I had a week in Italy, enjoying the status of winning the Giro before heading back to Wales to get my knee checked. I was in such good form that all I needed was to maintain my health through the next few weeks. I had beaten the world’s best in Italy; bring on Athens.
When I got back to Wales, I was invited to BBC Wales who wanted to discuss how they were going to cover me at the Olympics. They were probably trying to make up for the fact that they had given me no coverage during the Giro d’Italia. BBC Wales later purchased some RAI footage of the race and Wales Today ran a small section in a regional sports programme, but for the nationwide BBC I did not exist. However, now BBC London wanted to give me a camera so that I could produce a video diary for the breakfast programme. They also thought it would be a good idea to cover Mum and Dad out in Athens as well. This synthesised my problem. In Italy, I was greatly appreciated and their sincerity was touching, but women’s cycling was a financial basket case and there were no sponsorship deals for foreign riders in Italy. Maurizio was able to pay me but my career was going to be short, and if I did slightly better than break even, I would have done far better than most other female cyclists. In the UK, my profile was controlled, as 2003 had shown so clearly, not by my performances but by cycling journalists, British Cycling and the BBC.
The twin themes that run through my cycling career in relation to the English-speaking cycling journalists of the time are their failure to question the Lance story and their sexism in reporting. On the former point, only David Walsh and Paul Kimmage come out with any credit. Week after week, all that Cycling Weekly could put out were magazines full of eulogies to Lance.
While satellite TV showed plenty of men’s cycling, my only race on TV each year in the UK, and therefore my only chance to shine, was the World Championships. But there were two problems. Firstly, I was effectively riding alone in a team sport against very strong teams, and secondly was the fact that the male commentators never followed the women’s sport on a regular basis, and so instead of being able to instantly recognise riders and describe the action and finer tactical points, they wasted time trying to identify riders from glimpses of their numbers. To get around this uncomfortable unfamiliarity with the riders, the commentators tended to talk about something they knew about – the men’s race coming up next. Beyond TV, the British Cycling press office remained in the hands of Philip Ingham. The shadows of events in 1999 would still be dark four years after Athens; I could not expect fair coverage from that source. A World Cup win might take the headlines for a short time on their website, but soon there were the dramatic events of a domestic club race to knock it off the front page.
The BBC was undergoing change as satellite channels outbid them for so many of the sporting jewels they took for granted. The Corporation started trawling for sports that were easy to cover and did not come with a high price tag and in which, no matter how small the competitor pool, British success was frequent. Track cycling was about to fit the bill perfectly. British Cycling and the BBC would together promote track cycling in a powerful way that would not be matched anywhere else in the world. Therefore, a fact of life for a British female road race athlete was that only the Olympic road race counted. This was where the BBC would cover women’s road cycling and my exploits could be relayed direct to the public without somebody imposing arbitrary censorship.
However, it was not all negative. At the Olympics, the UCI’s sexism acted to offset my team disadvantage. While men could have five riders in a team at the Olympics, for women the maximum team size was three. Once every four years, I would get an opportunity where the odds were not stacked so steeply set against me. A win in this race was crucial to how I was perceived, and hopefully the spectacle of the event would shine through the ineffective commentary. Without it I would always be that woman, riding abroad, for whom a clip of a rider with ‘FRANCE’ on the kit would do as a backdrop while giving her an annual ten seconds’ air-time. Not many other people understood my predicament. I felt it only too keenly.
My first day of training when I got back to Wales was a long ride in the hills – and that’s where I made a mistake. Instead of being sensible, I went out into the pouring rain and cold and trained myself into the ground for four hours, driven by a voice inside which kept telling me that if I wasn’t completely exhausted when I got home, then I wasn’t working hard enough. The next day and the next were more of the same. More! Harder! There, that would drown out that clock.
A few days later, I started to recognise the symptoms that were so evident two years before, when I was so overtrained and exhausted before the Commonwealth Games. I would get back from a training session knowing that the intensity was missing, my instinct confirmed when I downloaded the data from the heart-rate monitor. My performance at the Giro had made me forget that I had no proper base of winter training. I flew back to Cornuda and the heat of Italy and a more appropriate acclimatisation option than the unseasonal cold of Wales. I competed in a team time-trial in Germany but raced badly. I clearly needed a rest. But would there be time to rest and build again in the days towards Athens? Rachel Heal, who had been selected in the GB team alongside me, came over to train with me, while the third member of the team, Sara Symington, decided that optimal team preparation was achieved by going to the Team GB Olympic holding camp in Cyprus. An earlier request to BC management asking Sara to prepare with Rachel and myself in Italy had merit, but was met with a verbal shrug of the shoulders. It was good to have some time with Rachel before the Olympics, as during the Giro there had only been time for a snatched ‘Hello, how are you?’ We went training together and bounced race scenarios and ideas for tactics off one another while we rode.
