I arrived in Belgium that Saturday night, reunited with Joane, Fany and the rest of the Deia team, who were all very excited for me, knowing how much I’d told them about the Commonwealth Games all season and what the win meant for me. I spent the evening examining every detail of the Tour de France race manual; there were two stages the next day, a road stage then a team time-trial, followed by three stages all in excess of 160km. An individual time-trial on Thursday led into three serious days of climbing in the Alps before a much-needed rest day. Then the race would go to Le Mans, there was another TT and eventually on to Paris in two weeks’ time. My job was to help Joane, who was aiming to win her third Tour. The management seemed to have everything in place. We had a campervan so we could stretch out our legs to help recovery on transfers and use the cooking facilities to have food after the stages. Luigi had also hired an extra masseur, as there would be eight pairs of tired legs at the end of every stage to deal with.
We rode to the start from the hotel with Joane resplendent in her yellow jersey as defending champion. The crowds and people cheered our team when they glimpsed Joane’s jersey. I felt the magic of the Tour. As we rode, I also felt an uneasy tightness in my legs, that didn’t get any better with each kilometre.
I ignored my concerns. In Stage 1, my job was to go for the sprint to try to get a high finishing position that would seed our team higher, and therefore later, in the team time-trial that afternoon, giving us more time to recover. However, I would have no support in the sprint as my team-mates needed to save themselves for the team time-trial. As we left Brussels, the pace was frantic, with 120 riders all wanting to be to the front where it was relatively safer. In the sprint, I had to gamble on the wheels to follow. I was disappointed with 13th and felt I had let Joane down. My team-mates and the management were satisfied with the placing and pointed out that I was first U23 finisher and got to wear the blue best young rider’s jersey in the team time-trial that afternoon. We finished fourth, and that evening Joane was happy enough with her start. I looked forward to the relieving massage of my very tight legs.
The second stage, 159km to Valenciennes, featured long stretches of cobblestones in the closing stages. My job was to work as Joane’s domestique, supplying her with drinks and food from the team car and keeping her out of trouble until the cobbles started, which I did. All day the tightness in my legs remained. Stages 3 and 4 were theoretically 154km and 156km respectively. The UCI set limits on stage ‘race’ distances. The mercurial organiser Pierre Boué would always do his very best to put on the grandest Tour stages possible, taking in iconic cities and areas of outstanding natural beauty. With this in mind, he sometimes became quite inventive with the stage route. So on Stages 3 and 4, Pierre came up with the idea of adding in neutral or ‘non-race’ sections. These enabled the peloton to ride out of a busy city centre with a parade and fanfare. Pierre thought nothing of making some neutral sections 20km long, and once you added in the odd ‘miscalculation’ in the race manual, we were racing more like 180km. Pierre wanted to create a spectacular Tour, and frankly I’m glad he did.
Each day the dead, tight feeling in my legs became worse. After long stages we had long transfers, sat in the campervan driving for hours to the hotel. On one transfer, our campervan got a flat tyre on the motorway and Dazzani and our new masseur had to fix it. We had to get all equipment out of the back to get at the spare wheel, change the wheel with the camper balancing perilously on a tiny jack, and then repack the equipment before continuing our late, long journey. On Stage 4, I was really struggling to hang on to the peloton. As the gradient increased on a long drag, I was at the back, in among the team cars of the race convoy. Out of nowhere, my Deia team car appeared alongside me. ‘What do you want, what is it, does Joane need something?’ I didn’t know what to say, I couldn’t bring myself to say I’d got dropped, but they quickly jumped to the conclusion that Joane must have needed some energy bars so they stuffed them in my back pockets, gave me a massive shove and I had to somehow get back into the bunch.
I was just about on the back of the bunch, when there was a screeching of brakes and some riders crashed. I tried to avoid them but someone fell on top of me, and the next thing I knew I was in a ditch; it had been raining so at least it was a soft landing. I clambered out and then pulled my bike up after me. I got going after the bunch again, my mission being to get these bars to Joane. I sprinted up the side of the bunch and handed her the bars and checked that she was okay, after which I slid to the back of the group before grovelling my way to the finish.
