Thomas wanted to do things differently at Univega. He was hard working, committed, capable, and understood women’s cycling. He had great ambitions and wanted to get the team started with a bang. Cycling was currently bringing me its fair share of problems, including difficult, prejudiced people, but such challenges are present in all walks of life; it’s how we rise to the challenge that is the critical factor. Now, at a low moment, cycling gave me a wonderful new experience.
Thomas decided that we should all meet together for the first time at Engelberg in Switzerland. It was a winter wonderland I shall never forget. I flew out in late December, was met at the airport and took a ski lift up to a mountain resort. Once all 12 riders and five support staff had arrived, Thomas assembled us in a private meeting room and started by giving us the most fantastic presentation on the team’s ambitions and plans for the year. He then asked us to introduce ourselves and talk a little about our ambitions for the year ahead. It was great! And it got even better. We were to stay in a giant snow igloo which had several rooms where even the tables and chairs were carved out of ice. There was also a room without a roof which had a jacuzzi so that you could relax by simply looking at the stars above. It was a magical experience, and being there breathing in clean mountain air was certainly banishing the blues of my broken collarbone. It was a great way to bond the team together. None of us were novices, so having seen what went on elsewhere, we could all appreciate what Thomas was saying and doing. New to the line-up this year were Sarah Düster from Germany, Joanne Kiesanowski from New Zealand and myself. The rest of the team had ridden with Univega in the previous year when the racing programme was less international.
By January 2006, I’d had enough of the turbo trainer and, against doctor’s orders, I was back on the bike. My shoulder was still very weak, which meant that it was very painful to ride out of the saddle, as I needed to for climbing and sprinting. I was forced to ride everywhere staying firmly seated. I graduated from 40 minutes up to a five-hour training ride in the space of a week. I’d overdone it and now it was not the shoulder but an aggravated left knee that was the issue.
When would I learn? In my urge to make up for the lost time of the broken collarbone, I had rushed too quickly into heavy training. Once again, I was going to have to start the season without the solid basis of steady endurance miles.
In February, more in hope than with a definite plan, I flew to Australia to join the rest of the team who had gone to Melbourne to prepare for the first two rounds of the World Cup, the first in Geelong and the second in Wellington, New Zealand. All this obviously slotted in perfectly for the Commonwealth Games, which were due to be held in Melbourne in March.
The reunion with Craig and the new team was invigorating. I really hit it off with my new team-mates, squeezed into our team house. Thomas and Priska took the main bedroom with five of us sleeping on an array of bunks and floor mattresses in the other two bedrooms, while the directeur sportif, Manel, slept on the sofabed in a small room with all the bikes. My fitness was low compared with my team-mates’ and it showed. On a six-hour ride the others took a break at a café and had to wait for me. As I worked hard in training, my knee flared up again, but Thomas was understanding and sat with me to discuss how to manage what was clearly going to be a continuing issue. He had brought me onto the team knowing that I had knee injuries and stated that I was under no pressure to perform immediately. I was heartened by the conversation. In contrast, I had felt abandoned two months earlier when I broke my collarbone and the British Cycling coaching staff told me to call back when it was mended and I was able to do full training. Now, here was someone with expertise who saw me on a daily basis and could be the extra set of eyes I needed, so I accepted Thomas’s offer to be my coach.
I travelled with the team to Geelong, just outside Melbourne, in late February and taking Thomas’s advice didn’t compete in the three-day stage race that preceded the World Cup, but instead I continued my training programme. I still wasn’t race fit, so we came up with a decoy plan to try to mark one of my biggest rivals for the World Cup out of the race, and give me an easier ride in the bunch until the finish. My Austrian team-mate Christiane Soeder, who had won a stage of the Geelong Tour and was in good form, would make an early attack and hopefully take some of the race favourites with her. They would be working hard, while I would try to save as much energy as possible in the bunch. It was unlikely that the break would stay away, and I would be able to contest the finish with what little firepower I had still intact, while the riders in the break with Christiane would be a spent force, unable to contest the bunch sprint.
It worked a treat. Oenone Wood, my most likely contender for the World Cup series this year, followed Christiane and a couple of others in the break. There was a tantalising chance they might stay away to the finish, but they were caught by the bunch with just 2km to go and Oenone finished down the field and out of the points, while my team-mates led me out for the sprint finish. Eighth was a good result in the circumstances, but for myself and all the other girls the most important point was that we had a great feeling of confidence in our management. We were part of a team with strategy and tactics, Thomas and Manel were totally committed, and together we were going to achieve great things.
We travelled to Wellington for the second round, where again I needed to limit my losses until I had made enough progress in training to be able to dictate tactics. After two laps of racing, we were on a fast twisty descent through the city when I rounded a bend in first place and to my horror there was a white van parked smack bang on the racing line. It certainly hadn’t been there on the previous lap. Someone had opened the barriers to let the van onto the roads, and rather than continuing its journey the van had simply parked on the corner. I braked, skidded and tried to adjust my line and avoid it, but I hit the side of it at 50km/h.
