Uncle Chris had been at Plouay with us and he too met some interesting people. Travelling home to Moscow, where he worked as a finance director for an international company, he bumped into Natalia Boyarskaya and the rest of the Russian junior team. He congratulated her on her ride and introduced himself to their coach, Anatoly Voronin. Somehow the conversation turned into an invitation for me to go to Russia and join the team the following year at their pre-season training camp at Sochi.
To me, Sochi sounded even colder than Wick in February, but this was an unusual opportunity not to be missed. I’d watched the footage of the various races in Plouay many times and seen how well the Russian team rode together, and there were a good number of Russian riders in the women’s professional teams. Natalia was likely to end up at the sharp end in Lisbon later in the year when I aimed to defend my title, and having a friendly face in the race would be useful – for all the sincerity and enthusiasm of the British girls my age, the performance gap was just too large.
I joined the Russians in my half-term school holiday. It was surreal from the moment Uncle Chris met me at Moscow airport and took me on a tour driven by his chauffeur Igor. We saw the Kremlin and Red Square, its colours and turrets bright against the snow all around. Early the next morning I was back at the airport bound for Sochi.
Anatoly met me at the airport in his very old Mercedes and drove me to an old Soviet-period ‘house of rest’ that had been closed down for the winter and made available to Anatoly’s squad of 20 or so promising boys and girls. They had organised themselves rather traditionally, with the boys taking care of the maintenance and cleaning of the bikes, while the girls did all the cooking in the kitchen, preparing food bought from the local market each morning by Anatoly. The facilities were very basic, adequate for our needs, but the place was freezing cold. I had a sitting room and bedroom upstairs, each with a small portable radiator. I needed both of them in my bedroom at night. To do this, I had to stretch the cable of the one connected to the wall in the sitting room so I could have it in my bedroom and jam the door shut over the cable to keep the heat in. Clothes were hand-washed in the bathtub.
I loved it. The team did not have much in the way of good equipment and clothes, but they all really enjoyed what they were doing, and that made a difference. Many of the riders, like Natalia who was from Siberia, had travelled thousands of miles by train, taking several days, in order to be there. Training was based on the classic formula of gradually building stamina by long, steady, relatively slow rides each day.
The harsh surrounds matched their attitude to team tactics. One night after a ride into the mountains, Anatoly showed me the video he had taken that day of the girls behind us, who were practising team tactics while riding on the snow-covered roads. The idea was for two riders, acting as team-mates, to try to prevent a single rider behind them from getting ahead, by slowing down and even using pincer movements to block and harry, while the rider changed angles to counter the blocking moves and somehow get in front. Finally, after being frustrated for a while, the rider tried to find a gap on the left – only to be cut off and knocked sideways into the snow piled up at the side of the road! Barging each other off into the snow was all part of the ‘toughening up’. These were girls who were younger than Natalia and me, and good on them. After a memorable week of adventures on the roads around Sochi, I bid farewell to my new friends and looked forward to meeting them at races later that year.
The dates of my half-term had also coincided with the big presentation of Acca Due O in Italy. Giancarlo had kept in touch and I’d been invited to be there to join the team. If that went well, I could have a trial placement in the summer when my exams were finished.
I arrived in Treviso directly from Sochi and felt honoured to be on the same training ride as the best riders in cycling. I tried my basic Italian on the girls; they were very welcoming and I enjoyed the camaraderie. I met Maurizio Fabretto, the team president, who was inspired to create the team four years before when he came across a group of Lithuanian riders living out of the back of a van as they competed around Europe. He was a flamboyant character.
On the night of the team’s official presentation Maurizio was in his element, hosting a spectacular launch party in Castelfranco Veneto. It seemed like there were millions of journalists, we had a fancy meal and then every guest went home with ‘Team Edition’ bottles of Astoria Prosecco labelled with a photo of Diana Ziliute and her Olympic medal. I couldn’t wait to be part of something like this.
Cycling is a fantastic sport; only one rider can win races, but the collaborative element is really important and can often be the reason why certain riders win and others don’t, and it’s fabulous to see what a good team can collectively achieve. It was not something I had experienced in any meaningful way in my life so far, and I couldn’t wait for this next phase of my career to begin.