That night there was lots of screaming and shouting in Italian. I did my best to keep up but thought it not the right time to ask my team-mates for a literal translation. Our new masseur threw a tantrum and packed his suitcase. ‘That’s it, I quit!’ he wailed, before leaving to sit at the front of the hotel, his suitcase at his side, with his arms folded in a huff. I don’t know what the masseur was expecting but Luigi was hardly flustered. I looked around. Most of my team-mates found something very interesting to concentrate on and pretended to carry on as if nothing odd was going on. After about an hour, perhaps it dawned on our masseur that no one was going to take him to the station or drive him home and we’d probably leave him there the next morning when we left. He got over it, and quietly got back to work.
The following day was the 31km time-trial and I finished in 94th place, more than eight minutes slower than the winner. I’d been told to take it easy to save myself for the next day, and to the casual onlooker it might have seemed I carried out the instructions perfectly. In fact, I had been riding flat out to make the time cut. Each day the tightness in my legs was worse than the day before, my strength ebbing away. Each journey back to the car was followed by a chase to the peloton which seemed longer, further and more frantic each time I made it.
Stage 6 was a very hilly 127km between Lyon and Villard de Lans. My legs just wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do and my reactions and brain power were ebbing with them. I was involved in a crash and although I somehow stayed up, my front wheel had lost spokes and would not turn, so I stopped for the team car and a spare wheel. A few of us formed a chase group; we worked hard and had the tail of the bunch in sight on several occasions but could not quite make the shelter of the race convoy. The chase went on for what seemed like an eternity, and I was running on empty. Next, were two mountain stages in the Alps. I could start but I would not be of any use to Joane and the rest of the team – this was not something I could ride through. I knew my Tour was over. I told Luigi I was exhausted and that I couldn’t continue. I think he was expecting it, as he asked me to hand him my numbers off my jersey and he would withdraw me from the race.
I found Joane and apologised for my bad form and for not being able to help her. She was very understanding. At the hotel that night, Fany – who had also abandoned that day – and I talked about the race and the exhausting and crazy events of the season so far. While I had been back in the UK for the British Championships and Commonwealth Games, part of the team had ridden the Giro d’Italia. It was not surprising that Fany was exhausted as she had ridden both grand tours working as a domestique for the team leaders.
There were other problems than my form. The Spanish riders had their wages ring-fenced from the team via the Spanish newspaper sponsor; our erstwhile Ukrainian house-mates were also being paid, but neither Fany nor I had received our salaries for a few months. It was not the biggest thing on our minds because the money was poor anyway. Even worse, Fany and I were both very disturbed by the blood tests and help being offered by Dazzani. In the Giro, our Ukrainian team-mate Nataliya Kachalka finished eighth overall. Some of the quality of rides we were seeing had both of us incredulous. Zinaida Stahurskaya had finished second in the Giro and was now smashing everyone in the Tour including Joane, who was in superb form. Was Zinaida ‘reformed’, having been banned from racing during the winter for PED abuse? From where Fany and I stood, it looked like the actions of the authorities had precisely the opposite effect on the peloton from that they were meant to achieve.
If ever anyone excuses Lance, Tyler, Ullrich, Riis, Millar, Hincapie, Barry or any of the other dopers by saying they only did what they had to do to level the playing field, then they need look no further than Fany Lecourtois.
Burnt into my memory for life will be how she felt that night. She had ridden as a professional for ten years, plus all the years before she had put into preparing for that career. She lived the life of a professional athlete every day, watching what she ate and how she rested, sacrificing so much. She gave her all for her team-mates and helped me achieve wins. Her team managers didn’t pay her and she turned the other cheek. Our sport came up with meaningless out-of-season penalties for that tiny minority who actually tested positive. She, like me, would never resort to taking drugs. She stood rock solid, her personal integrity intact. Nature had blessed me with physical characteristics which, in an injury-free season, allowed me to take on all-comers. Fany didn’t have that level of natural ability and simply strived as hard as she could, but was now realising that the system, which should have been designed to protect those of us who would never take drugs, did not; and those at the top of the sport who should have acted, failed to do so.
