At the end of 1998, I had applied to the BCF to request permission to ride any of the Junior World Championships in 1999. Other nations were sending girls who were younger than the official age range. Could the BCF do so and allow me to gain valuable experience competing at this level? Unsurprisingly, the answer was ‘No’. So 2000 would be very important for me, as I would be 17 and officially eligible to compete in the Junior World Championships – track, mountain bike, and of course the road events. Here was my opportunity to prove myself at a world level. It was also the year of the Sydney Olympics, and as reigning British Road Race champion surely I would have a chance to compete for selection and show how good I was there?
The one race that I definitely knew I would be able to ride was the World Junior Road Race Championships, due to be held in October 2000 in Plouay, Brittany, so we thought we should go and have a look at the course. We went in the October 1999 half-term school holidays; after all, there is nothing like planning well ahead. Elite Cymru eventually agreed to fund our recce, contributing to the petrol and modest accommodation, but insisted that we find a race in which to compete while we were there to justify the expense. So we loaded two road bikes and a cyclo-cross bike on the back of the car and drove to Plymouth to catch the ferry and then made our way to Plouay. We rode the world road race course, looking at the various points of the 14km circuit, especially the three climbs, to work out where I might attack. We also rode the world time-trial course as well, and then looked out for suitable accommodation that would be handy for getting to and from the circuits during times when the course would be open the following year.
To find out if there was a local race I could enter, we visited the bike shops in town. There was a ‘duathalon’ being held in Clegeur on the Saturday afternoon, which seemed suitable. I was a reasonable cross-country runner, so I expected to do quite well. On the Saturday morning, Dad and I rode and completed our recce; we did an easy lap, then a fast lap together and finally I did one lap on my own with Dad chasing behind. Following this, we drove to Clegeur. Dad was getting my bike ready as I went to pay my entry and sign on. I came back to Dad a few minutes later with the news that it was a team race, which meant I needed to find a runner to be able to compete – and that he was going to be that runner! It took Dad a full five minutes to walk from the car to the restaurant that night – he was pretending to do his malingerer act again – but we had won our category. We finished first in the combined category of senior/junior male or female. We had done our race as requested by Elite Cymru, and we had a winner’s trophy to prove it.
Elsewhere it wasn’t going so smoothly. In September 1999, I heard the news that the WCPP, had decided to remove the junior WCPP programme for 1999-2000. The year before I had met the performance criteria but couldn’t join because I was too young; now, when I was old enough, the programme suddenly disappeared. This meant that instead of moving into the WCPP, I would have to stay with the Elite Cymru programme.
On 23 September, British Cycling issued the Olympic selection criteria. The selection races were almost exclusively World Cup races that clearly I could not attend because I was still at school. However, there was discretionary selection available to the director of the WCPP. Then on 16 December, Shane Sutton rang Dad to tell him that he had been informed that the UCI had put out a new rule that precluded me from going to Sydney. Dad rang up the BCF the next day and asked for a copy of the UCI rule and they replied by return of post. There it was. UCI information Bulletin 29 November 1999: Part 11.1.003 – ‘To take part in the Olympics each rider shall be 19 years old for the road race and mountain bike events.’
When the press spoke to BCF communications manager Philip Ingham, he gave the following quote: ‘Rules are rules and as a National Federation we have to abide by them. The UCI rules are there to protect juveniles in what is a very demanding sport. I would say that a BCF Appeal on her behalf is unlikely. Some would say that Nicole was very fortunate to win the British Championship. She hung on the wheel of the favourite and outsprinted her. It’s different at world level as it is a lot more tactical. I don’t think anyone can say that Nicole is a medal hope.’
Shane Sutton was quoted: ‘We will fight this all the way because Nicole is clearly good enough to go to the Olympics. We have not given up hope that this ruling can be overturned. I can’t see the difference, Nicole can compete at the Cyclo-Cross World Championships yet she is told she can’t do the road racing at the Olympics. It doesn’t make sense.’
The Olympic Charter actually has a very clear section which states that age shall not be a barrier to participation. However, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) can approve exceptions presented to it by world governing bodies. So we had a rule that suddenly appeared from the UCI, with the BCF happily pouring cold water on any possible challenge. There was also the contradiction that the same UCI were holding a Cyclo-Cross World Championships in January at which there was no junior event for women, so now I was going to represent Britain at senior level in that event. If the UCI felt so passionately about this rule change, why just introduce it at the Olympics and not in their own forthcoming events? Where did this new rule come from? Believe me, I asked, Dad asked, my solicitors asked. The IOC stated it was a request from the UCI, not their choice. My route to the UCI was via my home federation, the BCF. We asked many times in writing, with many follow-ups asking why there were no responses. All we were met with was prevarication and nonsense.
You will recall that at the end of the previous year I had written to the BCF, asking if I could ride a Junior World Championships event in 1999, and was told that I could not. Now having reached the standard age, all I had to do was meet the selection criteria, and that surely was written with the aim of making sure the best British rider represented the country. Peter Keen wrote the selection criteria and invested himself with the power of selection.
Peter stated that despite three years of not being beaten by a single other British female rider in any discipline in any age group event, he was not going to pre-select me for any Junior World Championships. I would have to prove I was worth selection by performances during 2000; nothing I had done before counted. An extensive programme of selection events was proposed. If I didn’t show or didn’t perform, I wouldn’t be able to go.
The situation at that time was that opinion was split two ways regarding the British Road Race Championships and my worthiness in the British Olympic team – those who thought I had a flukey win and others who thought that the girls and the support staff on the WCPP had been travelling around the world for three years at the public’s expense and didn’t know how to race. I was burning for a re-match, but an extensive programme of junior qualification rides meant I was UK based, while the Plan went training and racing overseas. I couldn’t go and meet them.
