By Ally Gravina, Moonshine Ink

It’s no secret that mountain bikes are expensive, especially for a teenage boy who grows like a weed. For Luca Robillard, 14, and his mom Annie, who live in Truckee, a June trip to Coffeebar turned into the opportunity of a lifetime when the single mom and her son ran into professional mountain biker Katerina Nash.

Annie had worked on the Mountain Bike World Cup Tour for more than 10 years, so she and Nash had mutual friends. At Coffeebar in Truckee, the three got to talking about, what else, mountain biking. Luca, who was riding his mom’s old bike at the time, had been bit by the biking bug last year when he first started competing in the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA) mountain bike league for Truckee. Like teenage boys do, Luca grew out of his bike in just one season and was in desperate need for a new one as he was already signed up for the 2017 season. Nash, a decorated athlete who has competed in the Olympics five times, twice as a Nordic skier and three times as a mountain biker, had a solution — the $10,000 Orbea Oiz she raced on in the 2016 Rio Olympics, on which she placed fifth.

“I wanted this super fancy bike to be used and not sit in the garage or hang in a bike shop,” Nash said of the bicycle collecting dust in her Truckee garage. “I had a great ride on that bike in Rio and wanted to hold on to it. Since I’m still a sponsored athlete and under contract, I wasn’t really able to ride my Olympic bike due to some new sponsorship. So my Olympic bike was sadly sitting in the garage and not being used.”

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