Other riders came down in the ensuing crash. I jumped up, remarkably suffering only a few bloody grazes and a shredded jersey and shorts, and looked for my bike. The forks and front wheel were totally detached from the rest of the frame and only the cables held the bike together. I contrasted the state of my bike and clothes with the state of my body and I felt very lucky. My race was over as we didn’t have a spare bike, and all I could do was watch from the sidelines as Sarah Ulmer, the local favourite and Olympic Pursuit champion of Athens, attacked alone and won the race. I was grateful to some extent because Sarah was unlikely to be a threat for the overall World Cup and I would rather her win the race than my main rivals, like Oenone, who won the sprint for second. Later, Sarah would carry the New Zealand flag in the opening ceremony at the Commonwealth Games. She had also won gold on the track in Manchester in 2002. Her country was proud of her and backed her completely. I could only compare and contrast her treatment with my treatment by the Welsh Cycling Union.
While most of the Univega team, other than Aussie Emma Rickards and Priska, now headed back to Europe, I returned to Melbourne and moved in with Craig, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I had planned a three-week training programme with Thomas through to the Commonwealth Games, and each morning I went training with Priska and Emma, whose family was a great support during my stay. Then I’d spend the evenings with Craig, cooking meals for him and his house-mates and learning about his new life. Craig took me on a tour of his university just down the road, and he would buy bags of ice for me so I could have ice baths to help my recovery. We did a couple of rides together and he rode with me to evening criterium training races in the local suburbs. He would watch and give me high-quality feedback on my performance. On the night of the opening ceremony, I was running late with no way to get to the stadium except by train. Craig ended up giving me a ‘backie’ on his bike; me sat on the saddle with my legs outstretched so I didn’t get chain oil on my nice cream suit trousers and Craig standing up pedalling through the evening traffic.
Melbourne is a sports-mad city and put on a wonderful opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Games. I felt very proud walking into the huge stadium with the Welsh team. Back home, the Welsh media were asking why the WCU had not provided any support and put me in such a disadvantaged position, as I was going to have to race alone against teams of six riders. Even the Australians, smarting after the World Championships, were discussing it openly. Oenone had secured her second World Cup win and had been the world’s No.1 ranked rider. They had put a full-strength team into Madrid to support Oenone winning the World Championships, but instead, a superbly drilled German team and a determined British individual had turned gold to bronze. She had selflessly sacrificed her chances at Athens and worked hard to help Sara Carrigan, but this would be a showcase for Oenone in front of her nation.
The Australian Institute of Sport was a well-formed and functioning operation, leading the world. Their staff followed the road circuit and gathered information to help their riders. They knew how I had come into Madrid and the relative strength of the riders I had around me compared with those of the leading cycling nations and the measure of what I had achieved in beating their accomplished star Oenone. They paid me the highest compliment by not underestimating the lone Welsh rider. They acknowledged that it would be me against their six best riders. This was going to be a unique situation, due to the position the WCU had put me in, and maybe the answer was to make it a unique race. It was clear that the Australian team would dominate. I had beaten Oenone in Madrid, so they wouldn’t dare allow a situation where I was still with a smallish leading group. They had tracked my progress from when I arrived in Melbourne through to the club criteriums that I had been doing two times a week up until a few days before the race. From their point of view, there was nothing to indicate that I was on anything other than good form. To be certain of gold, they needed an Australian up the road, or Oenone in a group without me present, and they would achieve this by using their numerical advantage to attack me and wear me down, so that eventually I would be unable to respond to their attacks. My chances of gold were zero; my chances of any medal were tiny.
Was there a way I could still pick up a medal, accepting that gold was out of reach? The breakaway that would work would be the one without me present. Once one Australian got away, the others would not chase. That would give me an easier race and I would then still have strength at the end of the race to take on the rest of the Australians, whereas if I was active the whole race I would be too weakened to be competitive in the last few miles. To ensure the success of this plan, the rider from the Australian team needed to be one of the weakest so that she would not be able to create such a large gap on the field that the remaining riders could still attack me, knowing that we would never close on her. My job was to influence that selection. I needed to chase all attacks with strong Australian riders but let an attack with a weak Australian rider go away.
I lined up for the start, proudly wearing my Welsh national jersey with the No.1 pinned on. Numbers 2 onwards are taken by the team supporting the defending champion. In this case, thanks to the failure of Welsh Cycling over the intervening four years, numbers 2 to 7 were the Australian team that crowded around me. Other countries that could field only one rider were Malta and Bermuda. There were a couple of early attacks and then New Zealander Toni Bradshaw attacked, was chased by Australian domestique Natalie Bates and then joined by riders from England, Canada and Malaysia. This break suited my purpose well, since there were riders from the four countries fielding full teams, so their respective team-mates wouldn’t chase. Everyone looked to me to chase, but I didn’t. The gap grew quickly as the bunch dawdled and the riders in the break worked together. Once the break reached a lead of over two minutes, Natalie stopped working.
Even in the live commentary, the Cyclingnews.com report states: ‘The peloton looks like it’s out for a Sunday morning club run. Several Australian riders are on the front and cruising.’ Yes, that is exactly what I needed them to be doing. When the lead went over three minutes, I felt that I needed to keep the time gap in check. I attacked and of course was followed by all the Australians and then the rest of the bunch. I chased until the lead was down to just over a minute and a half. I didn’t want to bring them any closer, in case someone got the idea of attacking the bunch and bridging across to the break.