She was exactly like Peter, who I spoke about in my retirement statement. It is these unknown riders who are the victims of Lance, David Millar and the rest of the liars. I will value my friendship with the team-mate I met, on my first professional team, for the rest of my life. Peter and Mlle Fany Lecourtois are each worth a thousand Lances.
Fany and I helped out the team as best we could, washing clothes, handing up bottles and preparing feeds. On the Sunday, we were at that same summit at Vaujany where I had first seen the Tour three years before. The conditions couldn’t have been more different: fog and freezing rain, with visibility barely 10m. It was a different experience watching the soaked and shivering riders traipse in at the summit, holding bottles and clothing ready for Joane and the rest of the team.
Zinaida Stahurskaya has her name in the record books as winner of the 2002 Tour. In 2003, she would again test positive and receive only a two-month ban from competition.
After a week of total rest in Forli, it was back to Wick where they had planned a big party for me. The village hall was bursting with people, spilling out onto the road and park outside. The organisers asked me to ride around the village on my race bike wearing my Commonwealth gold medal. Bob Humphrys covered the event for BBC Wales and it was fantastic to re-live the race. After everything that had gone on at the Tour, I loved being surrounded with such genuine people, happy to share in my achievement, and it restored my confidence in human nature. It seemed like I was a million miles away from Ms Stahurskaya, my unpaid wages and the whole circus that surrounded the worst of professional cycling. Still in recovery mode, I went to Mildenhall, camping with Sean and Kathryn McClelland’s family. We had a wonderful time watching the grass track racing and doing some marshalling for the kids’ duathlon and the cyclo-cross race.
Around this time, I had wished to address Shane’s behaviour at the Commonwealth Games with the WCU. He certainly had a great deal to offer in terms of his knowledge of the sport, but he was in a professional position, working for the WCU, and he needed to learn to behave in a manner appropriate to his position. While I was on the Tour, I asked Dad to represent me in a meeting with Bill Owen, the volunteer president of the WCU. On the day of the meeting, Dad heard that Shane was no longer working for the WCU but was now a full-time employee of the BC WCPP. Dad asked Bill if this was true, but neither Bill nor the secretary of the WCU (who maintained the personnel records) had been told about this and had to check with his new employers to find out. This meant there was nothing more to discuss. It seemed that I was not the only victim of Shane’s lack of respect.
Finally, at the end of August, I was refreshed and ready to build up my training for the last part of the season, so I returned to Forli keen to race, with the World Championships not too far away.
First up, in September, was the Giro di Toscana. I was now rooming with two new girls, but when I got back to my room one night after dinner, I walked in on what looked like a hospital ward. My two room-mates were sitting there with drips hanging out of their arms and there was a collection of bottles of milky liquid. I was absolutely incensed. What the hell was in those bottles? Knowing my anti-doping stance, how dare they do this in my room?
‘What’s going on?’ I demanded.
‘We’re recovering from the stage,’ came the lame reply. ‘We’re using amino acids and sugars, medicines.’
‘Not in my room you’re not, I’m not putting up with this.’
I found Luigi and told him the girls were injecting stuff in my room and I wanted to change rooms. He came up to my room, mumbled a few words and the two girls got up, needles still in their arms, picked up their bottles and walked out into the corridor and off to another room. I lay on my bed seething. I felt I was surrounded by aliens. I didn’t want this. I thought back to the celebration in Wick and the fun of Mildenhall. I struggled to match the pictures of Wick and Mildenhall against riders who had needles in their arms, and Luigi who seemed to have no conscience about not paying his riders. Was there something wrong with me? No, but there appeared to be plenty wrong in cycling.
I tried to focus on racing the Giro di Toscana and looked forward to the following season when I could make a fresh start with a new team. Joane did not race. Our team formed an odd assortment of personnel bonded mostly by simply wearing the same jersey. Given the fact that I was virtually riding alone, and the state of the peloton at the time, I am immensely proud of my riding in that Tour. I finished best U23 rider and eighth overall.
