I spent the evening in Varese where there was a fantastic World Championship Festival. We British girls went out and found a nice restaurant to dine in and Andy joined us. A number of riders were retiring and I sought out the Aussies, and Oenone Wood in particular, as I wanted to congratulate her on having been a fine competitor and rival throughout our careers. It was a great evening.
That night I didn’t sleep, I was so excited and thought of the race and our celebrations. I remembered the time the British official stopped us going out after I won my first World title. I recalled giving my Mick Ives jersey and badges to Mum and reminding her, as I went to bed, where to sew them on to cover up the logos, then waking up to find it at the foot of my bed, all perfectly done. Mick was sincere, stretching a tiny budget to achieve more than could ever have been expected, always enthusiastic and helpful.
I was World and Olympic champion, British Cycling was receiving millions of pounds of Lottery money for the administration of the sport and yet they cared so little that they could not get me the right kit to wear, kit that a 12-year-old could have at the Helmond Youth Tour and all the other things. They couldn’t sort out a replacement headset on my bike, while my bike for Beijing had not arrived until July – at least it was earlier than the time-trial machine for Athens, but it was still too late.
We couldn’t get a whole team entered for the World Championships, leaving two women’s places blank. Why? By comparison, not a single man had finished from the full male team we had at Beijing in the road race, while Sharon had crashed, but cut and bleeding she had chased alone to the end. At Varese the next day, a full team of GB men would line up comprising professional riders Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas, David Millar, Ian Stannard, Stephen Cummings and domestic rider Russell Downing. Of this illustrious list, Russell was the only one to finish, crossing the line in the main group in 28th place, 4:53 down on the winner. He at least recognised that when you wore a national jersey you were representing your country and not yourself. He wouldn’t get rich and nobody would write about his efforts in the newspapers, but that was not going to get in the way of him giving it everything he had, just like Sharon.
And what about that change in my programme for the build-up to Beijing? Right from the start, it was obvious that Team Halfords was not going to be a team that would enable me to complete a road season. Why was Rob Hayles in it? It enabled British Cycling to place a tick in the box that they had supported a women’s road programme and satisfied an incurious press, preoccupied with men. But if the calendar had started the season looking thin, the cancelling of the team going to the women’s Tour de France and replacing it with evening club time-trials exposed the reality. Why didn’t they want me riding at the Tour de France?
After my second Tour win in 2007, the organiser of the women’s Tour de France, Pierre Boué, always keen to follow up any possible avenue of promotion to keep the race going, approached London. In 2007, the men’s Tour de France had started with the ‘Grand Départ’ in London city centre. Boué obviously thought that with the women’s Tour having a two-time British winner, they might want to follow up the 2007 start for men with a 2008 start for the women’s Tour in London. I have no doubt that the budget Boué would have been talking about would have been a fraction of that lavished on the men. Apparently, he made an excellent presentation to London and received a good response from the Mayor’s office. They would just need to check it out with British Cycling. The answer came back to London from British Cycling at Manchester that they should not support a London depart for the women’s Tour. The project was dead.
From where I was at that moment in time, it was obvious that British Cycling was organised by men for men. The critical roles at BC all went to men, and the 2001 experiment with Peg Hill was just a distant memory, a forgotten high point. On the track, a single female to pose with the men and whose star could not in any way be a threat to their collective machismo, a star whose glow could only enhance the aura around the men, was fine. But if they gave oxygen to me, it only served to bring attention to the woeful performance of the men on the road, and the primacy of the road scene over track was probably not something either British Cycling or the BBC was keen to promote to the public. The BBC had a long-term deal for televising track events and BC was riding high, maximising publicity for its track riders, so my story did not fit well with that narrative. In the months following Beijing, it was almost like an industry had been created, as day after day the papers were full of how ‘marginal gains’ of the track cycling team should be applied to every facet of enterprise, but that was only a part of the whole story.
Now, in the ‘holiday’ atmosphere of these championships – where I was doing everything to win a gold medal and so many of the British team seemed more interested in enjoying a social event at the public’s expense – all the talk was of the massive Sky sponsorship that was coming into the sport and plans for what they were going to do with the money. I didn’t need a crystal ball back in 2008 to predict that, by the time of writing six years later, while millions have been poured into a system to convert the male non-finishers at Beijing and Varese into world beaters, virtually nothing has come the way of the female road riders, whether it was Emma, Lizzie, Sharon or me.
Post-Beijing some media pundits, those who ignored all that the British girls achieved on the road, criticised British Cycling, denigrating their achievements on the track as being peripheral to the sport, due to the fact that so few countries had a serious attitude to track racing. Undoubtedly, British Cycling were somewhat stung by such criticisms. These pundits would state, when Mark Cavendish won the World Championship Road Race in 2011, that this was the first time a British rider had achieved such a feat since 1965 – thus ignoring the achievements of Beryl Burton in 1967, Mandy Jones in 1982, and my own exploits.
A similar account would follow in respect of the Tour. Some within British Cycling would foster the convenient narrative – ‘we cut our teeth with success on the track and then moved our skill set to the road’ – because it placed the management team at the centre of all success. To sustain that account they had to diminish the independent successes of both Emma Pooley and me. Even if Team Halfords ran into the next year, I would be a fool to think that it would be backed to run a serious continental road season. The last 12 months had shown that, even if a tilt at a major stage race was planned into the team calendar months in advance, those in charge thought nothing of cancelling the trip at virtually no notice, and substituting it with a club evening ten-mile TT, without any consultation. These were unassailable facts of life. Well, I would never have a better chance to do something to change it, so that night I decided to give it my best shot. Unfortunately I would fail miserably.
The most obvious thing to do would have been to use my status as World and Olympic champion to negotiate for the best year’s pay of my life and join an established team. I might even have been able to persuade them to allow me to bring a couple of GB riders, but I couldn’t expect them to create a team composed mainly of GB riders. My dream was to create a team that would act as a development opportunity for young female British riders. I wanted others to have an easier route than I had. So much talent had been lost, ground down by the attitudes of British Cycling. I knew I would only ever have this chance once to do something this big in my life, and I wanted to take it, regardless of the men in the sport around me and regardless of the risk to me. They didn’t care, and I knew I would be finished in the sport before they would be replaced by people who would care.