In the break, England’s Emma Davies did most of the work until Natalie, who had been resting at the back of the break, felt she was close enough to the finish to make it alone. She then attacked the break and headed for the gold medal. I was still in the race for a silver. With just about 10km to go, we caught Natalie’s erstwhile companions. The heart seemed to have gone out of them once Natalie had left them. Now we could have a race – it would still be uneven odds, but the short distance to the finish reduced their ability to wear me down. I made attacks to try to get away but was easily neutralised by the Australians. With just under 3km to go, Sarah Ulmer put in an attack on the last small hill, and again the Australians marked it. Sara Carrigan led out Oenone for the sprint and I made sure I was on her wheel. As we came into the last 200m, Oenone came off Sara’s wheel beautifully and although I was drawing level with her I just didn’t have the strength to get past her. I had won the bronze.
The podium shot is one I treasure, demonstrating what their manager had said before the race, that it was six Australians against Nicole. The Australians had ridden a great race and I always look at my bronze medal as a success. The Australia coach Warren McDonald also recognised the situation: ‘The bad thing for Nicole is that she was on her own and you always feel sympathy for someone when you see that. When she went in the middle of the race and brought the lead back to a minute-and-a-half, it showed her quality. She’s a class act and she’s got an exciting future because she’s so young.’
The Welsh men raced in the afternoon. None of them even finished the race, including Julian Winn, who then refused media requests to discuss the controversy about my lack of team-mates, other than to say that my medal had been ‘against the odds’. In four years, Welsh Cycling had done nothing but thwart the talent that followed me. Would the ‘men only’ Board of Welsh Cycling manage the next four years any better? My hopes were not high.
In October 2005, things had been looking good for the women riders at Madrid as British Cycling examined various options for supporting them. A house was set up in Italy for the U23 men. and the beneficiaries of this included Mark Cavandish, Ian Stannard and Geraint Thomas among others, all of whom went on to achieve success afterwards. However, it was decided that plans for a house for the women in Italy were not to go ahead. To make matters worse, after Rachel Heal had shown she could provide effective and tangible support to me in a GB jersey at the sharp end of a World Championships, straight after the Melbourne games the WCPP decided to remove her Lottery funding. There was no way that she could survive on the road circuit without a living wage, so she left the country and went to America. Other girls also had their Lottery support removed, and I felt for Rachel and some of them. If 2001 was the zenith of GB coaching support for me at the World Championships, then 2005 was the zenith of GB rider support. Another brave ‘new start’ had been snuffed out.
After my triumphs in Lisbon in 2001, 2005 marked the fourth year in succession that there had been no junior girls sent to the World Championships. All those girls who had followed me to Helmond and elsewhere had left the sport. In conversations at events when I returned to the UK, many parents, often long-term club cyclists, expressed their opinions that not only weren’t British Cycling supporting the girls but by failing to select anyone to represent Britain, they were actively blocking the road.
At the time, I was unaware of their plan for Rachel, so I returned to Wales in a far better frame of mind than when I left. I felt that I could challenge for both the World Cup and the women’s Tour de France, which I had not ridden for four years. I rejoined my team in Belgium for the Tour of Flanders, where our team plan was based around Christiane and myself as joint leaders. Christiane finished in second place, a just reward for sacrificing her chances for the team in Geelong, while I won my group sprint to finish sixth, not a big points score but I finished ahead of my World Cup series main rivals and closed the gap slightly to 78 points on the leader, Germany’s Ina-Yoko Teutenberg, who had won Geelong.
After the race, we set off in our team cars for the seven-hour drive from Belgium to Zug, Switzerland. We moved into our team house, a tiny flat on the fourth floor of an old building with a jewellery shop on the ground floor, emblazoned with the word ‘schmuck’ – which for those who don’t know is German for jeweller. It was a tight fit for four people, with privacy at a premium given that the shower room was in the kitchen, but we happily adapted to our new home in the heart of the old town, where the daily training rides began and ended with views of the lake against a backdrop of beautiful green hills and snow-capped mountains. This was heaven. Even unseasonably bad weather and snowfall did not slow me down. My bag was packed and with it on my back, I rode down to the station, jumped on a train and travelled two hours south to Lugano, on the border with Italy. Giancarlo lived there with his wife and had offered it as a training base for me. I trained in bright sunshine for three days and couldn’t have been happier on my 23rd birthday.
I was fairly confident going into the Flèche Wallonne. I was strong and healthy for the first time in three years, but as always in road racing, I was also keenly aware that my rivals would be planning a strategy to thwart me. Oenone was two places and eight points ahead of me in the World Cup standings and she was going to fight to retain that lead.
In the middle of the race, my team-mates and I had a challenge on our hands. Russian Olga Zabelinskaya was away with more than a one-minute lead and we were forced commit our riders to a hard chase. Olga was caught with 25km to go, but then Team Nürnberger, who now had the most riders in the lead group, started setting up the finish for Oenone. They set a furious pace before the Mur, and Oenone attacked right from the bottom of the climb. I was now going flat out and could not stay with her. As the climb went on, the other riders dropped away so that Oenone was leading and I was in second place, but now so far back that the commissaires let a motorbike into the gap between us.
