another high point for Coryn at this educational institution involved meeting fellow student Nate Labecki, whom she would eventually marry. She graduated from Marian University in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in business, management, marketing, and related support services (with a concentration in entrepreneurship).
Coryn has since more than held her own in high-level cycling races across the globe. She rode for Team Sunweb (subsequently renamed Team DSM and now known as Team Picnic PostNL) from 2017 to 2021 and Team Jumbo-Visma (the present-day Visma–Lease a Bike) in 2022-23. Coryn has been affiliated with UCI Women’s Continental Team EF Education-Oatly since 2024.
During her career to date, Coryn has won well over 70 national titles. An especially notable accomplishment for her involved finishing first in the Tour of Flanders race for women in 2017. These annual road cycling races in Belgium date back to 1913, and Coryn made history as the first American – woman or man – to win one of these prestigious competitions.
Another defining dimension for Coryn throughout the years has been her strong family ties. Her favorite memories in this regard have included trips to the Philippines to visit relatives there. In her blog post about a 2018 trip to that country, she highlighted both those family ties and her inevitable round of cycling activities.
“It was humbling to take part in a cycling weekend in the country my parents are from and see the growth of cycling there,” Coryn recounted. “Both coastal and mountain views here were crazy and I even got to see some monkeys just hanging on the side of the road and hundreds of bats just chilling in the trees . . . And my dad and I even got to ride in the grand fondo [long-distance race] at the end of the week with hundreds of other cyclists who came into town to ride and enjoy the beauty of the island.”
Coryn and her family have also experienced their share of tragedy throughout the years. An especially devastating development was when Wally Rivera died of COVID-19 in 2021 after having been involved in efforts to combat this disease. “This has been a really, really difficult time in my life, without a doubt,” Coryn acknowledged in an interview later that year with VeloNews. “Probably the hardest thing I am currently still also going through, but still really trying to make the most of the present moment and also honoring my dad the best way that I can.”
On a far more lighthearted matter, Coryn once described in an interview with Cannon Bikes what she would have done with her life if she had not become a professional cyclist. She made it clear that the alternative would have involved another mode of transportation. “I would be a pilot,” remarked Coryn. “I am a short person so it would be a way for me to be ‘taller’ than everyone and to see the world from a different way.”
In her aforementioned interview with Team EF Coaching, though, Coryn left no doubt about her consistently strong devotion to the world of cycling. “I am a tried-and-true racer at heart,” she asserted. “I love every aspect that contributes towards success. Training, nutrition, mental strength, recovery, sleep, life balance, preparing for specific weather conditions, learning the race course, equipment, teamwork, and tactics.”
Coryn then noted, “I believe success is when preparation meets opportunity. I also know that ‘success’ can mean different things for different people. Whether it be finishing a century, contesting a final sprint, setting a new personal best, or being able to drop your buddies on the weekday group ride, a lot of the same factors will contribute towards those goals.”
Photo Credit: Geof Sheppard (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Geof_Sheppard) – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
For more information on Coryn Rivera Labecki, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coryn_Labecki and https://www.teamefcoaching.com/coaches/coryn-labecki/
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