July Furtado

Juliana "July" Furtado (born April 4, 1967 in New York City ) is a former American cyclist and two-time world champion who competed in races on the road and on a mountain bike .

Juliana Furtado grew up in Vermont and operational 1981-1987 skiing and was a member of the US national team. After several serious knee injuries, she turned to cycling.

In 1989 Furtado became national road racing champion . Then she mainly competed in mountain bike races. From 1991 to 1994 she was the "Overall Champion" of the National Off-Road Biking Association (NORBA), from 1991 to 1995 she won the national Grundig racing series and from 1993 to 1995 the World Cup. She became mountain bike world champion twice: in 1990 in cross country (first) and in 1992 in downhill ; this makes her the only athlete who managed to win the title in both disciplines. In 1996 Furtado started at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in cross country and finished tenth.

During the Olympic year, Juliana Furtado was not feeling completely well and in 1997 she was diagnosed with lupus erythematosus , an autoimmune disease. She therefore had to end her active cycling career. She currently lives in Northern California and promotes the mountain bikes named after her, called Juliana . She was inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in 1993 and the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame in 2005.

literature

• Morgan Hughes: July Furtado: Rugged Racer , Lerner Publishing Group 1998.

Web links

• July Furtado in the database of Radsportseiten.net
• July Furtado in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
• Juliana Furtado on usbhof.org