The Mur is a terrible climb, but I wasn’t going to give up. At 400m to go, there were some hairpin corners with a 20% gradient. I still didn’t seem to be closing, but as the gradient eased I changed up a gear to somehow pick up my pace and started to close, very slowly. With 100m remaining, I finally drew level with her and as I came alongside I clicked up another gear, willing myself to drive all the way to the line, and pulled away. This win hurt. It hurt a great deal. I was now second in the World Cup rankings, just three points behind Ina-Yoko Teutenberg.
I took over the World Cup leader’s jersey a week later, although my race in Berne, Switzerland, wasn’t very good. I missed a breakaway by the eventual winner, Zulfiya Zabirova, and then sprinted badly to finish fifth behind Oenone, Olga Slyusareva and Judith Arndt. However, I now had a 14-point advantage over Oenone and a 24-point lead over Ina-Yoko. This year it was going to be a close fight.
Thomas suggested that my next race should be a time-trial. I had a very mixed record in time-trial rides, and to be frank I had decided that I wouldn’t ride any more World time-trial championships. Thomas reminded me that stage races included time-trials and I had to face up to the fact that I needed to ride them. Besides, the course at Lausanne was hilly with lots of turns and much more suited to my style of riding. In addition, he would provide me with a special time-trial bike, made by the Swiss frame-maker Andy Walser. Andy provided specialist TT bikes for several of the men’s teams and they had been used to win world titles. I was measured, the machine appeared and when the last fittings were completed, I started training on it. A week later, despite my reservations, I was on the start line for the Magali Pache time-trial against a very strong field. I won and Thomas had restored my confidence in my time-trialling ability.
The sixth round of the World Cup was the Castilla y Leon in Spain. Thomas worked with us to plan the tactics. Priska launched a series of attacks to keep reducing the lead group. Then, when it came to the finish, our sprinter, Joanne, led me out. I held off Judith Arndt and Susanne Ljungskog to take the win and finish off the excellent work of my team-mates. I now led the World Cup by 74 points from Judith, with Oenone third, a further five points back. It was a happy team that returned to Zug to prepare for the UCI’s oldest female stage race, the Tour de L’Aude.
It was the middle of May but snowing hard in the foothills outside Zug. I kept going, hoping it would ease, but as it became colder my left knee began to ache and throb. Please don’t let this be happening again. I eased up and looked for a spot to turn around and head back. The ride back was awful; racing through my mind was that injury was again about to ruin my season just as things began to look settled. Reluctantly, I told Thomas the news and he immediately referred me to the Cross Klinik in Basel, which specialises in sports injuries. In desperation to hold on to my fitness, I did three daily swimming sessions, swimming like ‘a dead dog’ according to Karin Thürig, who watched my pathetic attempt at front crawl with a float between my legs while she trained for triathlons. I had a tentative ride a week before leaving for the seventh World Cup round in Montreal, but it did not go well and I travelled with great trepidation.
Thankfully, the Montreal World Cup event was a fairly tepid affair for most of the race, my rivals unaware of my knee problem, thinking I had missed the Tour de L’Aude in order to save myself for this race. Perhaps their tactics would have been different if they had suspected but, as it was, my team-mates patrolled any dangerous attacks and looked after me, until it came down to a battle between Judith Arndt and myself as we raced up Mont Royal for the last time for the hilltop finish. Judith sprinted away from me and there was nothing I could do; I crossed the line in second rather pleased that my knee had held up to the race and I had not lost too many points. My World Cup lead had been cut to 49 points over Judith. Oenone Wood did not finish.
I flew back to Switzerland and could not wait to get out on the roads around Zug. My knee appeared to be holding up. I was back in Britain at the end of June, my recent results ensuring I was once again the rider everyone else wanted to beat for the British Championships. Since I had turned professional in 2002, as British champion I had worn the white jersey with the blue and red hoops on it every year and I was easily recognised in it. I was always pleased to ride World Cup events in the jersey of the leader of that competition, but each time I pulled on the British champion’s jersey was a special moment in my life. This time, the course around Beverley was rather tricky with narrow roads, where you couldn’t get more than three riders abreast, which put the onus on staying at the front. It was also a rather flat course, with one very gentle drag that was only about 400m long. Rachel had come second for the last four years, but naturally given the recent blow to her confidence by the management of British Cycling, her form was seriously reduced this year. With no anvil on which to crack open the race and no really strong second rider, I knew I would have to attack the rest of the field every lap on the ‘climb’ to wear down the others.
Going into the last lap, I had still not managed to break the invisible elastic holding the bunch together, so I put everything into my attack the last time up the hill. I got a few metres’ gap and kept going and twang, the elastic finally snapped. There is a special feeling about a solo victory compared to a victory in a sprint. You have more time to savour the moment and when you come into the finishing straight the crowd is already applauding rather than holding their breath to see who will win. I really enjoyed this victory, which meant I could wear the British champion jersey going into my next race – the women’s Tour de France.
