When The Going Got Tough, Jenna Rollman Kept On Going

After a terrific 2023 Para-cycling season, illness waylaid Jenna Rollman’s 2024 campaign, which left her miserable both physically and mentally. And, on top of everything else, it left her out of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.

But it’s 2025, and Rollman is back — and, she believes, better than ever.

The veteran rider from Rancho Cucamonga, California, is off to the start she wanted, qualifying for the 2025 UCI Para-cycling Road World Cup in Ostend, Belgium, starting Thursday and running through the weekend. From May 15-18, she’ll be in the second world cup in the series in Maniago, Italy. All that sets up exactly where she wants to be — the world championships in Ronse, Belgium, Aug. 28-31.

“My goals right now (are) just do better than I did last year,” said Rollman, 37, via a video call from Ostend. “The bar is pretty low. I want to raise it a little bit, and second, do well enough to make the worlds team.”

In 2023, Rollman earned her first international silver medal on her home soil at the world cup in Huntsville, Alabama. She went on to that year’s Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile, where she earned bronze medals in the road race and time trial.

Put simply, Rollman said, “I was killing it.” In fact, from August 2022 to July 2023, she rode 12,890 miles — or 815 hours and five minutes of cycling.

But then she quickly added, “In 2024, it all fell apart.”

It was a urinary tract infection, something she had been concerned about for years. She’d been lucky to avoid one. Then her luck changed.

“I got one, and it hit me like a ton of bricks,” she said. “I went to two world cups with antibiotics. I was actively sick when I was competing, and it was terrible.”

The illness precluded her from participating in the Paralympics, and to say she was disappointed is a big understatement. She said she suffered the worst depression she had ever experienced in her life.

But as they say, that was then and this is now.

She’s healthy again and qualified for the Ostend world cup with a solid finish in the 2025 U.S. Paralympics Cycling Time Trial on March 29 in Huntsville, traveling 14.6 kilometers in 24:03.13, placing her in the top six.

That performance came under difficult weather conditions in Huntsville.

“It was terrible,” Rollman said. “It was cold and it was raining, but you have that lovely southern wet humidity. Not only was it raining down; you were breathing in that moisture. The dense air makes it hard to work through.”

That’s not all. On the wet pavement, braking isn’t great, and with her wheels behind her head, her glasses were soaked, impeding her vision.

But she did it. And it’s particularly gratifying considering this is her 10th year competing in handcycling, and she’s not planning on slowing down.

“If I can cycle until I’m 60, that would be great,” she said. “I was an able-bodied cyclist, too, and when I started handcycling, I was wondering how far I can go.

“Because you’re doing it with your arms, there isn’t a concern about longevity. As long as my joints are good and my muscles are good and I can breathe, there is nothing that can stop you.”

That doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges. Life happens, which can be taxing on the body. Rollman has a 2-year-old nephew, and there are more family events to attend. At Easter, for example, “I was real tired. You get up early, you’re tired, but you do what you’ve got to do. You make a schedule.”

There is the mental aspect of the sport as well, which was especially tough last year. But she fought through it and in one way, it made her stronger.

“Last year kind of changed how I see things,” Rollman said. “I had things that were out of my control, and I had to let the results be what they were. I had to shed that baggage and move forward.

“Ultimately when you’re on the racecourse, it’s you. You just have to be free and let your experience and your mind take over. I’m always looking to access that total cooperation of getting along with yourself, because the other side is self-sabotage.”

That’s the thing for Rollman. She’s seen the heights of success, and she’s endured the low points, all in the space of a couple of years. That’s true for just about any athlete in any sport.

That’s why her mantra is simple. You have to keep going.

“Even if it’s’ not what you want, results or time,” she said. “The bad days are the days that you have the best ones. When you don’t want to, you need to try.”

Gregg Voss is a journalist based in the Chicago suburbs who has been writing sports for newspapers and magazines for more than 20 years. He is a freelance contributor to USParaCycling.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.