The gritty drive Chloe Dygert demonstrated in winning all four stages of the Colorado Classic, pulling away on finishing laps of the weekend stages even when she had the overall title all but wrapped up, emerged when she was a young girl growing up in a suburb of Indianapolis.

“When she was 6 or 7, we had a 5K run and a 15K run,” her father, David, recalled Sunday after she left the peloton breathing her fumes in winning the first women-only Colorado Classic by more two minutes. “She insisted she had to do the 15K (9.3 miles). We got done, and I thought social services was going to be waiting at the end to arrest me for letting her do that. She’s always had this incredible cardio engine, ability to recover and attack and recover, whether it was running, basketball or whatever.”

It wasn’t just her motor that set her apart, it was her will to win, and now courage is part of the equation. At the Tour of California in March of 2018, she suffered a severe concussion in a crash that essentially ended her season only two months after she set a world record at the world championships in individual pursuit. Coming back involved more than healing her brain. When she returned to racing, she had to overcome fear of crashing again. It didn’t help that when she went to the Tour of California this year, people kept asking her how it felt returning to the scene of the accident.

“That really messed my head up,” said Dygert, who rides for Sho-Air Twenty20. “I was really nervous in that race. It’s all coming together now. It’s taken a lot of time, I’m still definitely not comfortable, but it’s getting better and better every time I race.”

To the untrained eye, it looked as if her descent from the brutal climb on the Beaver Creek stage that had her pushing 60 mph on a road riddled with switchbacks was fearless, and that was where she opened her winning margin in that stage. Her father, though, could see she was being cautious.

“TBIs (traumatic brain injuries) are scary business,” said her father, wearing a new T-shirt with Colorado’s trademark C on the front because he fell in love with the state since he got here last week. “It took a long time for her to get better.”

Sunday’s race, as anticlimactic as it was, did have an interesting last couple of laps after Janelle Cole of the Lux/Flexential team broke from the peloton and Dygert went with her. They worked together until Dygert pulled away about three kilometers from the finish to win the stage by 11 seconds.

Brodie Chapman, a TIBCO-SVB rider from Australia, finished second in the overall standings, 2 minutes and 37 seconds behind.

“It’s been a wonderful event,” Chapman said. “I’m just super stoked and impressed by all the crowds, the professionalism of the organization, all the volunteers. It’s just amazing. Chloe thoroughly dominated this weekend, so for me it was just try to hang in there for second place.”

Race organizers generated some skepticism when they announced they were dropping the men’s race this year to showcase the women, but everyone involved seemed pretty happy with the way things turned out.

“When you do anything innovative or new, you’re going to have skeptics, and I took it as a challenge,” said Ken Gart, chairman of RPM Events Group. “We weren’t sure people (spectators) would show up, and that question was answered. There are things to prove globally. To prove the business model and show the quality of athletes to the world, we’ve got a lot of work to do. But in terms of the skepticism about our intent and our broad goal, that feeling has gone away.”

The event is guaranteed to return next year, because it will be the second year of a two-year contract the race has with VF Corporation as presenting sponsor. Dygert left little doubt she wants to return next year.

“Definitely,” she said as emphatically as she dominated all four days.