My last race of the season with Deia was the Giro della Romagna. After the race, I handed my bike and kit bag over to Dave Mellor and the British team who had also raced, so that they could take my things to Belgium for the World Championships in Zolder. I set off to Forli and would travel lightly to Belgium a couple of days later. I was glad my time with Deia was finished. Then Dave Mellor called. ‘Hi Nicole, your team manager has just picked up your bike.’
‘What?’
‘He came along, we’d already put it on the roof and he said something in Italian like he was going to take it to Belgium. I didn’t know what he was trying to tell me.’
‘And you just took it off the roof of the GB team car and handed it over to him. Thanks Dave.’
In the run-up to Romagna, Luigi had stopped answering my calls and I had suspected something was up. After Mike Townley had contacted them on my behalf, the UCI had taken action; they had written to the team to ask about my wages, and now I had no wages and no bike. I called Luigi again, but still got no answer. Just as I thought my nightmare with Deia was finally over, Luigi had yet another trick up his sleeve. I had no bike for the World Championships.
But before then, I had one more race in Holland. Perhaps feeling guilty at giving away my bike, Dave rang to say I could use one of the many spare bikes the Lottery had funded for the WCPP girls to race on. Looking back, I just can’t see how I did it. For the race at Westerbeek, which I won, I must have been running on anger rather than energy.
Meanwhile, a contact made a discreet call to the Colnago factory to explain what had happened, but apparently Ernesto was at a bike show in America. Surely Colnago would want the British star on the Colnago bike that they had supplied to Deia at the forthcoming World Championships? Two days later, Luigi turned up at the GB team hotel with my bike. He smiled as I came out to see him, as if there was nothing wrong. He insisted on making a public scene about wishing me luck and said that he wanted to make sure the bike arrived safely for me. I was just wishing the moment would come when he would have no more impact on my life.
After two wins at the last two World Championships, I should have made a big bang here. There was a kind of bizarre camaraderie at Deia, such that when we got on the bike, regardless of what crazy things were going on elsewhere, at least we knew how to race and what we were there for. With GB, I entered the twilight zone where David Millar was fawned upon by the staff, while I was with Dave Mellor and the WCPP girls, for some of whom cycle racing seemed to be a necessary but unwanted diversion from comparing air travel and the hotels they’d stayed in. They made all the right noises about how they would help me, but I felt like screaming, ‘You don’t know how to race at the top level, how could you help me?’ Rachel Heal, in particular, was willing and sincere, but with some of the others, I just felt like I was a meal ticket. The uneasy looks of so many of the support staff towards me told a story. Since Peg Hill had been ousted, I doubted any would be sad to see me go the same way.
It was a flat course at Zolder, so I knew it would finish as a sprint. I hid in the bunch, recognising I would need everything for the finish. None of the British riders would be able to get me into the top 20 in the last 5km. I don’t know what my team-mates were doing during the race, but those I could locate in my half of the race looked startled when I told them a break was up the road and I wanted them to go to the sharp end and earn their year of Lottery funding. It didn’t do any good. Peg had been right; they really needed to start from the basics.
With about 5km to go, there was a big crash in front of me, which blocked the whole course. I tried to get through it as quickly as possible, but there was no way of catching up the lost ground and I chased all the way to the finish line. I finished 35th and 27 seconds behind the winner, Susanne Ljungskog of Sweden.
It would have been nice to say that was the end of an eventful season, and now it was time to make plans for 2003. I had learnt a lot riding with Deia-Pragma-Colnago, particularly from Joane and the short time with Giorgio, and I had been thankful for a place on a team. My salary had only been €8,000 for the year and it took lots of help from Mike Townley, and action by the UCI, before I saw it in full.