I felt that with a good number of British riders we would be able to attract some UK sponsors. I had plenty of experience from riding with teams on how to organise one, and sitting there on the border of Italy and Switzerland it seemed to me that all it needed was to find some Italian enthusiasm, combined with Swiss organisation and British determination, and we could have a world-class team. Not wanting to assume that British Cycling would be completely uninterested in my idea, I set up a meeting with Dave Brailsford. He listened politely, wished me luck, but there was no interest from BC. The men’s road team, Team Sky, was taking shape.
Andy had many good ideas and was a great driver for the project. Helen Wyman joined in straightaway, with her husband Stefan as directeur sportif. I had great memories of how they had both supported me earlier in the year in my ill-fated attempt to retain my Tour title. Stefan had a good way of working with riders and did not let his relationship with Helen get in the way of what he needed to do to support others professionally. We attracted a mixture of young and experienced riders from Britain, Holland, France and Australia.
The three youngest riders were headed by Dani King, who had just turned 18. She had been on the BC Olympic Development Programme as a sprinter but was then removed and not offered any way forward in the sport by British Cycling. I was as grateful she could join us, as was she for the opportunity provided. She has since gone on to win Olympic and World gold medals in the team pursuit. Katie Curtis was turning 20 and had already finished eighth in the World Track Championships, while Jackie Garner was 19 and had won a collection of Welsh junior road and track titles.
Gabriella Day, a cyclo-cross rider and quite handy on the road, joined along with French rider Christel Ferrier-Bruneau, who had finished 13th in the Beijing road race and fourth in the Cyclo-Cross World Championships. Eighteen-year-old Aurore Verhoeven, also of France, who was fifth in the junior world road race, was so keen to ride with me that she had given me her CV the previous year at the women’s Tour, telling me, if ever there was a spot for her on a team in which I was riding to let her know. Vicki Whitelaw had been Australia’s road cyclist of the year in 2008, in a season that included victories in stages at the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de L’Aude, while Debby van den Berg was a hard-working domestique from Holland. The assembled team represented great potential and everyone who joined us was fully committed and could not have been more enthusiastic.
Finding financial backers to provide the money we needed to pay for logistics as we moved around Europe from race to race, was a different matter. There was plenty of interest, telephone calls, emails and meetings, but no commitments. The media interest following the Olympics had dried up, and the enthusiasm with which we launched the project was turning into the realism that finding sponsors was going to prove much more difficult than we imagined.
The problem was countering the perception that no one was interested in women’s cycling. Sponsors want attention on their products in return for their money; not just great results from the riders but media attention, and in particular television coverage. Women’s cycling, like so many female sports, did not receive the same media attention as the men and the only televised events were the world titles and the Olympics. It was a chicken-and-egg scenario: we needed the coverage to increase interest and convince sponsors, but the media always cited lack of interest, and sponsors would always fail to commit until the interest was proved.
I met with the BBC sports department and discussed how they might follow the road scene. I even explained that the UCI TV rights to the women’s World Cup were available and that they would not have to invest very much because each race was already covered by the national broadcasters in each country. The result was a polite refusal. They felt that their coverage of track cycling gave quite enough time to cycling as far as they were concerned. As I write this, I can only marvel at how the nation and the BBC have now taken the sport to their hearts, better than even I could have imagined, but unfortunately in 2008 and 2009 my voice could not be heard.
To add to the problems of finding sponsors, we were hit by two major events. The financial crisis of 2008 affected everyone, but in particular it led to companies cutting back on their easiest variable cost, marketing and advertising. It was not the time to ask companies to try a new medium of communication, sports sponsorship.
The other was yet more doping scandals in the men’s cycling scene. Among that year’s highlights was Riccardo Riccò. Riccò had come second to Alberto Contador in the Giro and then won Stage 6 of the Tour at Super Besse. The sporting press were full of it, a classic ballet in the mountains. Cycling Weekly eulogised about Riccò and how he had stormed to a great win. But then came rumours that he had failed a standard haematocrit test. Riccò and his team stated that he had a naturally high haematocrit level of 51%, and like all good individuals so unfortunate to suffer with such an entirely natural condition, he had a certificate issued by those responsible for the governance of the sport, giving him exemption. All was well.
The year before, as Emma P, Priska and I were giving absolutely everything on the Col d’Aspin, virtually nobody from the cycling press thought our denouement on the final mountain of the final day was worth a column centimetre. Now one year later, on that same mountain and three days after his initial heroics, Riccò produced another magic moment to have the cycling press filling their pages with superlatives describing his second stage win. Four days later, it was announced that Riccò had tested positive and he became the fourth rider of the Tour to be evicted from the race that year for doping violations.
Of course, like the rest, he couldn’t go without the whole circus. First denial, then ‘honest’ contrite confession and a statement that ‘it is only fair that I pay’. His lawyers persuaded the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) to get the now ‘contrite and reformed’ Riccò’s ban reduced to 20 months. Needless to say, despite reform, Riccò continued to lie and cheat. In 2011, he was admitted to hospital in a life-threatening condition after a blood transfusion, that he was administering himself, went wrong – he was using 25-day-old blood that may have been past its ‘inject before’ date. Apart from this mistake, he would have been able to complete his career with the full charade as reformed repentant, having learnt from his mistakes.
We worked with various specialists in sports marketing and sponsorship, and time and time again we were told of the corrosive effect on potential sponsors not familiar with cycling of googling ‘cycling’ and coming up with all the recent stories. Particularly galling was the effect on women’s product sponsors. As we attempted to attract sponsors outside the norm, who might have a commercial interest in women’s health and fitness, we were left with the understanding that no worthwhile brand was going to risk becoming contaminated by contact with a sport where lurid and fantastic tales of bags of blood-dominated search engine results.
In 2006, I had spoken out against the return of David Millar to the GB road team. David’s sister Fran was now promoted by Dave Brailsford to handle PR and potential sponsorship enquiries into British Cycling and direct them towards riders. That I seemed to receive only those enquiries turned down by other British Cycling Olympians did not surprise me.