The Athens ‘experience’ started with a comical episode which proves conclusively that you can’t take your parents anywhere! Firstly, you need to be aware of cycling’s long tradition of painting the names of the fans’ favourite riders on the roads, on climbs or key parts of the course. I’m sure you will have spotted it if you have watched any of the major continental races on TV. Mum and Dad were keen to write ‘GO NICOLE’ on the road. Accompanied by BBC Wales’ Richard Owen, Dad chose an unusually quiet stretch of road race course. However, the reason it was quiet was because it was in the embassy district. Some armed guards from a nearby embassy spotted them and called the police, suspecting that they were writing some political slogan. The police arrived and were not unduly concerned; other cycling fans had also written names elsewhere but must have avoided being spotted by the guards. However, once called to an incident, the police would have to report it, so they asked Dad and Richard to show them their passports or other identity documents as required under Greek law. Neither Dad nor Richard had such an official document with them. The solution was for Dad to wait at the police station while Richard fetched his passport and then for Richard to do the same. Somebody decided such important news merited transmission via the international press agencies!
It’s possible that this had something to do with the fact that Greek athletes Konstandinos Kenderis and Ekaterini Thanou, whose faces were plastered across the billboards of the city, were about to miss their appointment of carrying the flame into the stadium during the opening ceremony. They had gone into hiding in a hospital, claiming that they had both been riding on a single motorcycle and had been involved in an accident. They were recovering in hospital and could not speak to anyone. In fact, they had been keeping one step ahead of the drug testers who had been chasing them for weeks, trying to catch up with them across several continents. Earlier that day, a story broke about the accident being a fake and that the motorbike was undamaged in a garage. A distraction was needed: ‘Cyclist’s Dad Arrested for Creating Disturbance in Athens’ was obviously picked up by someone.
Once I knew the true facts relating to Dad, it came as a bit of light relief to the seriousness of preparation. I only wish winning a big race garnered me a quarter of the coverage Dad was able to get that night for ‘being arrested’. Meanwhile, Kenderis and Thanou withdrew from their home Olympics.
I had been staying away from the Olympic village, with the Townley family who lived near the time-trial course on the peaceful coast. This was ideal, away from the intensity of the athletes’ village with a bit more freedom to ride on the quieter roads, and in those final days I had begun to feel the magnitude of the occasion. I was constantly on edge, paranoid and tetchy about most things. Do my legs feel okay? How is my resting heart rate? Is my heart rate as expected in my last training ride? Am I resting enough? How was the course recce? Did I feel good? Question after question about detail – could I recover fast enough was the only question that mattered. That clock in my head was now booming again at every tick. I was convinced that this was a race I could and should win and anything less would be a failure.
The Olympic road race, with teams of three riders, would be very different from the professional races. If I attacked, the other teams would make sure someone chased me, but when they attacked, how could I tell if it was to be a winning move when they had two or even three riders capable of winning? I couldn’t afford to use my energy chasing every move, and conversely I didn’t want to miss the right move. The very fact that I wasn’t in a move could cause impromptu alliances to arise that could turn it into the winning move. Looking back now, my Giro win is one of the highs I treasure most from my career. It also ensured that every other athlete viewed me as the principal favourite for whom there was the obvious counter: ‘Let her do the work, she is without strong team-members, if we isolate her, she will have to chase and she will fail as she did at Hamilton.’ Therefore, by winning in Italy weeks before, I seriously degraded my chances for Athens.
The temperatures were predicted to hit 40 degrees Celsius, and in the city centre where there was little wind, it would be like an oven. The race was nine 13.2km laps, making almost 120km of what was practically a criterium course with plenty of sharp turns, as well as the zig-zag climb up to the Acropolis, a cobbled section and a tricky descent.
