The Radical Irony of Competitive Collaboration from Lea Davison

BOSTON, Mass. – When winning is how you make your living, and when women have less opportunity than men, a self-centered approach is the blueprint. This is how Lea Davison opened up her TEDx talk in Boston last May with this established fact. In 11 minutes, she explained the radical approach that six, highly competitive American mountain bikers collectively took to help fulfill individual, lifelong dreams to compete at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Her talk, titled “How to Win When You Don’t,” was made available to the public this past Friday, August 12, at https://youtu.be/Rr1-uCGRyl0.

Will this help or hurt my career?

avison, who is a trained public speaker, explained how the top six U.S. women mountain bikers adopted “competitive collaboration,” which is oriented around lifting each other up, supporting one another’s growth, and celebrating each other’s victories, with a goal to score the maximum number of Olympic spots available for mountain biking.

“You may think women collaborate by default but not when it comes to individual sports,” Davison said.

Tradition had to be ignored, but this went against all reason for each of the six accomplished athletes…until they crafted a plan to chase the coveted points that would lead to three spots for U.S. women to compete at the Olympics. Without giving too much away, you are invited to watch the full talk when it goes live later this week.

Watch “How To Win When You Don’t”

Davison’s talk is available now on the TEDx Boston website and linked to Davison’s athlete page on Facebook. This talk is for anyone looking to be inspired by what’s possible in the power of the collective. For anyone for whom bucking conventional trends is a strategy for problem solving, this talk is also for you, your friends, colleagues, teammates, and even your rivals.

Up next

August 14-19, Davison will race the Quebec Singletrack Experience mountain bike stage race as great training for the two main goals of the season, the UCI MTB Marathon World Championships on September 17 in Denmark and the USA Cycling Marathon Mountain Bike National Championships on October 23. She will be debuting the next cause that she will ride for at Vermont Overland on August 28! Stay tuned to her Instagram Page to be in the know

Photos By: Tedx Boston & Katherine Taylor