Meanwhile, back in Manchester the BC WCPP had read our 29-page document and taken on board our comments. Things were going to change for 2001. Ken Matheson and the member of staff who had been responsible for the junior women’s team at Plouay were heading for pastures new. The WCPP was evolving and I felt very optimistic about the season ahead, where my goals were world junior titles in track, mountain bike, time-trial and road race. It was agreed that I would be able to take a trusted neutral mentor with me to both the track and road championships, and for mountain biking the British coach Gary Foord would work individually with me. I was highly motivated. My winter training had gone well, it was now just Craig and me on the school ride as Dad had changed jobs to teach at another school. Craig was becoming stronger and the rides were becoming very competitive, with the sprint to the Volvo garage reaching new heights of intensity. With maths out of the way, I had more free time due to less school work and could add in an extra ride like the Windmill circuit, to increase the volume of training when I didn’t have lessons.
We continued to ride cyclo-cross races through the winter, although I knew it was likely to be my last season. My heart lay in road racing and I wanted to concentrate on that. The cyclo-cross scene in Britain was fairly small, the big races were all in Holland and Belgium and if I wanted to ride international World Cups the whole season, it would be really hard to do with such little support. So it was time for a final blast.
The British Cyclo-Cross Championships were held in Sutton Park, near Birmingham. With both Craig and me racing, we arranged that we would pack all the equipment on the Saturday morning and then travel up, hoping to do some easy practice laps in the afternoon. We were halfway through the journey when the car broke down. What to do? Should we wait for the recovery vehicle to pick us up – which would probably mean we would get back to Bridgend when everything was closed – and how were we going to get to Birmingham for our races first thing on Sunday?
Dad had a plan. Instead of calling the recovery service and being taken home, he called Mum at home and asked her to ride down to the local van hire centre in Bridgend and rent a vehicle big enough to take the three of us, the four bikes, spare wheels, a generator, power washer and our bags, then drive up to where we were stranded, an hour and a half away. He waited before calling the recovery company and they came out to us, arriving shortly after Mum reached us with the hired van. As soon as Mum had arrived, we loaded the bikes and everything into the back of the hire van and set off to Birmingham, leaving Mum with the broken car with her bike in the back, going home on the back of the recovery truck. We arrived just over two hours later than scheduled but did everything we needed to do. We rang Mum at home to make sure she had arrived safely.
I won the senior cyclo-cross title, beating Louise Robinson by four seconds. Louise was silver medallist in the inaugural World Championships the previous year and so this was quite a scalp. Craig’s race was due to start as soon as mine finished. Journalists wanted to take photos and ask lots of questions, as Louise was a very accomplished and decorated cyclo-cross rider, so the result obviously generated a lot of interest, but I needed to be there for Craig’s start. After the medal ceremony on the podium, I paused for the barest number of pictures and I was off. I ran from the podium, telling the journalists I would be back later, I popped my big silver trophy into the plastic box where we kept the bits and pieces like gloves and brushes and rags to clean the bikes, zipped up my tracksuit top over my British champion’s jersey and then leapt back on my bike and zoomed over to Craig who was on the start line, so I could take his top and gloves from him just before he started. Dad was busy in the pits adjusting the spare bikes from my seating position to Craig’s and making sure all was ready for him. I arrived just in time. Later, I went back to the journalists and then helped Dad out. Craig was third, which was pleasing as a first-year junior. We went back home, showed the medals to Mum and then put them in boxes under our bed in our rooms – ostentatious displays of awards were not allowed. After listening, Mum just asked Dad to confirm that we had both given everything in our races and behaved properly.
We often had people come up to us at races. Many of the compliments were very touching. Sometime after this, at another race where just Craig and Dad were present, a lady came up to them. She had been attending cycling events for many years, she said, and had often noticed our family with Craig, me and Mum competing, while Dad ran around and organised everything. The lady just wanted to tell Dad that she liked the way we supported each other, which she said had been epitomised by me not dwelling on my race result at the British Championships and instead putting my trophy in a plastic box so that I could sprint off and help my brother. I didn’t find out about that conversation for some years, but it just reiterated how bonded we have been as a family and how important that was to my career.