The last couple of days leading up to the race seemed eternal. Sleeping was difficult, despite the absolute tranquillity of my surroundings and hospitality of my hosts. The day before the race, I did my last ride in the morning along the coast, nice and easy, and then made sure all my equipment, my helmet and shoes were spotlessly clean. I also double-checked we had my favourite type of pasta ready for my pre-race meal. Mum and Dad joined me at the Townleys and we watched the men’s road race, run the day before mine, on television. The Italian team rode a superb race, placing a strong rider in every move, and duly had a man left over to win.
That afternoon, the British staff came to collect my bike. The rest of the evening was spent watching other Olympic competitions, which was a distraction from thinking about my race, but it only served to remind me of the triumph or disaster that awaited me. I just wanted this excruciating wait to be over. After a glance at the clock, I went to bed early, my dreams full of race-winning scenarios, visualising myself sprinting across the finish line.
I woke up excited; finally my day had come. The morning seemed to fly by. I ate my pasta meal then seemed to be constantly checking I had my shoes, helmet, mitts and heart-rate monitor all packed in my bag. The team officials came to pick me up, the Townleys wished me the best, promising to be cheering the loudest on the course later on.
The pits were small tents where we changed, got ready to race and somehow tried to stay cool in the afternoon heat. Sara, Rachel and I went through our plan for the race and what we would do if I had mechanical trouble; we were all ready, and all visibly nervous. There was not much space for warming up, and with all the media, team cars, officials and riders in the narrow side streets, it was hard to find anywhere to even hear myself think. I asked to sit alone in our team car so that I could have a few moments of quiet and collect my thoughts. I looked at the clock on the dashboard, got out of the car and went to the line.
In the first part of the race, everybody was twitchy and nervous. I paid special attention to my rivals: how were they riding? Did they appear to be better or worse than when I last rode against them? How were my team-mates doing? Everybody was more nervous than normal; everyone riding knew the same thing. This was our one chance to shine in the gaze of the wider public. The next opportunity was four years away.
The early attacks came from the French and Spanish teams trying to set up something for Jeannie Longo and Joane Somarriba respectively. These attacks and successive accelerations were having an effect, as riders were shelled out of the back of the bunch. Rachel was doing a great job of making sure that I was getting enough to drink, providing bottles for me, and keeping me in a good position in the bunch.
Going into Lap 6, Sonia Huget of France was ahead on her own when Judith Arndt launched a massive attack. It was a dangerous move. I went after her of course and this caused an immediate reaction from my other rivals. I caught Judith and then we reformed as a group of about 13 just as we caught Huget. Ominously, all three Australians made the selection. I was on my own, as were a few others. If the Australians wanted this move to stay away, they’d best do some work. As we came through the finish line to start the next lap, defending champion Leontien van Moorsel, who had been riding tempo on the front for a lot of the race, looked back over her shoulder to check the situation behind and rode into the Spanish rider, Iturriaga in front of her and came crashing down, taking other riders with her including Canada’s Lyne Bessette. They were both now out of the race.
This crash and consequent easing allowed the chasing group, which included Rachel, to rejoin us. I was pleased to see her as we still had three laps to go. Then Sue Palmer-Komar escaped off the front. We dawdled, and Sue’s lead grew to over a minute. On the climb, Joane was forcing the pace with Mirjam Melchers and me following. The gaps were starting to open. I went to the front to help Joane create the selection. It worked; we were now a group of five, Joane, Oenone Wood, Susanne Ljungskog, Mirjam Melchers and myself. We started taking turns to make the pace at the front, all except for Susanne. Mirjam and Oenone saw that Susanne was not working and then they stopped coming through as well. Joane and I were the only ones left working, so we slowed. Judith, for whatever reason, had not managed to come with us on the climb but was now chasing hard by herself. As she caught us, she immediately attacked. Sue Palmar-Komar was still out front by herself; if Judith got to Sue before we could catch her, they would almost certainly make it to the finish. This was one move I couldn’t risk taking a chance on. I chased very hard.
As I was one tactical bound behind Judith, so Oenone was one tactical bound behind me, each chasing the other like a track pursuit, then virtually simultaneously a selection of five formed, with Sue still out in front while Susanne had lost contact from our group.