After the Commonwealth Games, I had received a call from Peter Keen. Despite all the efforts of British Cycling, home riders had garnered only two golds – Chris Hoy on the track and myself on the road, a small improvement on Kuala Lumpur 1998, when there had been no golds for British riders. By contrast the Australian track team had won eight gold medals and the men’s road team had won all three medals in both the time-trial and road race. England was at the bottom of the list of seven nations that had won medals at the cycling events. With the Athens Olympics less than two years away, Peter Keen asked me for my ideas and thoughts. I was happy to share them.
The girls on the WCPP were riding the big races, but they were travelling out from Britain each time. In order to gain real experience, I said it would be better if they could actually live with a team on the continent as I was doing, so they could not only race with top riders but also learn by training and living with them. The Australians successfully used this model to develop their talent. I was not suggesting anything radical.
During the season, Maurizio Fabretto, the manager of Acca Due O, and I had spoken together. He wanted me to ride for his team in 2003, just as I had wanted to ride for his team in 2002. I spoke to Peter Keen about my optimal team placement being with Acca Due O, but also that we both needed my relationship with the WCPP to develop. The arrangements that had come into place since May, to make me a member of the WCPP while riding for a professional team, had worked well; certainly I would have found it very difficult to continue without the generosity of the Lottery funding. Peter was supportive of continuing this arrangement with Acca Due O for the following year. This was acceptable and we spoke about other WCPP riders possibly joining me. Peter also suggested that he could include me with the WCPP girls for the endurance events on the track. If I was prepared to dedicate the time to the specific preparation, then a ride at the 2003 World Track Championships was a possibility.
British Cycling took my suggestion to heart about placing WCPP riders in a continental team and Dave Mellor contacted me about getting a place for Rachel Heal at Acca Due O. The plan started to be fleshed out and Maurizio was willing to take her on his roster.
In October, I attended the WCPP induction camp for the women’s squad where the staff identified their aims. Over the next weeks, Rachel and I swapped emails about going to Italy together. Later, I received a call from Dave Mellor that should have rung alarm bells. He had obviously spoken to Maurizio and was trying to sound me out. Dave wanted to know what was being lost in translation.
Some team managers liked playing practical jokes on other managers and GB, with no Italian speakers, were an easy and very attractive target. The way they flew in and flew out and had all the latest and most expensive kit, grated with so many teams who were stretching their resources so thinly. Dave had obviously started asking around the circuit attempting to gain offers for Rachel to ride with a continental team.
Dave said that Maurizio had offered Rachel just board, lodgings, kit and a bike, but no salary. However, other teams he had contacted said they would pay a salary of €40,000 for the year, so he wondered if Maurizio was just trying it on. I told him that €40,000 per year would be well beyond any amount I would be able to negotiate, and that the wages I was still chasing via legal challenges would total just €8,000 for the year. At this stage, Rachel did not have a single win on the international circuit. Dave seemed very confused.
Maurizio wanted me to sign the contract in Italy and meet some of the sponsors. Just before I went to Italy, Dave was in contact again, saying I was not to sign under any circumstances unless it was confirmed that Rachel was to be placed with the team. While I was not going to take instructions from Dave about whom I would and would not sign for, I was happy that Maurizio was sounding positive about Rachel and I could not understand the reason for this bizarre conversation.
Dad and I met Maurizio in his office. Firstly, I made it clear that I would not live with anyone who was taking drugs or any ‘preparations’ which required to be taken intravenously. Maurizio agreed and replied that he had just the right place to stay; a house looked after by ‘Nonna’ – an 80-year-old known to be totally drug-free!
We then discussed the possibility of including track racing in my programme. Maurizio wasn’t interested. What if I won a track World Championship? ‘Track titles!’ a gesture of his hand indicating they were of little consequence. Dad insisted I press the point and said if we were to negotiate a bonus for a road world title, surely there would be one if I was to win a track world title. How much would it be? I translated. Maurizio looked at us both and then nodded. With a dramatic flourish he gripped his calculator, stabbed at the keys and noted the result on a piece of paper. He then took a notebook out of his drawer, looked through it until he found exactly the right page – his thoughtful nod confirming he had found what he was looking for – before more stabbing at the calculator and another figure written on the piece of paper. Then he looked at the ceiling and put some more figures on the paper and a final calculation. With a flourish, he wrote a sum on a separate piece of paper and passed it over, face down. This, he assured me, was his single and final offer. We turned it over – €100. We all laughed together. You see, Maurizio explained, the Italian public is just not interested in track racing. The road racers are their heroes, they want to see them when they stand at the side of the road at a criterium or on a mountain pass. On the road is where the great races take place. So it was settled that I would ride a road programme based mainly on Italian races and World Cups in Europe.