Direct, and not via BC, I was invited to the London Bike Show to speak. At the entrance, above the kiosks, hung five giant, far larger than life-size, double-sided posters of British cyclists at the Olympics. There had been eight gold medallists, and on the ten available sides, every gold medallist was featured – apart from me. There was even room for pictures of riders who had been there and not won a medal, and other Olympic cycling scenes. While I spoke in a lovely Q&A session at the show, taking lots of great questions from the public, Dad made gentle enquiries to speak to the manager of the show. The manager stated that he asked the British Cycling press office for the artwork of the Beijing gold medallists and he had no idea they had not featured me. The manager came up to me afterwards, expressing his sorrow. I had been good enough to be one of just three Olympians to come to the show, and not only that, but I had spent time with the public who had paid to come into the show, away from the Q&A session. He was very sorry and keen to show me the emails asking for the artwork from BC, to prove that the omission was not his fault. I never thought it was.
Andy and I pressed on against the odds; something would turn up surely? Although the first season was important, our sights were firmly on the 2012 London Olympics as the generally supportive media coverage noted. I paused in mid-December, wondering if I should abandon the idea and opt instead for a well-paid place with an established team, but I had come too far to turn back now.
Vision 1 Racing came together for the first time at a training camp in February. Resplendent in our team jerseys, white and blue, emblazoned with a star designed to resemble the spokes of a bike wheel, we prepared for the season ahead.
I had sacrificed much of my pre-season training to get the team up and running and as we approached the first races, the three-day GP Costa Etrusca, I knew that without the block of endurance work, I had little hope of a strong showing. In the circumstances, Vicki’s eighth and 13th, and my 12th, fifth and ninth places were a good start, and when I followed it up with a good showing in the Tour of Flanders, finishing fourth, and the Flèche Wallonne in sixth, we seemed to be on track. Vicki and Christel were riding well, with Vicki winning the sprints jersey at the Tour de L’Aude. The younger girls were still learning, as was to be expected given that they were making their first tentative steps in the elite ranks.
But it wasn’t enough. The cost of accommodation during races was met by race organisers, but the cost of everything else – transport and food as well as hiring staff like mechanics and masseurs during races – was coming out of my pocket. Any modest earnings from those few post-Olympics endorsements and appearances that did manage to find their way to me were all being ploughed directly into the team. To compound matters, I was also in a legal battle with Thomas Campana over unpaid wages and prize money relating to the 2007 season. The issue would eventually be resolved in my favour, but it was an unnecessary and time-consuming distraction. Without the finances and logistical support needed to mount a serious challenge in such a demanding event as the women’s Tour de France, it was a disappointment to have to withdraw the team and miss it.
Wearing the rainbow jersey of World champion is a very special feeling. It always gave me a boost when I pulled it on. At races, it stands out from all the other jerseys and there would be exclamations of ‘Wereldkampioen’, ‘Championne du Monde’ and ‘Campionessa del Mondo’ following me around wherever I went. I had earned the right to wear the rainbow jersey, but had still not yet won a race wearing it. This is referred to as the ‘curse’ of the rainbow jersey, since often riders who were prolific winners in the year they took the jersey fail to win a single race the following year. I was desperate for this not to happen to me.
My special moment of winning while wearing the rainbow jersey finally came in the Emakumeen Bira stage race in June. I had notched up a number of second places over the season so far, including Stage 1 on the previous day to Judith Arndt. Stage 2 was heading for a sprint finish – there were a few corners in the last kilometres forcing the bunch to line out – and I got the timing spot-on to sprint to the win. Perfect! The team was on a high, leading the team classification, and now that I had the winning feeling back I was on a roll. The next day, the stage finished 100m after the brow of a steep climb. I was shoulder to shoulder with Judith as we crested the hill and then pulled away over the final metres to claim another win.
We were still in Spain when the van broke down; the gearbox had failed. We crammed our bikes and equipment onto the team car and hitched a lift back from a friendly Dutch photographer, William Maertens, who happened to be travelling behind us in his Land Rover. More money, more time wasted, as we prepared for the Giro di Trentino. Life seemed to be providing more than its fair share of distractions.
After all my tough races at the Giro di Trentino over the years, I really wanted the team to do well here, and I sprinted to second on Stage 1. On the final stage, first Christel sacrificed her race to make the other climbers work hard in the mountains classification sprints and then, with 20km to go, Vicki and I attacked over the top of the main mountain, creating a break of five riders. Vicki did the majority of the work, setting a fast pace and establishing a lead of almost two minutes on the peloton. I had rarely experienced this situation in my career, and now it was happening in my own team. Vision 1 Racing had become a force to be reckoned with. I prepared myself for the final climb, immensely proud with our team’s performance, and determined to finish the job. I attacked and won by seven seconds, winning both the stage and the overall title as well. As Vicki rode towards the line, she fainted from her efforts. She had given everything.
I capped off the month by winning the British national title for the tenth time, beating Emma Pooley and Lizzie Armitstead in a sprint. This was organised by the ever-active Bill Owen around Abergavenny, and provided a rare photo opportunity to see a British national jersey being put on over a rainbow jersey! On this occasion, Colin Clews applied the one rider one prize principle, that I had insisted on years before at the Celtic Manor, to the youngsters in the U23 medal ceremony. There was then a quite unseemly event as Colin was overruled.
While it gave me great pleasure to ride in the World champion’s jersey in Wales, the best bit was seeing all the youngsters who came to watch, in particular so many girls. They cheered and shouted, just as they had done 12 months before. I wondered how many of their hopes I had carried with me to Beijing; I hoped I was living up to their expectations and that they would have the opportunity to live out their dreams sometime in the future.
Across the Channel, Christel won the French national title, giving Vision 1 Racing two national champions in its ranks. We reconvened in July for a team camp in Luino, just across the Italian border from Lugano. My form was still good, and I even competed in a men’s points race at a Zurich track where, like the good old days in junior ranks, I held my own and got my photo on the front page of the sports press. A couple of the girls’ boyfriends joined us in Luino and we trained together. Evenings were wonderful, dining together with the food spread on a big table outside in the garden. They were good times, as we enjoyed the best of team camaraderie.
