When she crossed the finish line in downtown Emporia — dirt folded into every crease in her face and lips — she grabbed a bottle and drank like someone who’d spent hours in the Kansas sun without a drop. She had, more or less. A flub at the first feed zone had left her chasing hydration and hanging on for some 70 miles in the middle of the day.

Then, quietly, she rolled to the recovery tent, trying to catch her breath.

Her second-place finish at Unbound, the most prestigious gravel race in the world, was a massive triumph — though Decker, as usual, wasn’t seeking attention.

“I really wanted to win,” she said, a flicker of intensity in her voice. It was the only outward sign that she’d just had her best-ever performance on a world stage.

To understand how remarkable that finish was — how close it came to not happening at all — you have to go back.

Back to when Decker was a sophomore in college, still recovering from the shock of losing one career before it even really started. Once a promising alpine ski racer, Decker had a serious ACL tear after three years with the U.S. Ski Team. After much consideration, at 21 she pivoted to collegiate racing and moved to Bozeman with a full-ride scholarship to Montana State. Nevertheless, the injury followed her. After nearly a year with unexplained knee pain, an X-ray finally offered clarity, and devastation: end-stage arthritis. Bone on bone. No cartilage. No more racing. Even walking up stairs would be a challenge, the doctors told her.

When Opportunities Arrive

By the time Decker lined up for her first gravel race — Rebecca’s Private Idaho in 2022, the fall of her junior year — it was mostly out of curiosity. She got third. Then she went to BWR Utah. Second. Big Sugar? A flat tire took her out. The results were scattered, but it was clear: Decker was good. She sensed it, too — and that feeling, combined with a competitive fire she’d never lost, was enough to let her imagine a new path in sport.

Fortunately, a start-up gravel team noticed Decker at just the right time.

“Honestly, I don’t know if I would have pursued this if they didn’t reach out,” Decker said. “It kind of made a pathway that both made sense in my head and when you're telling people what you're doing after school — ‘Oh, I'm going to go ride my bike around.’”

That was 2023, and technically her first year as a "pro," though she still winces at the term. Decker is not big on self-promotion. Her social media is quiet, her demeanor low-key. At Unbound, she and her partner Brian camped at the fairgrounds in their van. It may be for reasons like these that the "dark horse" label keeps sticking to her, long after it should've faded.

“Even at Sea Otter this year, it was like, 'Decker achieves surprise third place result’ and it’s like … that’s the same exact result I got at the last two Life Time races,” she said. “I wouldn’t call that a massive underdog story.”

She laughs, but there’s a little edge to it. Decker has been on enough podiums now — Sea Otter, The Rift, Big Sugar, and now Unbound — that her results speak louder than her voice ever will. And yet, people still talk about her like she came out of nowhere. It’s true that her results are recent. Yet her career, still just beginning at 27, hasn’t been built on hype or a master plan — just a steady accumulation of improbable yeses.

Pragmatism Defined.

This season, Decker’s return has been especially poignant. After tearing her meniscus last year — the one in her ‘good’ knee — she spent the off-season recovering. Sea Otter was the first real test, a race that became a quiet showdown with two-time Life Time Grand Prix champion Sofia Gomez Villafañe.

After Olympian Haley Batten dropped Decker on a singletrack section, it was just she and Gomez Villafañe together for the final lap of the race. And it was Decker doing all the work.

Was she angry about it? Certainly, some people were — Decker said she received dozens of DM’s telling her what she ‘should’ have done to drop Gomez Villafañe. Yet she’s resolute in how she handled it on the day.

“Looking back — could I have attacked her when she was on my wheel and dropped the strongest female gravel racer there is? Probably not,” Decker said. “Also, I was starting to cramp. I had a lot to risk. There was a group of four chasing us. So I could risk losing third for seventh. I have no regrets at all.”

That pragmatism defines Decker’s racing. It’s not reckless or flashy. Just smart, tough, and composed. Her win at The Rift in Iceland in 2024 stands out not only because it was a rare break from her streak of thirds — but because it came in unfamiliar terrain, against an entirely new field.

“It was cool to be able to perform in really different conditions,” she said. “That meant more to me than a lot of other results.”

And yet, second place at Unbound might top them all. Not because she won, but because she nearly did.

Present. Strategic. Unshakeable.

Last year, she watched the lead group ride away after a lapse in focus sent her into a muddy rut. This year, she stayed present. Strategic. Unshakable. When the break went, she was in it. She let the other women make mistakes behind her. For over 100 miles, she and her PAS Racing teammate Karolina Migon — who would go on to win — traded pulls with gravel national champion Lauren Stephens. Decker and Migon didn’t have a plan or any big tactics, but they did share a sense of mutual respect. When Migon offered Decker water during the dry miles between the two feedzones, Decker decided that if it did come to the line between them — ”you don’t chase down the teammate gave you water,” she said.

Gravel has changed in the three short years since Decker took it up. The women’s fields are deeper, the racing more aggressive, the tactics more layered. While she’s well-suited to mass-start races — able to go hard early and then settle into a diesel pace — Decker prefers women’s-only starts. There’s more strategy. More racing. “The mass starts just aren’t as exciting or fun,” she said.

Yet while the sport has evolved, Decker remains who she is. Her competitors host shakeout rides and sign autographs at the expo, but she knows that she's better suited for the quiet and solace of the campground. She doesn’t post much on social media — “I could be better,” she said — but she’s found a team that fully supports her. She just shows up and rides really, really well.

Her doctors, for one, would be floored. Decker still hasn’t exactly told them what she’s doing.
“They’d be like, ‘So, how’s it been going up and down the stairs?’ … I’m like, ‘Yeah it’s been OK, I ride my bike a little bit,’” she said, almost mischievously.

That understatement runs through everything she does. What happened in Kansas wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t loud. But it was defining — another chapter in a comeback no one expected. Not even Decker.

 “I really wanted to win,” she said again. And this time, you don’t just believe her. You know she will.