you may have seen her race, you probably have: blond girl, fairly short, not particularly muscular. she rode a twenty-five year old Raligh ti team-replica apparently enjoying herself a lot. starting number? 218 name? Mira Maas - according to the ranking-forms. final ranking? 7th - not bad at all. especially considering that she’s not a roadracer, nor Mira Maas and in fact she isn’t even a messenger. Mira Maas who happens to be pretty fast and furious herself spend the whitsunday-weekend in Amsterdam rehearsing with her band. the girl who took her place, Gretta, originally came to Freiburg as a guest of the Versnelling team. like most dutch girls she rides her bike regularly as a means of transportation, but that’s about it. Being with bike-messengers and knowing the beauty of Freiburg’s surrounding area she had brought her bike along and decided it might be fun to enter the competition. It was decided that it would be easiest to let her race in the name of Mira, who’s entry fee had already paid by her company. Gretta seemed to have the hang of it immediately, rode a neat quarterfinals, well organized, not to sweaty, and waving back merrily at cheering bystanders while being fast enough to make it to the semis. Of course right that night we asked begged and pleaded to her to become a colleague of us, but she is firmly committed to make her living as a designer and on top of that she’ll shortly be moving to France – bike-messenger wasteland. The semifinals she approached in the same leisurely way and obviously unharmed by the previous nights beer’s - with the same result. So it turned out that the only Versnelling entry to make it through to the finals was a non-messenger. Gretta took a slightly more serious approach now, she sighted a bit at the prospect of having to race for two more hours, then could be seen resetting the endstops at her rear deraileur and filling an extra bottle of water. She rode the final in the now familiar, undramatic fashion, her face getting a little darker with her effort and – selfadmittedly – getting slightly bored with the game after the second manifest, but she made it through and as said before finished 7th Then we all rushed back to Amsterdam to make it in time for the Tuesday morning shift. Gretta I figure slept late that next day and went very easy on the designing but then again I woudn’t bet on it, not with her. Meanwhile, next year, in Rotterdam prepare to meet the real Mira Maas, a fine courier and ex-triathlete, who will most likely live up to her yet undeserved race record.