Our pace eased, with everyone wary of the other. Russian Olga Slyusareva had jumped from the group behind to bridge across to us, so now we were six. Judith was driving on and remonstrating with Oenone, who was now not only not working but hindering our efforts by riding in second place and not going through. Olga, a sprinter, was not working, but at least was not hindering as she sat at the back. I had used a lot of energy and was swiftly recalculating. There were only four of us working but we pressed on, catching Sue by the end of the penultimate lap. Seven nations now each had a single rider in the lead group. Our pace eased, every one of us thinking how we were going to act out the finale. Judith was clearly the strongest.
Behind, Australian Sara Carrigan had jumped away from the group like Olga had done earlier. She was in no-man’s land, chasing and hoping. She played the cards she had in her hand, as many another rider has done in identical situations, and this time they came up; there were not enough of us working hard and she caught us. Now the Australians could call the shots.
As we crossed the line to start the last lap, we all looked back down the wide finishing straight and could see the chasing group, just 20 seconds behind. If we continued messing around, we would all lose out; I ‘suggested’ to Olga to start working, we needed to stay away, but it had no effect. Olga was following wheels until she saw the 200m sign.
On the wide drag after the finish, Judith made a probing effort. I jumped after her, as I could not let her go again, and Joane jumped after me. We chased again, reformed again and eased, pausing to catch our breath. The others caught us. Sara saw the opportunity and attacked, but neither Judith, Joane or I were capable of immediately responding to her. Even if we could have, Oenone was riding shotgun, and should we catch Sara, Oenone would immediately counter. Sara was quickly opening up a gap; we all recalculated. We paused, watching Sara just ahead of us.
The trick is to attack when your rivals are distracted. I was on the right of the group and Judith was on the left. Behind us there was a new sound, the heavy breathing as riders caught us. I manoeuvred to see who they were; others in our group did likewise. Judith went and I’d missed the moment.
In a twinkling we had become a group of eight, chasing two lone riders. Of our eight, only Joane, Mirjam and myself were going to work. Edita Pucinskaite and Kristin Armstrong, who had just crossed to us, couldn’t, and neither could Sue. Olga was saving herself for the sprint and Oenone was actively disrupting any chase. Joane and I looked at each other and together with Mirjam we did our best, biding our time until we got to the hill. Ahead, Judith quickly caught Sara and swept on. At the hill, Joane and I gave it all we had left. Oenone was strong and Joane and I could not get rid of her; Mirjam stuck with us as well. By the top, the gap to Judith and Sara was tantalisingly small, but we had not made it. Oenone was excellent, always riding second wheel, disturbing our group to the maximum. I would have done exactly the same in her place. She earned the duo ahead those precious metres that were needed.
Joane and I descended as if our lives depended on it. I don’t remember it like this at all, but writing now after I have watched the video of the race, first I can see myself remounting after I slid out of control into the barrier on a corner. I’m not hurt and the impact was minimal. Next, we see Mirjam braking, out of control, and she goes into the same barrier, independently of me. Finally we see Edita, doing exactly what Mirjam and I had done. Somehow, on one corner, once in the race, all three of us, independently, overdo it! All three of us had already ridden the same bend eight times, yet now, this last time, we all make exactly the same mistake and overshoot.
In the fracas after the corner, any chance of catching Judith and Sara as they played out tactics on the run-in to the finish is gone. Not that Judith is worried about that. She is a woman on a mission, she drives the last couple of kilometres, storming to her own special ending for which she needs time and space. Judith signals to Sara that she is ready for the finish by coming off the drops and putting her hands on the hoods of the brake levers and sitting up, exactly the opposite of what she should be doing. After Sara takes the ‘hint’ and goes for the line, Judith takes her mitts off, no doubt savouring every penny of the fine imposed on her, after she had sent her own special message to her very special friends in the German Cycling Federation, as she crossed the line.
We catch the little group ahead, but I am exhausted. Olga has been saving herself for the sprint, so I position myself on her wheel. Oenone sees me there and leaves it as long as she can before jumping, but neither of us can match Olga. I’m still battling with every last ounce of strength in my body as I cross the line.
I was fifth and felt devastated. The way I viewed it for a long time was that I’d put everything I had into it and got nothing out. I’d failed in what had been my ultimate aim in life since I was 12. There had been so much expectation and although I don’t think I wilted under the pressure, in 2004 I viewed it that my training disaster three weeks before Athens had ruined my form, and my desperate desire to win had clouded my tactical judgement.