With that issue sorted out, there was just the position of Rachel to be confirmed. Maurizio passed me a fax he had received from Dave Mellor and asked me to translate it all for him. It was quite simple and just asked for Rachel to be recorded with the UCI as one of the 12 members of the registered team, and that Rachel was accepting of the conditions Dave had verbally outlined to me. It requested a written confirmation in reply. There was some issue about numbers, relating to a new regulation for the next season that set a maximum of 12 riders per team, probably to avoid better sponsored teams having more riders than other teams. I asked Maurizio whether he would be able to give one of the 12 places to Rachel.
Maurizio waved away our concerns and then described how he was going to deal with the maximum team-size rule. He had a twist. He was going to have two teams, the older riders headed by Diana Ziliute and a team of younger rides with me as captain and Rachel on my team, called Ausra Groudis Safi. When I began raising concerns about which team would be entered in which races, Maurizio reassured me: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll enter both in every race, and you can work as one team.’ Those rules were being taken to the limits of their flexibility! Rachel’s spot was confirmed. I signed a two-year contract, with my salary €23,000 per annum.
Next was a visit to London at the end of November. Tony Blair was hosting a reception for all the gold medallists from the Commonwealth Games. Chris Hoy and I were there and of course there were the representatives of the sporting federations, in our case, Brian Cookson and Dave Brailsford. With Tony Blair just a few metres away, Dave came over and asked if we could have a quiet word; he had something he wanted to tell me. I have never been able to find out why this happened and no one at BC has wanted to talk to me about it, therefore I can only speculate on the motives.
Dave told me his urgent news: ‘If you sign for a professional team, you cannot be supported by WCPP, so you are not going to get a grant next year.’
All the barriers would be erected against me riding with a trade team, exactly like they had been the year before. Of course, I could rip up my contract with my trade team and ride with the rest of the girls on the BC WCPP and then I would get full support from them. I was shocked at his timing and the content. With Tony Blair so close, I could hardly make a scene. Dave was making sure I understood that their agenda had primacy. Mum drove me home and we discussed it with Dad in the early hours of the morning. Peter King had a very detailed email to respond to by the time he came into work the next day.
Six months earlier we had been in arbitration with UK Sport over my WCPP membership, and now we were further back than before that. I explained that I had gone through my 2003 WCPP membership with Peter Keen in August and he had confirmed it. I was told there must have been some misunderstanding, as Peter Keen could not possibly make such a commitment. I also pointed out that I was not the only British rider with Acca Due O; there was also Rachel, indeed I had helped translate her contract and the fax from BC, and helped Maurizio draft his reply while I was with him, these rather uncomfortable facts somewhat mitigated against the scenario they were trying to present. So was Rachel still on the WCPP, or off it like me? But the BC WCPP were never ones to let facts get in the way of a new policy.
Within BC there was little or no knowledge of the women’s professional cycling scene. As a matter of fact, there was not at that time a great deal of knowledge of the men’s scene either. As a result of this ignorance, rumours abounded, particularly about riders’ salaries. If they thought that Rachel could receive €40,000, no doubt they thought that I was on a much greater sum. The fact that my contract registered with the UCI was for €23,000 wouldn’t have stopped them thinking I was actually receiving more. They would have been aware that some men’s teams registered smaller contracts with the UCI than they actually promised to pay the riders, both to reduce the deposit the teams had to lodge with the UCI and also for ‘tax optimisation’ purposes. I was never aware of similar practices on the women’s side because the salaries were always so small.