Sadly, it was not sustainable. I caught a virus and was laid low by splitting headaches and nausea. I reassured myself that after a few days’ rest all would be back to normal. We rode the Carnevale di Cento in Italy, four of us finishing in the top 20, another great result for our team, but it was clear that I was ill. I tried to battle on as we headed for Germany to compete in the six-day Thüringen-Rundfahrt. I struggled for three days before pulling out, which was made all the more frustrating by the good form of my team-mates, with Vicki up in eighth place.
I was at breaking point, physically and psychologically. I had spent the whole time since the World Championships the previous year organising the new team and finding the riders. I had tried as hard as I could to find sponsors, but it was me who was contacting the organisers to persuade them to give us free accommodation, or dealing with the broken gearbox in Spain. While I had energy and could jump out of bed every morning raring to go, I could cope. Now that I was ill, the enormity of what I had taken on hit me. If I didn’t do it, the show stopped.
I headed back to Wales for a family event for my grandfather, George. Being away from the cycling scene, I tried to plan for the last months of the season. I was ill and exhausted and the next block of racing was going to involve a lot of travel, which would completely drain what few financial resources I had left. I realised I had to close down the team, so I rang the girls one by one. They were all devastated, but I made arrangements for them on other teams. In hindsight, maybe that was another bad call. Perhaps we could have made it through to the end of the season. Certainly, I know that my state of mind was greatly affected by my poor physical state. I decided to finish my season riding with the GB U23 team.
I should have just sat out the rest of the year and got well, but instead I pushed on. The thought of not riding the World Championships with the race No.1 was something I simply could not contemplate. Goading me was all the press talk of what Team Sky were going to do for the British men in the next year; I wanted, once again, to remind the world what the British women could do. At the GP Plouay World Cup, I put myself in the five-up break riding for second place behind Emma Pooley but punctured with 1km to go. I then struggled in a couple of stage races in France. I knew that I was still not well, but I couldn’t bring myself to withdraw gracefully from the World Championships. I had my spot, I knew I wouldn’t do myself justice, but I just hoped I would feel better on the day. I was stubborn and I was wrong. I woke up on the day and felt exactly as bad as I had felt all week. I had no strength in my body. I started, was wished luck by my team-mates and wished them luck. It needed something quite different to luck. I should not have been there and dropped out halfway through.
Vision 1 Racing had seemed such a good idea, but we should have put in some break points to call a halt if we hadn’t hit the required sponsorship targets. Looking back, a critical point was the news from a professional agent whose opinion was that Dave Brailsford would not recommend us to any sponsor were they to approach British cycling. It seemed that, as with the idea of a start in London for the women’s Tour de France, British Cycling’s influence spread itself further than I had thought.
The only bright spot was that in early September, I was contacted by Alexander Oppelt, manager of the Nürnberger team, who wanted to sign me for the 2010 season. They had been in existence for many years and had an excellent reputation. It was one of the top two choices I could wish to make of all the teams on the circuit, with Trixi Worrack and Amber Neben, defending World Time-Trial champion, on the team roster. We quickly finalised the deal. After a year of spending my own money to keep my team afloat, I was happy to be back as a salaried employee, without any responsibilities other than winning.
In October, everything was looking positive as I attended the Nürnberger launch of its new sponsor, yacht-chartering company Skyter, and then went to Buckingham Palace to receive the award of Member of the British Empire (MBE) from Prince Charles in recognition of my services to cycling. I then drew a line under the experiences of 2009 and flew out to Australia for a two-month pre-season training programme, staying with Craig in Perth where he was now living. We made a trip to Geelong to recce the course for the following year’s World Championships.
During December, I was starting to enjoy life again when Alexander Oppelt telephoned. The team’s sponsorship with Skyter had fallen through. The deal was off, they had signed riders and staff without a guarantee of money and they were now struggling to find a new financial backer. Alexander told me I was free to leave and race for another team, or join a new team that he was forming, but I would have to ride for free. Legally, I had a contract that should have been enforceable, but once again the UCI showed it lacked both resolve and the capability to do the things that really matter – protect the vulnerable. Instead, the UCI granted a racing licence to the ‘new’ team, and allowed the management to transfer all the assets from the old team to the new, while all the liabilities like signed contracts conveniently remained with the old team. A long trip down the German legal system finally proved that they were wrong. The ‘curse’ of the rainbow jersey was certainly reaching out further than I expected.
On the eve of the new season, my team options were limited as all teams had filled their rosters. British Cycling said I could ride with the U23 squad where I would receive my Lottery grant, but I could not have any personal sponsors. Despite the fact that I would ride in a jersey emblazoned with the Sky logo, I would receive nothing for this. Sky were also now sponsoring a men’s road team and all the riders received a salary. They also sponsored track riders, who received personal sponsorship. If the track riders and male road riders had a windfall, good luck to them. Dave Brailsford was in charge and set the conditions. With the only other realistic choice being exiting the sport, as Amber Neben did at this time, I had no other options. It wasn’t like I was getting rich before anyway.
I resumed training back in Lugano alone, looking ahead and hoping my problems of the last 16 months were over. Mauro had a serious crash in a Gran Fondo and broke his leg, so throughout 2010 he couldn’t partner me on training rides. Then the dispute with Thomas Campana escalated into a court case. The effort to progress this was made all the more wearying as Thomas would do all he could to stop me winning races. He recruited Fabio, who had been coaching me, and also, knowing how much the British Championship meant to me, he recruited Lizzie Armitstead and Sharon Laws to join Emma Pooley at Cervelo.
The ongoing doping scandals of the men’s scene were bringing women’s cycling close to collapse. At the beginning of 2010, there were only two main teams: Nederland Bloeit (led by Marianne Vos) and Bob Stapleton’s HTC, with Judith Arndt and Ina-Yoko Teutenberg. Thomas’s Cervelo was the next strongest team and after that it was just small teams struggling to find the funds to race the full season. The races had also been severely reduced in number and length. The Tour de France and HP Challenge had gone, the Tour de L’Aude was about to run for its last-ever time and the Giro d’Italia was reduced in length. The World Cup had lost the races outside Europe and classics like San Remo and Amstel Gold. Naturally, there were fewer riders in total, with many of the older riders retiring. The 2010 season, for which I was now preparing alone, was certainly not the type of season for which I had left home and gone to live in Italy in 2002.