In the race for the men’s British Championships, Roger Hammond was clearly the best in the field, but with a sense of déjà vu I watched the other riders simply gang up on a solo rider. Roger tried time and time again to get away but was faced with riding against the whole bunch by himself. Hamish Haynes went into the record books as the men’s British champion of 2006. Roger rode a fantastic and brave race that day but was defeated by negative tactics of riders not trying to win but simply riding to prevent someone else winning.
We had a great team of five riders for the women’s Tour de France in 2006. There were my flat-mates and now close friends, Joanne and Emma, and two of our Swiss riders, Sarah Grab and Pascale Schnider. The Tour began with a time-trial in Font Romeu high in the Pyrenees, which I won, vindicating Thomas’s decision to reignite my interest in time-trialling. I started the next day in yellow, dressed just as Joane Somariba had been in 2002. As the field was not as strong as the Giro, we felt defending yellow all the way was an option. I suggested that in that case we could also take advantage of me holding the jersey by letting other riders of the team go with breakaways and try to go for a stage win for themselves. During the second stage, Sarah got in a two-rider break in the closing kilometres and just missed out on the stage win. There were two stages that day, and in the afternoon I led out Joanne for her to achieve the win, a thank you for her leadout at the Castilla y Leon World Cup. Then Emma won the fourth stage on day three while I carefully controlled any threats for the yellow jersey.
Since the age of 12, I had dreamed of winning the Tour de France. On the TV, I had watched Robert Millar climbing the mountains. I had ridden the French Alps on our family camping holidays, dreaming as I was climbing that I was on my own ahead of the pack, heading to victory. Now I was standing on the start line wearing the yellow jersey, about to begin a stage that was going to take us over the famous Mont Ventoux, a climb of special magic to all British riders. The stage was not going to end at the top, there would be a further 60km after the summit until the finish line.
As we assembled on the start line, I heard nothing. Instead, I saw this quiet figure of a 12-year-old wish me well; she would be watching me from her TV in her lounge, and she would be with me every pedal stroke today. The crowd behind her seemed not to be French nationals but her friends, Sophie and the Jameses, her schoolfriends and teachers, and Geoff Greenfield, Walter Rixon and Ron Dowling. This was the day I owed to her and all those standing behind her. Her TV had a special camera that would follow me every second of the race. I was going to do everything to make it the most special day I could for that innocent little girl with so much hope in her heart. Today was the day, above any other in my life, which I owed that little girl.
As soon as we reached the first steep slopes of Mont Ventoux, I attacked hard. I wanted to ride this one on my own, ahead of all my rivals, wearing the yellow jersey, just as I had seen in all the old magazines and books. As I emerged from the trees, I got my first glimpse of the strange lunar landscape. I still had over 7km of climbing to reach the top. I pushed on, wanting to gain as much time as I could. I crested the top and started the descent flying round the bends; I made sure I was within centimetres of the edge of the road at every bend, trying to gain every second. It was a long way to the finish, but I pressed on, never doubting myself. This was going to be a day I would remember for the rest of my life. I crossed the line six minutes ahead of the next rider. I had done it.
In the last few kilometres, that little girl came up to me again. This time she was leaping about, trying to show me something. She had a picture frame in her hand with a photograph in it. It was of a rider in a yellow jersey, on a bike. There were no other riders around; she was alone with just the motorbikes and official cars. The mountain background of the picture was a moonscape. The 12-year-old was just so happy. I told her she could have a present as soon as I was finished. It was a bit sweaty and had a couple of pin holes in it. It was yellow. We both smiled. The little girl gave me the picture I treasure so much.
The race finished the following day, no one was challenging me and I couldn’t have been happier. We were a perfect team, the riders were all great friends and we had excellent support. I was leading the World Cup and had just won my dream race in a wonderful manner – I had ridden from beginning to end in yellow. I was the first British winner of the Tour de France.
Our focus now returned to the World Cup, as it became clear that not only was I leading the individual title but that Univega was in with a strong chance of taking the team title. Thomas and I carefully planned the events leading up to the final at Nuremberg in September.
First up was the Thüringen-Rundfahrt der Frauen in Germany. A year earlier, the cycling world was deeply shaken when the Australian team were out training on the morning of the first stage and a car lost control and hit all six riders, with Amy Gillett losing her life. I had not been at the race in 2005, and it still gives me shivers thinking about that night when I received the text from Rochelle informing me of this terrible accident.
The Australians, and particularly their coach Warren McDonald who was following the riders in the team car when the accident happened, showed incredible strength. The Amy Gillett Foundation was set up in her memory to promote road safety and safe cycling, and every year there is the Amy Gillett Ride in Australia. To mark the first anniversary, a memorial was unveiled at the scene of the accident, with a ceremony on the morning before the first stage. It was optional to attend and my team-mate Emma Rickards went with her fellow Australians. I personally felt it would be too upsetting to go to the ceremony, and rode there alone a few hours afterwards to see the memorial and pay my respects. It was covered with the flowers of the ceremony, and I spent a quiet moment taking it all in.