Watching the video now, I see it differently. Fundamentally I wasn’t strong enough. If I could have taken the form I had at the Giro into the race, I would have been able to get away with Judith on one of several occasions. With the form I had, I made sure I was in every move that counted and several times took the initiative at exactly the right moment. You can’t make it happen if you don’t have the legs. The Australians, like the Italian men the day before, had played their hand superbly. There was a huge gathering of British media at the finish, all with high hopes they would witness the first British medal of the games. I had to face them. There was not much to say, I’d blown my chance and failed. They were sympathetic, but it did not ease the pain, and later on I finally cracked, crying as I got changed alone. I had never contemplated what would happen after the Olympics. While others went on with life and the world kept turning, I wondered what I was supposed to do now. The clock had stopped. There was no ticking now. All was silent.
I still had the time-trial three days later and was determined to try to salvage something from this Olympics. The reality was that with the disruption to my training and the delay in delivery of the bike, I had done precious little specialist preparation. Certainly nowhere near as much as in 2001, when I won the Junior World title. Now, I was only ever going to have an outside chance against the specialists, but I ignored the statistics and went straight into resting and recovery, clinging on to the totally unrealistic hope that I could pull a big ride out of the bag.
The time-trial was won by Leontien van Moorsel, who had so many wonderful results in the mid ’90s. Set off behind me was Deirdre Barry. She caught and passed me, leaving me for dead, on the way to silver. She would find a walk-on part in the Lance Armstrong scandals of 2012. Long-term team-mate of Lance, husband Michael Barry had been hired by Team Sky. He confessed to the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) that he was guilty of using EPO. Deirdre was named in the testimony of a young rider David Zabriskie, working with Lance, who stated that he received EPO injections at Michael Barry’s apartment, and that after taking injections he states ‘that night Michael and his wife Deirdre and I had a conversation about EPO and its wide use in the peloton. They proceeded to come up with justification for drug use.’
Thanks to USADA, you can read the whole testimony online. It makes a very sad contrast to the honourable and decent attitude of Peter Baker, the American I had met in Italy trying to progress honestly through the sport. Poor David Zabriskie, who had lost his father early in life, lost his way and met people who he really should have walked away from – Michael Barry confessed that he kept the drugs in the fridge! His wife, however, has never been convicted of doping. Zabriskie was entranced with the sparkling, ‘win at all costs’ brigade – the people who cannot contemplate honour in defeat, going down, having given absolutely everything you have. The unspoken tragedy of PED use within the peloton is one of the reasons I felt I had to make such a powerful statement on my retirement and why I include such evidence here.
Karin Thürig came third in Athens. Later, I would be on the same team as Karin for two years. I have the utmost respect for Karin, I admired how she raced and her ability to both win and lose with grace. I am confident she is entirely deserving of her bronze medal. I finished 19th, and spent the next three days in the Olympic village. I put my disappointing results to the back of my mind and took in the ‘Olympic experience’, visiting the Acropolis, watching other competitions and touring the food hall in awe of the assortment of athletic specimens and quantity of food on show. Even going around the village on the bus was a cultural experience, seeing the different athletes jump on and off and passing the headquarters of all the different nations, with their huge flags and decorations to display their national identity and traditions as well as making their athletes feel at home.
I was back in Cornuda by the time the second week of the Olympics was underway. Away from the bustle of Athens, the feeling of despondency hit me again and I decided I had to do something to try to deal with my thoughts so I could move on. The answer was a bike ride and I chose to ride to Lake Garda, 180km to the west, with no distractions, to sort my head out. I told Nonna about my escapade, packed a few belongings – toothbrush, money, shorts and a pair of trainers – and set off with the intention of riding six hours there, staying the night and then riding six hours back the next day.
The unfamiliar roads and beautiful surroundings gave me something new to think about. I got there in time for an afternoon walk around the lakefront and that night watched Kelly Holmes win the 800m back in Athens. The next day, riding back, I tried to deal with my race in Athens, and set new goals, trying somehow to move on.
The rest of the season went by in a sort of blur. I was out of the running for the World Cup, having missed seven rounds, but my form recovered a little. I defended my title in the San Francisco Grand Prix and I won a stage and finished second overall in the Giro di Toscana. At the World Championships in Verona, the lack of a training foundation at the beginning of the season displaced my preparations once again, and on the wane, I finished 24th behind winner Judith Arndt. At Athens I had missed the target, but considering where I was in early May, I still believed I could win the Olympics. I looked forward to 2005; perhaps I could have a good winter and a full season.