My early-season form was good, but this was not shown in any results. The duopoly of either HTC or Nederland Bloeit controlled the races, and I wasn’t given any latitude and was heavily marked in every race. Emma Pooley had also wintered in Australia and was in sparkling form. I came to the Flèche without any enthusiasm and hope. Marianne had now won it three times in succession and was looking to pass my number of wins. At least it was a finish I knew well, and by my own efforts I could get a reasonable result. On the run-in to the Mur de Huy, HTC were lining it out for Evelyn Stevens and Judith Arndt. Nederland Bloeit were setting it up for Marianne, Cervelo likewise for Emma Pooley, while Emma Johansson’s Red Sun outfit were doing their best for her. For the U23 girls, this was a fight for positions they were not used to, so I did what I could myself. I couldn’t see what was going on at the front so just pressed on as best I could up the Mur. I moved through some of the second-string riders and then, to my surprise, went past Marianne as I continued overtaking riders. Ahead, I could now see the two Emmas fighting it out. Emma Johansson was fading, so I kept going and managed to pip her for second place behind Emma Pooley.
A British 1-2 in the Flèche Wallonne was unprecedented. Sadly, the performance went virtually unnoticed by the mainstream British press, who seemed to be becoming devoted readers of Team Sky press releases. I thought Emma deserved far more coverage for this and later results.
The result encouraged me. Unfortunately, it just reinforced the idea among my rivals that I needed marking all the more closely. I was back in Lugano training for the next event, the Tour de L’Aude, when I got a call. I could tell straightaway something serious was wrong, and I felt cold shivers as I was told that the other GB girls had been caught up in a horrific accident while out training in Belgium. They were riding as a group of five when they came to a crossroads and were hit by a car that had ignored a ‘Give Way’ sign and ploughed into them. At that moment, they were all being taken to hospital. Hannah Mayho broke her left leg and right arm, Lucy Martin had a cracked vertebra, Katie Colclough was knocked unconscious, Emma Trott broke her collarbone and Sarah Reynolds split her chin.
I retreated to training rides and competing in Gran Fondos while keeping up with the progress of the girls’ recovery. Amazingly, by mid-June Katie and Lucy recovered and resumed racing. We travelled to Spain to race the Emakumeen Bira, where my season finally looked to be on track when I won the third-stage time-trial, my first win of the season, with Judith Arndt second at 15 seconds and Marianne Vos at 25. At last, I could beat the best again. It had been a long time.
The next day, I crashed spectacularly during a descent on wet roads. I was out of the race and in agony, with gashes and bruises on my ankle, hip and elbow, all filled with embedded gravel, each tiny piece of which was the very devil to pull out. Another team-mate, Nikki Harris, tore the ligaments in her shoulder in the same race. I felt like a contagion was spreading from me.
A fortnight later, I returned to Britain for the national championships, attempting to win it for the eleventh time. Two weeks earlier, Lizzie Armitstead, racing for the Cervelo team with Emma Pooley and Sharon Laws, had been quoted in the written media as saying: ‘The main thing is that we work together to beat Nicole Cooke, who’s the big threat.’ I made an enquiry to the chief commissaire, as to his opinion in respect of team tactics. However, although the relevant rules had not been altered from the previous time this issue had arisen, the UCI had changed the part which stated that ‘National championships shall be run according to UCI rules’ to ‘Every cycle race shall be run according to UCI rules’.
This bungling alteration allowed for confusion. National championships provided no team competition, only individual prizes. For virtually every other event on the professional circuit, entry was only via a team. For this one race each year, individual entry was accepted. I received his written reply, spoke to him, and was confident that we would have a fair race on the day, with the best individual rider winning. However, the chief commissaire seemed to undergo a serious change of opinion on the rules on the Saturday afternoon before the race. At the riders’ briefing, which was given once we were assembled by the start line, I heard a quite different version from the one he had committed to me days before. With no time to debate the niceties of the rulebook, we were invited to start the race. However, there is a difference between a race involving riders and one which includes the team manager taking an active part.
Each lap featured a big, steep climb followed by a flat section, then a steep and twisting descent. A rolling section then took us back to the start-finish area. On the first lap, there was a crash after a corner at the bottom of the very steep descent. An official car stopped to attend. A series of riders then crashed into the car, one rider breaking her elbow. This caused the race to be stopped while they cleared the course. It was the second time in the year any problems of my own were put into perspective.
Once we restarted, a group of four soon formed. On the hill, I could shake off Lizzie and Sharon, and temporarily drop Emma before she would get back to me, but then she could sit on me, which would not have been too bad. Normal practice is that when the gap between riders, or groups, is less than 30 seconds, no vehicles are allowed in the gap. Once the gap is above 30 seconds, a single neutral service vehicle drops in behind the leaders. When the gap is greater than a minute, the riders’ team cars can drop in the gap. It is the commissaire’s job to monitor this rule, to make sure the team cars do not provide slipstream, allowing the chasing riders to catch the leaders.
When I was away with Emma, I saw the Cervelo team car behind us and behind the team car the two helmets of Sharon and Lizzie. The team car was effectively towing them back to me. I tried several more times to get away, but eventually worn out, Emma got away and then Lizzie beat me in the sprint. After the race, I attempted to find the chief commissaire in order to make a formal protest. I was quite keen to look him in the eye as I did so, but he was nowhere to be found. I handed my written protest to another official. Later on in the week, when I wrote enquiring if I should ever receive a reply to my protest, I received the most brief of responses indicating that the result on the day stood, and that if I wanted any more information I should contact the British Cycling offices at Manchester. I didn’t. Emma Pooley rode superbly well all season and could probably have won without the special help, but the way Cervelo did it without reprimand from the race officials left me very upset.