Some of the other gossip was relayed to me by Darren Tudor, the Welsh junior coach. Apparently, BC staff wanted to know how I had got such a good sponsorship deal with Jaguar to get a new convertible sports car. Dad had spent the days after the Commonwealth Games frantically putting a new clutch in my 1983 Peugeot that my aunt had given me free as a non-runner, with no MOT, so that I could go and see everyone camping at Mildenhall. I had tried to get a car sponsorship deal earlier in the year and been laughed at. ‘Come and see us after the Commonwealth Games,’ one of the more promising leads had said. After Manchester, I saw them with my gold medal. More excuses. It was a bad time of year, sales were down.
Mum and Dad had worked hard and had paid off their mortgage early, and then their original endowment policy had matured. They went mad blowing just over £6,000 on a totally impractical second-hand Jaguar. Now I don’t think anyone would begrudge Mum and Dad that. At the time and for years afterwards, their transport was two second-hand cars that notched up over 300,000 miles each! Dad did all the maintenance on them and ran them on a shoestring. I think to offset the disappointment I had after the Commonwealth Games in not being able to trade up from my salvaged Peugeot, they allowed me to use their new treat. So maybe this decision to not allow me to have a contract with a trade team and also receive the Lottery grant awarded to all the other riders was simply a question of jealousy based on gossip, ignorance and myths.
Just when I had finished with troubles regarding teams and thought I could concentrate on cycling, here were the very people paid by the public to help elite athletes creating yet more chaos, playing on the fact that UK Sport didn’t keep them in check. Rachel’s position was an obvious flaw in their argument, and so they also destroyed her dreams of riding on the continent as she was prevented from joining me in Italy. Maurizio was informed just before the deadline for registration, and at exactly the wrong time of year he had to find a replacement rider. BC refused to recommend me for a Lottery grant and demanded that if I were to ride for GB, for example at the World Championships, I would have to ride a GB bike, not my team bike, which is never the case on the professional circuit.
Ultimately, I wanted support and I wanted some British riders around me committed to winning. The issue was not about the money. BC had tried to stand in my way at the start and now, at the end of the season, they were behaving in exactly the same way. While BC either wouldn’t or couldn’t seem to accept what was required to become a successful rider, there were individuals who did. Claire Dixon, my junior team-mate at Plouay, had made her own way to Italy and Rachel had also been willing to make sacrifices and take the risk and go and live in a different country. BC preferred pouring public money into a UK-based team which included a whole train of coaches, mechanics and other support staff. Maybe if all the riders were based abroad, they wouldn’t be able to justify all these jobs?
Certainly it was not a decision based on success. Following my own path in 2002, I had seven race victories and a Commonwealth gold medal. A quick look at the women’s World Cup standings at the end of 2002 indicated that the public were not getting too much value for money, five years into this programme, for all the bikes, vehicles, air fares, full-time staff, grant-aided athletes on the women’s programme and its management team. Only three other GB riders had scored any points at all! Twelve months ago, with Peg Hill on board, prospects were good; now GB had gone backwards.
Then BC raised the stakes further. I received a written communication denying that Peter Keen had assured me that they would support me, in that conversation after Manchester 2002. It was obvious that politics and personal power plays within the still evolving WCPP were getting in the way of the organisation doing what the public paid it to do – support good athletes and help them become better. While I had no grant and therefore no support from them, I was confident that my cause was just and the route I was taking was the one they should be urging other riders to go down. Looking back, I’m sure they understood this too.
This second dispute did not worry me. I was confident, despite the posturing by some at BC, that UK Sport would see the sense of my position. Unlike in 2001, when I was portrayed by BC to those such as Peg Hill as a troublemaker who had yet to achieve on the professional women’s circuit, I now had a series of senior wins to my name, achieved against the very best in the world. The way they dealt with Rachel’s placement in Italy and the sacking of Peg Hill all confirmed that I needed to hold firm to my principles. As currently configured, the BC WCPP needed new direction. It needed a new director.