In order to qualify for the World Junior Mountain Bike Championships in June, I had to ride rounds one and two of the British Mountain Bike series. I also had to liaise with the national mountain bike coach so he could see me perform. The first round was at Thetford in Norfolk, well known for being the flattest part of the UK. I had to ride the junior women category race that set off behind a load of ‘Fun’ men, who fell off a lot and could go even slower than Dad. So my lap times were not a reflection of my ability, merely a measure of the traffic ahead on the single-track sections where I could not get past. Any comparison of my lap times with later elite women would be irrelevant because they would not have traffic problems.
To cap it all, when I had finished my race by mid-morning – we had started driving from South Wales at 2.30am – I met the national coach who asked me when I was riding. When I told him I had already showered and changed, he said, ‘Oops!’ Ooops? I was incredulous and very angry. Just 20 minutes from my house, I had a real mountain bike course and I wanted to train on that, but Peter Keen had insisted I go to Thetford, dodge in and out of a bunch of guys riding off their hangovers and then the national coach couldn’t get there in time to see me. Ten hours’ driving, a round trip of just under 600 miles. This was sheer lunacy. I won, but I proved nothing. So I was better at overtaking slow men than the other junior women. What does that count for? Why were they setting such selection conditions?
The second round was on 23 April at Margam. That was fine, and so close to home that I rode to the course and back. Then on 27 April, it was track, riding at Manchester to do some qualification testing for the Junior Track World Championships – to check what, I have little idea. Hundreds more miles of travel in the car. The Cheshire classic road race was on 7 May, a selection event for the Junior Road World Championships. More miles on the car. It also doubled as a round in the Women’s Road Race series. I certainly did not know the WCPP girls were going to be there and would have done a taper and reduced my training leading into the event to freshen up, had I known.
I now look at my training diary for the five days before the event: an arduous mountain bike session at Margam; a pursuit on a turbo fitted with a contraption straight out of Alf Tupper’s workshop, in this case fabricated by Dad, to replicate the starting load; and a flat-out ride around the Windmill circuit. My preparation was far from that which I would have undertaken for a grudge revenge match, with Olympic selection on the line.
Shane Sutton was there. He greeted us as we prepared the bike in the car park and asked if we knew the WCPP girls were there. We had no idea, we thought they were on the continent at this time. Shane wandered off and then came back and told me that Ken Matheson was boasting, saying that the WCPP girls were going to fill the top six places, and there was nobody here who could touch them. I have no idea if that was true, but all I needed to know was they were here. I joined them on the start line wearing the jersey that showed I was the champion of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I looked across at my challengers and thought, ‘You are full-time athletes and have been for years. All paid for by the Lottery. You have full-time coaches and mechanics and a whole bunch of the best equipment money can buy. Well, let me tell you . . . I’m a full-time schoolgirl and on Tuesday I have a Biology test and that chap over there, who I pretend is nothing to do with me, has a saddlebag of energy bars and hopefully he won’t have eaten them all by the end of the race. Starter, bring it on!’
The race was very boring, and if anyone tried to do anything the WCPP girls chased them down. This was fine. ‘Let’s have a bunch sprint. The finish is at the top of a hill, there’s none of you here that is going to worry me,’ I thought quietly to myself. You could see the same thought starting to go through a few of their minds as they were looking at me. ‘Maybe this cunning plan is not quite so cunning as we first thought.’
Then Yvonne McGregor attacked. Very kindly, she chose to do so on a section of dual carriageway, so I had a nice wide road to move out into and chase after her. Again, her plan to get away from me failed, I had the speed to catch her. We worked together again and built up a nice lead. Then Ken must have found out. He was in a WCPP car in the convoy. Yvonne and I were on one side of the dual carriageway and Ken was overtaking the bunch on the other side, leaning out of the open window and shouting at Yvonne, ‘Ceris is coming up to you, sit on her!’ pointing at me. Dad was on my side of the road just ahead and saw this, and I could see he was laughing his head off as we rode by. We did not have far to go and I was in much better form than the previous August, despite not doing a taper. This time, Yvonne sat on my back wheel as I towed her to the finish. I beat Yvonne in the sprint. Ceris didn’t join up with us and finished alone in third.
So, according to the records, that made it an identical 1-2-3 finish to the British Championships of the previous summer. I have no idea what they thought in the WCPP – could lightning have made some random strike in exactly the same place? It had been a long journey to Cheshire, but we barely noticed the drive home.
Five days later, in a letter dated 12 May, Brian Cookson, BCF president, wrote saying that he intended to bring up the issue of age limits in Olympic events, informally, at the next UCI conference in October. Thanks for that Brian, it was a tremendous help and comfort, as you can imagine. Dad and my solicitor wrote back, putting into more formal prose the idea that after careful scrutiny, this new, very cunning plan had one minor flaw in it: the Sydney Olympics would be held the month before, in September.
We kept trying to force the issue but with heavy hearts, as we knew there would be no will to find a resolution in my favour. My solicitor Gareth Williams, who was kind enough to do everything for free, was sending chasers on the 20 June to Peter King, CEO at the BCF, asking why he had not responded to letters concerning the BCF challenging the UCI on the reasons for the age-limit rule change.
It really didn’t matter how many times I beat the WCPP riders. They were on the WCPP, coached by the WCPP coaches and managed by the WCPP management. I was a schoolgirl. If they sent me to Sydney, they would be telling the rest of the world they were wasting the Lottery-playing public’s money. They were wasting it, but did not want to admit it. I wasn’t going to Sydney and that was that. I watched the Olympics on TV, with Mum and Dad sat either side cuddling me.