My motivation went to pieces. I was going through the motions. I went out training, but could not see the purpose in racing or training. I had won only a single race all year. Was it time to stop or would everything be okay if I found a proper team for 2011? I decided to return home to Wick. Picking up the familiar routine of family life had a beneficial effect. After a few days’ rest, I began to train well; my times up the Bwlch were among the best I had ever done. I began to think about the course at Geelong for the World Championships, which would suit me. My spirits rose with each training session on the hills and I finished five weeks of solid training on a high. Helping lift my spirits late in 2010 was the fact that I won my court case in Germany regarding my Nürnberger contract, making it two legal wins in a year – more than on the bike!
The 2010 World Championships would be run off on a variation of the old Geelong race course where they used to hold the World Cup and associated Tour. These races were long gone, but the location brought back happy memories of my wins here earlier in my career. Emma Pooley was in great form and the press were talking up Mark Cavendish’s chances for the men’s event, although few people realised how tough a course this was. Nobody was talking about me, which was fine. Emma started the week in great style by winning gold in the time-trial, beating Judith Arndt and Linda Villumsen. It was an excellent and well-deserved result.
The main contenders for the road race were similar to 2008, with Marianne Vos the favourite. The Germans and Italians were fielding strong teams; Emma Johansson was there but without Susanne Ljungskog. After that, however, the remainder of the field had changed greatly since 2008. During the season, I had noticed a significant change in the way races were being run off. Due to the duopoly, the races became very negative. Riders in those two teams rode in a set plan to cancel each other out and the rest of the field seemed to ride to just get a good placing behind them. Any aggressive move seemed to initiate a frantic and mindless chase, followed by riders sitting on, waiting for the next move by one of the main teams, rather than using the attack and counter to move the race onto another level.
Great Britain fielded a full team of seven riders – the three Cervelo girls (Emma, Sharon and Lizzie), Catherine Williamson (née Hare), Lucy Martin, Katie Colclough and me. The race was eight laps of a 16km circuit with two hills on it, the last one 6km before the finish. It was not going to be a large bunch sprint, but the size of the group at the finish would depend on the activity in the race.
The pressure on Marianne was significant. She now had three silver medals from the last three World Championships. I knew how difficult it must be for her and how much pressure there would be on her to win. We had several options: Emma was clearly on form and if she was away by herself, we were now a strong enough team to disrupt any chasers. Lizzie had been riding all year with Emma and Sharon, so should have had plenty of opportunity to practise sprint leadouts, and certainly there was no reason why all three shouldn’t be present in the finale. I felt good and, although I lacked recent competition, I certainly believed that I had a chance, particularly from a small group.
The team meeting was a strange affair. Shane Sutton led it and was obviously trying to encourage Emma to ride for the win, but she was having none of it. She was going to ride for Lizzie, as was Sharon. This did not seem unreasonable, as they had raced all season together and should be highly accomplished in helping each other. Shane gave me a free hand to do my own thing to go with any breaks on the last lap and counter or make attacks as I saw fit. He wanted it to be a hard race, banking rightly on the fact that in the final selection, the British team would be there in numbers.
A board, clearly marked and held aloft in the British pit, reminded Sharon of the lap she had to stir it up for the ‘hard race’. She did that and then settled in the lead group. As we began the last lap, there were fewer than 30 riders remaining at the front, with most of the favourites still in contention. Italy had three riders, the Dutch, Canadians, USA and Germans two each. There were four British riders left: Emma, Sharon, Lizzie and me. Marianne then lost team-mate Annemiek van Vleuten to a puncture and was isolated. This was the ideal time to attack, but nothing happened. Couldn’t they see that Vos was now on her own, as I always used to be? She was desperate to take the gold and would be forced to react to any attack. I was frustrated by this negative thinking, couldn’t they realise that by not attacking, we were actually helping position her to win the race? As we crested the penultimate climb, the negative nature of the race meant there was nothing for it but to make my own attack.
My objective was not to attack to stay away to the finish – Emma would have been much better for that – but to create a situation where there would be the fluidity of attack and counter attack where it would require strength, skill, courage and cunning to pick the right moves. I worked hard enough on the descent to make the front group chase, all the while keeping something in reserve for when I was caught. They reeled me in halfway up the next climb, but amazingly there was no counter attack. So as we went over the crest of the final hill, still 6km from the finish, I attacked, this time a full-blooded attack to stay away. Judith Arndt came with me and we quickly established a lead of 15 seconds. We left behind a group of about 20, followed by a long strung-out line of stragglers trying to get back on.
Judith and I worked extremely well together, both fully committed. We knew the drill: flat out until 600m to go and then it was down to each of us. We didn’t expect it to be easy, but logic told us that apart from our own team-mates the only real sprinters left in the group were Marianne, who was by herself, Emma Johansson, also alone, and Giorgia Bronzini, who still had two team-mates. Of course, there were individual riders who could attack to try to go by themselves, which by itself would inject pace into the chase, but we also had our team-mates who should try to disrupt the chase.
As we took the final right-hand bend and entered the finishing straight with 800m to go, we had a gap of about six seconds. Should I launch an early sprint and ensure a medal but give Judith an easy leadout, or should I wait, and gamble it all for the win, choosing my moment to make sure I beat Judith?
I waited, watching Judith in front in case she jumped, and looking behind to see how close the charging bunch was to us. At 400m, Judith went for home; I responded and I knew I could beat her. I kicked for the line, passing Judith just as Marianne came past us, towing Giorgia Bronzini and Emma Johansson in her wake. I could not match them. Giorgia came off Marianne’s wheel and passed her in the last 50m, while I was fourth and Judith fifth. It was heartbreaking to have been so close.
Afterwards, Marianne explained the reasoning behind her tactics. She could see us ahead and although she knew that Giorgia was on her wheel, she knew that if she didn’t go from a long way out, they wouldn’t have caught us and then she would have been racing for bronze. She, like me, had gambled on gold and lost. Watching the video after the event I saw that after Judith and I had escaped, there was a regrouping and then a very strange move from the two Canadians. They were going flat out chasing down Judith and me, giving a free ride to the rest of the group, and ended up finishing well down the field.