This certainly put things in to perspective. Our Univega team came to the race with possibly its strongest line-up, with Karin, Christiane, Jo, Priska, Emma and me. After a third in the prologue, each stage was executed with tactical precision. I broke away on Stage 2 winning the stage and took the lead in the GC. As a team, it was a commanding performance and I won three more stages on my way to sealing the tour against a top-quality field.
We then travelled to Sweden for the Open de Suède near Gothenburg, a new addition to the World Cup series. The local hero was double World champion Susanne Ljungskog, who had missed Thüringen to rest up for her home event. There were 11 laps of the 12km circuit with one main climb of about 800m. The circuit was lined with cheering Swedish fans having barbeques in the fields next to the course. They had really taken the race to heart and had even constructed huge figures out of hay bales and dressed them in Swedish national costume, complete with Viking helmets that towered over us from the fields.
On the penultimate lap as we approached the hill, Susanne attacked, I jumped straight on to her and the two of us broke away; then a few kilometres later, without warning, Susanne sat up and refused to work. It was a calculated gamble on her part, that I would either sit up and we would drift back to the peloton and she could take her chances on the last lap, or that I would do all the work while she sat on my wheel in the slipstream waiting for the sprint. I sat up myself, prepared to play Susanne at her own game, but Thomas, watching from the team car, called me over the team radio: ‘Keep going, you can beat her in a sprint even if she sits on.’
I wasn’t happy, but he had made some good calls in the past and I kept going. I tried to drop Susanne on the last hill but couldn’t. I motored to the finish with Susanne glued to my wheel. I hoped my sprinting would still save the day. Susanne jumped first and, being so much fresher than me, she finished a length ahead of me. It was a tough moment; Thomas and I had made the wrong call and letting a win slip away always hurts. Far more serious was the fact that my knee pain had returned during the race. In just two days, we would compete in the Team Time-Trial World Cup in Denmark; could I ride with so little time to rest my knee?
We blasted out of Aarhus, and after one third of the distance we got our first time check: we were leading Susanne’s Buitenpoort-Flexpoint team by a handful of seconds. We kept on going, now down to five riders, having lost one, and it was starting to get very tough. Some riders had to miss a turn every now and again, which is perfectly normal in team time-trials, but it means there is less recovery for the riders still working. There was also the issue of size, and being rather small on the bike, I was happily sitting in the slipstream while Karin Thürig was getting very little shelter behind me. I did the longest turns I could to try to compensate for her lack of cover from me. Thomas was shouting encouragement and instructions from the car. He had a megaphone, but we could only just hear him under our aerodynamic time-trial helmets.
After two-thirds distance, we were still just a couple of seconds ahead of Buitenpoort-Flexpoint but really feeling the effort, and we started to make silly mistakes, confusing the calls and instructions. Then, the noise of the megaphone changed. Thomas was now leaning out the window of our team car and screaming at us and thumping the side of the car with his fist. He was desperate. We were giving absolutely everything we had in our legs and after 52km we won – by just two seconds. We were elated but absolutely exhausted. Later, we surveyed the damage to the side of the car. Thomas’s passion was adorable. Oenone’s Nürnberger squad had finished fourth and T-Mobile third. With three rounds to go, the World Cup standings were looking good: I was on 354 points, with Judith on 197, Susanne on 197 and Oenone on 170.
Back in our little flat in Zug one evening a few days later, Joanne started jumping around on our creaky floorboards and telling me to look at her computer screen. I had just taken over as World No.1 on the UCI rankings! I rummaged around under my bed and pulled out a bottle of champagne, a prize from one of the races, and cracked it open so we could all celebrate. I went to bed that night and shut my eyes. I was 23, I was the first-ever British rider to be ranked No.1 rider in the world, I had won the Tour and had the World Cup in my grasp. I could not have been happier.
I had been totally absorbed in racing and keeping fit. The flare-up of the knee problem was a worry but the doctors were confident I could manage it through to the end of the season, provided I was careful. With three weeks until the next World Cup event in France, Priska and I were sent up to St Moritz for a high-altitude training camp, which sounded great but it snowed heavily. I managed to last a week, my knee aching in the cold, before fleeing back to Zug to rest and warm up before heading to the GP Plouay.
Away from our world of cycling, the men had been getting more coverage than they expected. Thomas had ambitions for the team and had been courting various sponsors to support his and our vision. Early on, after the spring classics, he prepared some super presentations and had a couple of major sponsors talking seriously. Negotiations developed and as we kept coming up with the results, the deals looked to be on as we aimed to be the No.1 team in the world.
However, our success in France was totally overshadowed by revelations taking place as the men’s Tour assembled. It was a new era. Lance had won his last Tour the year before and was now relaxing, lying back on his sofa, under his seven framed yellow jerseys (mine are in bags in my parents’ loft). On the eve of the race to find his replacement, news regarding Operation Puerto broke. Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes had his collection of bags of blood seized by the police. He coded them with names chosen seemingly more for comical effect than security: ‘Son of Rudy’, ‘Birillo’ and ‘Goku’ caused those who had come second, third and fourth in the men’s Tour the year before to be eliminated from the race on the day before it started. The exposé had fully occupied the shocked cycling press at the time of my Ventoux stage, so there was practically zero media coverage of our event. Later, my GC win did make the BBC website and a few short notices in some of the press.