With all my enthusiasm and the extra time on my hands, I added in more training to get really fit for the Cyclo-Cross World Championships in Tabor, Czech Republic, at the end of January. Well, that was the idea anyway. Preparation was going well through November and into December, and I was training harder than I had ever done in my life. I rode in the senior World Championships, as there was no women’s junior category. Craig was selected for the junior male category. Martin Eadon of BCCA was manager of the British team for Tabor and it was a real pleasure going away with him and the team. We had a few days to test the snowy course and get the hang of sliding round the corners on the snow and ice. I liked the circuit, it was fast and had short run-ups along a slope, and even had one section where it went through the main beer tent – the crowds were really loud in there! In the race, I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped, finishing seventh and just behind Louise Robinson, who was sixth.
As the cyclo-cross season finished, there was a terrible outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease forcing the slaughter of millions of sheep and cattle. It caused the closure of numerous community and festival events and also meant no mountain bike races or training, which made preparing for the World Championships in September very challenging. I was now working closely with BC mountain bike coach Gary Foord, who was very supportive and entirely professional in his attitude. It was another good working relationship and epitomised how things were changing during 2001. In the meantime, it gave me more freedom to concentrate on road and track, as my first big target would be the World Track Championships, in Los Angeles in July. At that time, Manchester was the only indoor track in Britain, meaning that each track session involved a 400-mile round trip.
In May, I went to Lisbon to check out the course for the road championships, which would be held in October, with Claire Dixon, her coach Peter Vernon and Dad. We were met by a representative of the Portuguese Cycling Federation who couldn’t do enough for this World champion, making me feel very special – an unusual experience. He showed us all the details of the course, including the dual carriageway that would host the start–finish area. This was newly constructed and not quite finished, so that although it was surfaced, no traffic was allowed on it. Claire, Dad and I did a leadout train and sprints along it. If the race was to finish as a sprint, I would be looking forward to it.
In June, I competed in a round of the Junior Nations Track competition in Orleans, France. I took part in an omnium, with four events held over one day. I felt awful and performed badly. The poor results made it clear I was doing too much of everything.
I needed to rest. I had to stop and consider the fine balance between not enough training and not enough rest. If I rested now, it meant my track preparation would be pushed back to July, giving me only a few weeks of specialist training before the World Track Championships, but so be it. I gave it a couple of weeks. Shane Sutton was rightly adamant that I needed a lot of rest. I had tests and these confirmed exactly what my own training traces were showing – that the decline had started in late December – as I belatedly looked at them with a critical eye. I had a simple philosophy – more is better – and had been overdoing it, seeing every opportunity without lessons and homework as a time to train as hard as I could.
For 2001, British Cycling was very good about the selection criteria. As opposed to the situation 12 months before, I was now pre-selected for all Junior World Championships. No one felt the irony more than me when I now deselected myself from the World Track Championships. I was just not recovering fast enough during those first four weeks after Orleans. Those around me were concerned that I might not even be recovered by the end of the year.
While I rested, I thought hard about my future. Although I had wanted to ride all disciplines for as long as possible, it was clear that too much could go wrong if I tried to do everything. The risk was that the other events – mountain bike, time-trial and road races – could also suffer and I would end up with nothing. I wondered for a while if I was just taking the easy way out, but I had reached a crossroads and had to make some tough decisions. It was time to start specialising.
In the UK, many cyclo-cross venues did not have washing facilities. Although Dad had a portable generator and could always manage to boil up enough water for us to have a good wash and get clean, either Craig or myself, or more often both of us, had a stinking cold at some time during the season. Cyclo-cross was not an Olympic sport and therefore was the poor relation in terms of the funding – they had virtually nothing. Whether this was the reason why the support staff and selectors were such a good bunch of people, who did it for love, not reward, I don’t know, but certainly I was going to miss working with them.
Riding the track meant going to the only full-sized indoor velodrome in the country at Manchester. Logistically, it was difficult and expensive. Giving up aspirations for 2001 freed up a lot of time and made my programme far more flexible as I recovered. I thought that maybe I would keep my options open to come back to track racing in 2002.