What concerned me is how GB had placed behind me: 9th, 16th and 20th. These were the three Cervelo riders, all three seconds behind Giorgia, who had been in the same group as them up to 600m from the line. Behind the chasing Canadians, GB’s three Cervelo riders had two options: they could either have got to the front and disrupted the chase of the Canadians to increase my chances of gold, or they could have manoeuvred into a train to set up Lizzie with a leadout, from which she would have stood every chance in a sprint finish. They had had all season to practise for this moment, and in Emma Pooley they had the World TT champion to drive onto the trio of Marianne, Giorgia and Emma Johannson. In the video, I can’t see that they worked together at all, and the result was that we had four placed in the top 20 but had no medal. I was not a scapegoat for their collective failure that year, and no inquest was held by British team management as to why they didn’t work to help either Lizzie or me.
Judith and I shook hands with each other as we rode slowly away from the finish. We had many great battles together, attacking each other and trying to break the other one. This time we had given everything together.
I can look back now and see that set against all the trials and tribulations of the last two years, I should have been proud of how I had turned it around and how close I had come to winning that World Championship. After all, in the first year of Team Sky, Britain’s men once again did not finish a single rider. At the time, all I knew was that I had been just metres away from winning gold. I had lost and was devastated. But I couldn’t just slope off; there was a Commonwealth Games road title to contest.
After the farce of 2006 I did not want a repeat, so Dad had worked with the WCU to come up with a support programme to develop Welsh girls and send a meaningful team. There were many Welsh girls entering the sport, and after my success in 2008 it was agreed that a non-paid coach would be put in place and Lottery funding would be available for the expense of running training sessions and supporting riders going to distant events and gaining experience, working with the coach. This was all coming to a nice conclusion in late 2008. However, internal politics within the WCU once again put the first spanner in the wheel. By July 2009, a selection process had been conducted and Courtney Rowe, father of Team Sky’s Luke Rowe, was appointed and the preliminary programme was issued for the Welsh development squad preparing for Delhi 2010. I was really looking forward to working with Courtney and the selected girls. For once, we were going to have a coordinated and focused plan. I was asked to produce a press release to accompany the announcement of the programme. It was now August, we had lost virtually all of one UK season, but we had a winter and the following season to do something tangible.
Within only a week, the programme was cancelled. Shane Sutton spoke to Huw Jones at the Sports Council for Wales and told him it could not go ahead, and Huw agreed. It was incredibly depressing. Just how many individual Olympic gold medal winners had Wales produced over the decades? The answer was at that time, just me, since 1972. That I was not consulted until the decision was made was another saddening feature. It wasn’t that the Welsh girls could even be left alone to get on and do our own thing, regardless of any bureaucracy. No, British Cycling had insisted that only they would hold accreditation for cycling events at Delhi, and they would not allow Courtney access to any of the events or facilities, even though he offered to do the job on a completely voluntary basis. Further, they and only they could be engaged in coaching any talent, with the WCU forbidden to run any talent development programme for Welsh women. I needed no crystal ball to visualise what the future might bring. The men at British Cycling were so pre-occupied with their Sky project that they did nothing of value to help develop any of the Welsh road girls.
The Sports Council for Wales refused to challenge British Cycling’s directive to them. After the debacle of the summer of 2009, Welsh Cycling and I did not speak to each other until just before Delhi. At the last minute somebody remembered the awkward questions asked at Melbourne – ‘Why hasn’t the gold medallist from Wales got any team-mates?’ – and suddenly Wales fielded a team of four. The riders were doing their best, but they did not have either the experience or the capability to help me. A couple had attended the British Championships but were not in the race. With a programme that supported them from February 2009, we could have done wonders. Instead, yet again I felt like I was a punchbag for the Australians, England and, most of all, British Cycling. Those Welsh riders were there only to save consciences.
The girls selected were fabulous; it was not their fault they were caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jess Allen was excellent and gave me her wheel when I crashed, which meant that her race was over, but it enabled me to chase back to the bunch and stay in contention. Unfortunately, I just didn’t have it in the sprint and my old colleague Rochelle Gilmore took the gold, with me in fifth position. As for BC and their much-vaunted support, they suddenly decided that riders had far better things to do than go to Delhi, and many excuses, such as preparing for European Championships and risk of illness, severely reduced the presence of their teams.
I would probably have retired at this point if there hadn’t been the lure of the London Olympics, just 18 months away. I still loved riding out in the countryside and feeling the freedom of riding under my own power, I enjoyed getting ready for races and going head-to-head against my rivals, but it was hard trying to believe I would ever get another even chance at a major race.
Others still rated me. I was flattered to be sought by a number of teams. Walter Ricci made effective overtures. He was forming a women’s team that was to run alongside an Italian men’s team sponsored by a bike manufacturer, using Mario Cipollini as the brand name, and clothing manufacturer Giordana. It was all very promising, with a decent wage and the chance to have individual sponsors where there was no conflict of interest. Fabio, my former coach, had dropped out of the Cervelo operation and called me to ask if I wanted to work with him again. Thinking of London, I cast my mind back to the good days of 2008 and accepted his offer.
The year started with the Tour of Qatar held on the flat, windy desert plains. I played my part for the team, which celebrated when Monia Baccaille won the third stage. I was off the pace during the early spring races, occasionally scraping into the top ten, and had to miss the Tour of Flanders due to illness, although I was back for the Flèche Wallonne, where the team supported me but I didn’t make the most of the opportunity and could manage only fifth.
It was an improvement, but I couldn’t see the positives as I continued to fall short of podium places, and once again fell into the trap of overtraining. I ignored Fabio’s advice and made sure I pounded myself in training each week, arriving at the next race overtired.
Going to the British Championships in June, I was already resigned to facing another one-against-three scenario with the Cervelo girls. Emma, Lizzie, Sharon and I made a break early on in the race, and I then had to respond to a series of attacks by Emma and Sharon over the next 80km. The race came down to a sprint, which Lizzie won comfortably to take her first national title.
It was interesting to see that the Team Sky 1-2-3 on the men’s podium, later the same day, had one or two informed commentators asking about the format of the competition: was this still really a competition for individual riders? With so many of the British Cycling staff receiving wages from both the public purse and Sky, this was not going to be a question that would get a sensible answer.