The summer of 2006 was one of sporting flops for the UK. The England football team went out of the World Cup on a penalty shootout. Elsewhere there was similar gloom. The BBC Radio 4 Today programme conducted a poll of its listeners asking them to vote for a British sportsperson whom the nation should support. I came top of the listener vote. That was very good of them, particularly as the hourly sports bulletin always reported the stage winner and yellow jersey of the men’s race but never reported a word about my performances.
That was a little ‘high point’, but a second drugs scandal lay ahead. Sometime later, Thomas was close to finalising with a major sponsor for 2007, then the devout Mennonite from Farmersville, Floyd Landis, who, weeks earlier, had all the world’s cycling press agog with his entirely unbelievable riding to win the men’s Tour, was declared ‘positive’. This second major cycling drugs story was too much. No one could blame the prospective sponsors for pulling out – the sport was a joke.
Floyd had way more time on the Radio 4 Today programme than they could muster for me during my whole career, telling them how he was not positive, that he had won fair and square, and basically running an advert encouraging gullible listeners to contribute to his ‘Floyd Fairness Fund’ for his legal defence against doping charges. As Floyd grabbed the headlines, keeping the ‘omerta’, the pact of silence among the drug-taking professionals, for his ‘best friend’ Lance, Thomas was rightly livid as his sponsors for 2007 walked away. It is very difficult to think about the consequences.
Floyd Landis can have no concept of the havoc he wreaked in the lives of people he will never meet. All the efforts of the riders in our team, all that we achieved in the sport, was brought close to zero because the press were transfixed on a liar from Farmersville. While the public donated over $1 million to the ‘Floyd Fairness Fund’, Thomas could not raise a small fraction of that for the best women’s team on the planet. I would still be dealing with the direct fallout of that in 2011, but the first strains were clearly felt in late 2006.
It should have been a joyous affair – my third placing at Plouay virtually assuring me of the World Cup crown – but Thomas, on edge, frustrated and tetchy, was livid afterwards because we had not followed team tactics and covered the moves of other key riders as we were supposed to do. We had let Nicole Brandli, from the rival Swiss team Bigla, ride away to a solo win. There was a six-day Tour of Holland between Plouay and the penultimate World Cup race in Rotterdam, and I managed to write my bike off for a third time in the year, although thankfully with no serious damage to the rider. I placed fifth to secure my second World Cup.
Post-race celebrations featured another Thomas blow-up. Manel had spoken to me before the race, asking if I would speak to the manager of Équipe Nürnberger. What could be the harm in that, I naively thought. Maybe I could get some leverage for next year’s salary negotiations. After all, while having the luxury of a living wage, I was not actually making money, and I knew that there were riders in the peloton earning several times my salary. What I didn’t know was that I was just one of three riders who Manel was masterminding to move across, along with taking up a position for himself as directeur sportif. Thomas ordered Manel into the team campervan, where they had a blistering argument, after which Manel was sacked. When we got back to Zug the next day, Thomas demanded an explanation from me and the other girls, threatening to disband the team. It meant a lot to him and it meant a lot to us. We riders were all reduced to tears. The next day, he appeared with a new contract for the following year.
Having secured the individual title, the season continued apace in Nuremberg for the final World Cup race of the season. We needed to ensure Univega won the team title, and there was the extra incentive of a trophy organised by the German Cycling Federation, with big sponsors backing it for the best overall performance by a rider in Germany during the season. We won the team title and, although Regina won the bunch sprint finish, I finished fifth to win the German Federation trophy too, the only time a foreign rider had prevailed.
All year I had worked on my time-trialling and for the first time in my senior career I entered the World Time-Trial Championships that took place in Salzburg three days before the road race. I was fifth, with two USA riders filling out the podium alongside Karin, but I was within a minute of the winner and did beat Zulfiya Zabirova and Judith Arndt. My form was still good.
The road race was six laps of 22km, based on the hills around Salzburg and with practically no flat roads on the course apart from a passage through the finish line. After the purge earlier in the year, I had three GB team-mates alongside me: Rachel, Tanja Slater and Catherine Hare. Tanja and Catherine were still developing, so I could only expect them to help in the early laps, but Rachel was very keen to do what she could. We decided that my best chance would be to create a split on the penultimate lap. Rachel would lead me out up the main climb where I would launch my attack and hope to create a break with a smaller group of good climbers. Hopefully there would be only one rider, or at most two, from each nation, thus putting me on an equal footing with the others for the last lap. Again it was a good thing that we were planning race tactics; it was just sad that it was effectively only myself and Rachel.
In response to earlier attacks, Zulfiya Zabirova was ahead of the group as we reached the main climb, then Rachel made a huge effort leading me out up the hill. I attacked and only Nicole Brandli and Marianne Vos of Holland came with me. We caught Zulfiya, then over the top, a number of riders bridged and we became a group of about 15. When I looked around at the composition of the group, I saw that the Swiss and Germans both had three riders while the Dutch and Austrians each had two. I was now alone.
