Working the night shift: former skateboarder Gabriela Guerra now earns six figures racing a bike at 2 a.m.

It is 11:30 p.m. in the Guerra household, and Gabriela (Gabi) Guerra is just waking up. Outside, the world is silent and black, but inside, Gabi's day is only just beginning. In the next few hours, she will step on the scale, warm up her legs, shovel down hundreds of grams of sugar, and race on an indoor trainer. Sweat will pool on the floor as she sprints toward a digital finish line. This isn't a hobby or a side hustle; this is Gabi's job. The 31-year-old Brazilian is a professional esports cyclist and a two-time world silver medalist who earns six figures a year racing online on the MyWhoosh platform.

Gabi found cycling the way many elite athletes do: through injury. In a previous life, Gabi was a professional skateboarder, racking up tens of millions of views for her skateboarding videos, travelling the world, collecting sponsors, and building a career on four wheels.

About that time in her life, Guerra said she loved "the freedom to create – the challenge to overcome. The art of each trick, flying and controlling the board."

But then her body forced a reckoning.

An ACL tear sidelined her for 11 months. Then came torn ligaments in both shoulders. Then the ACL in her other knee. While recovering from her third knee surgery in 2019, Gabi bought a mountain bike, and within a few weeks, she was off racing. She moved up through the ranks quickly, soon taking on the best racers in Brazil. But then, the COVID-19 pandemic began.

She had started a business exporting Brazilian honey to Germany, and allowed this to be her focus for a time. But living in Germany in the winter of 2021, she was getting stir crazy and needed a way to stay active. She found Zwift through a Google search and was immediately drawn in. A few timely connections earned her a spot on an elite racing team, and it wasn’t long before Gabi was taking on the best indoor cyclists in the world.

From the outside, her life looked extraordinary. Born in Curitiba, Brazil, she had moved to Germany at age 10, learned multiple languages, became a professional skateboarder, travelled the world, earned a business degree, started a business and rebuilt herself as an elite athlete once again. Racing on Zwift, she’d also met an American named Nathan Guerra, one of Zwift’s first commentators, personalities and presenters. The two hit it off, and it wasn’t long before they were married, and Gabi moved to Nathan’s home in Wisconsin and became a stepmom to his five kids. But behind the scenes, things weren’t all that rosy.

For one, her family didn’t understand or support her athletic path. They were builders and creators, doctors and engineers. Gabi, being a professional indoor cyclist, was not something they would be proud of.

"They were happy I would not be risking myself on open roads but sceptical about how this 'business model' could even work," Gabi said.

She also struggled with an eating disorder for many years. It’s something she’s quite open about now, not wanting this to happen to more people

In 2022, severely underweight, she crashed while mountain biking in Brazil and suffered a double hip fracture and a broken collarbone. It was the moment she knew something had to change.

She shifted her focus to reframing her relationship with weight and nutrition, and hitting the gym to build a solid base of muscle around her frame. The payoff was immediate. In less than a year, she went from winning a Category 4 race at the Tour of America’s Dairyland to finishing top 10 in the Pro/1/2 field.

But old habits die hard and in the winter of 2023-24, she’d lost weight again and was struggling. The balance between weight, power, and performance wasn’t quite working. But her husband was there to support her every step of the way. Together, they took a step back to evaluate, and they came up with a long-term plan to get her back to her best shape, both physically and mentally.

By the summer of 2024, Gabi was riding at her best-ever level. That summer, she placed fourth at the Chequamegon mountain bike race, a round in the Life Time Grand Prix, beating established off-road pros, and she went on to finish second at the UCI eSport World Championships after a heartbreaking final sprint in which New Zealander Mary Kate McCarthy beat her to the line in the final round of racing.

It was heartbreaking, but it was also "the most motivating thing that could have happened,” Gabi said. She had been one sprint away from becoming a World Champion.

By 2025, Gabi had fully committed to the strange, demanding world of elite esports cycling. Her primary target: the MyWhoosh Sunday Race Club, a high-stakes series run by a UAE-based platform where the best riders in the world compete for serious money. It requires Gabi to work the night shift, racing at 2 and 3 a.m., but the six figures in prize money is well worth it.

The schedule, however, is tough. Gabi goes to bed between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Saturdays so she can wake up before midnight. There are no dinner parties. No late nights with friends. No spontaneous weekends away. From Friday to Sunday, her life revolves around weigh-ins, carb loading, and razor-thin margins.

She follows a strict pre-race diet that includes carb-loading on Saturday mornings, and no sodium from Friday until Sunday’s weigh-in. The weigh-in takes place 30-50 minutes before each event, so Gabi hits the scale at 1:10 a.m. every Sunday. She doesn’t eat anything before the weigh-in. Instead, she spends that time waking up with a “happy light” (think: bright lights used during winter to ward off seasonal depression) and perhaps a pre-race ride. After the weigh-in, she consumes caffeine, bicarb and sugar before jumping on the bike for her warm-up. If she ever needs solid food before the race, it will be rice with honey or maple syrup.

Gabi plans to race every single Sunday Race Club event in 2026. No weekends off. No breaks. And any travel necessitates bringing a bike, trainer and computer and tow as well as a solid internet connection and power outlets on the other end. It’s not glamorous, but it is professional. And it is, undeniably, a pathway that pays better than most IRL racing careers.

"I love almost every minute of it. Like any other job, it has its ups and downs, and like anyone [who is] self-employed, you can quickly overwork yourself," Gabi commented.

"I have been figuring out a good rhythm from week to week, setting up a family schedule and everything else around it. Racing every week is very tough but I can't imagine not doing it right now. I am really enjoying this season of my life and have a big passion for this sport. I love how I can always stay at home. [At the same time] the training has been extremely demanding so it's hard to find extra time and energy for anything else.”

In addition to the SRC, Gabi hopes to race on the actual tarmac as well this summer with her sights set on the Brazilian Road National Championships and American stage races like the Redlands Classic.

Despite her wide range of skills and success in esports cycling, Gabi insists esports cycling shouldn’t be compared to road, gravel, or mountain biking. It’s its own discipline, with its own pressures and peculiarities—like hydration testing, weigh-ins, and constant scrutiny of data. Guerrai tracks everything: blood work, hydration, lactate, and body composition. She knows her numbers. She knows her body. After everything it’s been through, she has to.

At 31, with a VO2 max 77.9 ml/min/kg after less than a decade of serious training, she believes her best years are still ahead.

"I would love to experience top (WorldTour) road racing and TT. I want to continue pursuing cycling esports, growing/molding the sport, [being] a good role model but also obviously staying healthy, strong and being able to guide, help and inspire others," Gabi said.

"Later, if my income doesn't depend on racing and I can take a bit more 'risk' and time, then there might be a few changes to what I do, such as riding more MTB."

Despite its demands, Gabi is passionate about virtual cycling and wants to share the benefits of indoor training and racing with others: You can spend more time at home with your family. And you eliminate the risk of crashing and suffering serious injuries, of which Guerra has had her share.

These days, she’s swapped her skateboarding videos with livestreams of her training and racing, and she’s started coaching as well. She loves to teach, she says, and simply “be there for others…especially women, and especially in Brazil.”

Gabi has never taken the conventional path in life. She’s built careers where others saw hobbies. She’s rebuilt her body after it broke. And now, in a sport many still struggle to take seriously, she is making a very real living.

Esports cycling may not look like traditional racing, but for Gabi, the sacrifices, the discipline, and the commitment are exactly the same. The only difference is the finish line. And at 2 a.m., she’ll be sprinting for it.