Judith Arndt attacked with just over a lap to go. I was bridging up when Marianne Vos used me to jump up and join Judith, a smart move and a tactical mistake by me. I had thought Marianne, sat on me, didn’t have the strength to come through and help me chase. Judith and Marianne were a race-winning partnership, so I was grateful of the work of Svetlana Bubnenkova, who did some big turns to get the pair back, despite Judith powering away at the front. Then more attacks came, with Judith and Theresa Senff of Germany particularly active, working to wear me out before the finish.
On the last time up the main climb it was my turn to attack, and once again only Nicole B and Marianne came with me. The three of us worked together and quickly formed a nice break. Then, to my and Marianne’s utter disbelief, Nicole B suddenly stopped working and sat on us. It seemed completely stupid: if she kept going, the worst she would get was bronze, and in road racing you never know what might happen – by continuing to work at the front you’ve always got a better chance. Apparently, she was obeying instructions she was receiving on her race radio. Marianne and I eased off, not wishing to carry a passenger to beat us in the sprint. A small group caught us from behind.
It looked like being a sprint finish. Trixi had two riders to lead her out, then Marianne took Trixi’s wheel and I took Oenone’s wheel for the sprint. The four of us launched our sprint at the same time, Marianne came off Trixi and took the lead and won the sprint convincingly. I passed Oenone, but I could not get alongside Trixi and finished third. I was upset on the podium and tried to see some sort of positive in my third medal in a World Championship behind riders backed up with team-mates in the finale. The international press were generous in praise of how I rode the race. I was World No.1 and World Cup winner, I was alone but I had repeatedly taken the race to the rest, despite the odds. This was admired by those knowledgeable enough to understand my situation.
At dinner that night, Rachel was as unhappy about the state of affairs with the national team, as I was. Once again, my bronze medal was the only medal GB took away from the road World Championships, and my fifth place in the time-trial was the next best finish. There was no women’s national coach and had not been one since Madrid the year before, when so many positive options had seemed to present themselves. Elsewhere, at long last a GB women’s junior team competed for the first time since I won in 2001, and among the support staff there was an air of a more professional attitude.
Perhaps because of all the doping controversies, Thomas was struggling to find sponsors and staff for 2007, so I pressed Dave Brailsford for support. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, in that he was achieving great changes with the track squad, and hoped that after the purge good developments would follow for the women. Dave committed to meeting Thomas in the winter to see what support British Cycling could offer him during the next season, so as to develop riders for the Beijing Olympics of 2008 and also to support me. This seemed a very positive initiative.
Dave, though, was not without problems of his own. At the end of October, Dave spoke about his situation at British Cycling to Dad. The success of the BC WCPP was now evident on the track. However, like any success in life, there are always many who wish to claim it as their own. Dad was never any part of the structure at BC, and thus was free from the political manoeuvrings at Manchester, but we had first-hand experience of this project and had seen it evolve since 1998, which gave us perhaps a unique perspective. Dad wrote to Liz Nicholl, director of performance at UK Sport, giving our view on who was responsible for the changes, championing the work Dave did and urging her to speak to Peter King and Brian Cookson and clarify their understanding of Dave’s effectiveness. Liz responded positively.
Returning to Zug after the World Championships, my season was now over. I headed to Italy to attend the wedding of a former team-mate and another of a friend. Life was moving on, and I was getting tired of the lack of privacy in team houses, especially the unexpected arrival of team managers. I had spent only three days in Lugano training, but the city and its location seemed ideal, a comfortable train journey from my team-mates. Furthermore, the 2008 World titles would be in Varese, just 30km away over the border in Italy, and the 2009 Championships would be 14km away in Mendrisio. I enjoyed living in Switzerland and Lugano seemed to offer the advantage of Swiss efficiency, beautiful surroundings for training while being in the heart of the cycling world.
I was delighted to find a two-bedroom apartment with a garage and a small garden in the foothills on the outskirts of the city, and signed the contracts to move in in late December. In the meantime, I attended the German Sports Press Ball in Frankfurt where I was presented with the award I’d secured in Nuremburg a few months before. It was clear that there was a great deal of respect for what I’d achieved and it was a great occasion.
Just after Christmas, in my modest and entirely comfortable apartment, I joined that 12-year-old again. Together, we pulled a bag of jerseys out from a cupboard. She had watched me as I moved all my possessions into my cosy little flat. We gave ourselves a treat. We spread a jersey out on the floor and looked at a photo of a dreamer riding in a yellow jersey up a giant mountain. Puerto, Fuentes and Floyd had grabbed the headlines all year, dealing blows to women’s cycling from which parts of it would never recover. Soon there would not be a race for a women’s yellow jersey. That little girl gazed at me. She told me I had given her all she wanted. She told me she was very proud that I had faced down the demons that the weak gave into. I had started 2006 with my arm in a sling, but I finished it as the only ever British World No.1 ranked rider, sat on the floor with a cup of tea, looking at an adorable yellow jersey. I wanted to get a couple more jerseys for that 12-year-old. There might be some new kids on the block, but on my day I could match them.