I was encouraged with the way I rode and headed to the Giro d’Italia, which I hadn’t raced for a few years, in better spirits. It didn’t start well, as I lost large amounts of time over the first few days. On the fifth stage to Verona, we would be finishing in our sponsor’s home area and there was a lot of expectation for our team to deliver a big result. The sponsors would be coming along to the finish to meet the team. Walter was as nice as anyone could be about wanting one of the team to get a win and yet not demanding or trying to interfere with wacky tactical contrivances. He was so supportive, and this attitude was exactly the right way to go about it.
I had been trying all day to get into a breakaway and nothing had stuck. One big group with two team-mates in had just been caught, and with 10km left to go, it looked like we were destined to finish in a bunch sprint. However, I never give up, so I launched an attack. At least we would be able to tell Walter and the sponsors how hard we had tried. A few riders came with me and I kept going flat out, trying to drag a group away from the bunch. A few more riders joined us and we were now a group of 11 with a lead of around 30 seconds; there was a slim chance we might be able to stay away. There was a mixture of riders wanting to work while others were sitting on, making it hard to keep a steady tempo of regular strong turns on the front.
With 3km to go, we rode under the walls surrounding Verona and there was an attack countered immediately by Sarah Düster, my former team-mate now riding with Marianne Vos. This looked like the perfect launch pad for me, so I let the other riders chase Sarah, bringing us closer, then I attacked from the back. I sprinted past the chasers and then straight past Sarah so she could not get on my wheel, but there was still just over 1km to go and the bunch had us in their sight. This was going to be my 1km individual time-trial, and a close-run result. I was already riding flat out but nevertheless dared a glance back; the break must have been caught, as all I could see was the bunch strung out in a long line. That meant their objective was to catch me. I churned a big gear, riding the shortest line possible, counting down the distance to the finish. At 200m to go, the road turned onto the cobbles of Piazza Bra and I knew I was going to win. I crossed the line in front of the Arena and screamed with joy.
A few weeks later, I finished third in the Open de Suède World Cup from a breakaway group. After Sweden, Lizzie and I went to recce the World Championship course in Copenhagen with Simon Cope. I asked to practise a leadout and Simon dutifully led me out, while Lizzie did not participate. I discussed potential finish scenarios with Simon and we came up with a plan for attending a series of Belgian and Dutch criterium races to practise sprint finishes. The idea was to get other girls that might be in the team involved, so that we could practise together. Simon asked Shane for approval, but Shane wouldn’t agree with this initiative and instructed that this was not to go ahead.
I spent the rest of 2011 grinding myself down with overtraining, desperate to turn my poor performances around. Fabio was constantly telling me to take more time off after races to recover, but I had stopped listening, thinking that I knew better.
The World Championship course in 2011 would be the flattest championship course I would ever ride. Mark Cavendish was the best sprinter on the men’s circuit and this was a sprinter’s course. In 2002, on a similar course at Zolder, the Italian team had controlled the race to allow their sprinter Cipollini to win. British Cycling were now going to do the same for Mark in the men’s race. The whole squad was drilled with one single game plan and practised during the GB team camps held throughout the year. Mark was not delivered quite as well as Mario in 2002, but he did a fantastic sprint to win the title. While British Cycling had created a professional team for the men and had run a series of training camps to prepare for the World Championships, there had been nothing similar for the women. The modest plan Simon and I had attempted to put together was cancelled by Shane.
When you see the last kilometre of a bunch sprint on TV, it may seem relatively easy. You spot a group of riders wearing the same jersey riding in a line and maybe two or three other lines operating similarly. In reality, the bunch is forever a moving mass of riders, and in the last 20km there are plenty of riders who know that they don’t have a chance in the sprint and will attack. Each attack draws a response and this changes the order of riders at the front. If a team is strong enough, it can simply eliminate the attacks by riding so fast that it becomes virtually impossible for anyone else to attack. The risk here is that the riders run out of power before the finish and their sprinter is then left to fend for him or herself. The other aspect to be careful of is sprinters without strong teams. Their tactic will be to take advantage of another team’s lead out and get in the string themselves, or even more simply just take the wheel of the sprinter who is being led out. To avoid this, teams use ‘sweepers’, whose job is to ensure that one of their own is behind the sprinter. All these manoeuvres are being carried out in a bunch of riders going at 60kmh, with the tiniest of gaps between wheels. That is why it is not something to decide to try out for the first time in an important race.
The now four Cervelo girls in the British team, following the addition of Lucy Martin for 2011, had the luxury of another 12 months in the same trade team to hone their leadout train for their sprinter, knowing that they would all be in the GB team on a sprinter’s course at the end of the year. I’m not sure how many times they practised their leadouts over that period; I personally never saw a race where they did it. Certainly when the seven of us assembled in Copenhagen, we never discussed a possible team order of riders, or at what point on the course we might start a train.
In the meeting to discuss tactics on the Wednesday night, the agreed plan was that Lizzie would have the team set her up for the finish and I would be a free agent. On Thursday, the last day of practice on the course, I asked Lizzie if she wanted me to help in a leadout for the sprint. The response was that I could ‘tag along’ if I wanted. I followed the threesome of Emma, Sharon and Lizzie as they weaved in and out of obstacles and cyclists on their way to the finish line. They did it once. I remembered back to my first World Championship as a junior in Plouay, where a week before the race and at a time when the road was clear, with Dad and Craig acting as leadout riders, I practised sprinting the last 500m on the course. I had been on the verge of a professional career and intended to optimise my preparation as a professional should.
The full team meeting that night again confirmed the plan from Wednesday night. However, on Friday evening, the night before our race, Shane, who had not attended any of the earlier meetings or spoken to me during the week, called us for another impromptu meeting. Here I was told that Lizzie insisted I led her out.
This was quite some change of heart from the ‘tag along’ attitude of the previous morning, which suggested that the initiative had not come from Lizzie herself. I pointed out the flaw in this plan was that we had never practised doing this, either as a drill or at the end of a race, or even together the day before, and it was doomed to failure. I don’t know what the others thought of my criticism, but the outcome was immensely vague. I agreed that I would lead Lizzie out, while the rest of the team would ‘look after her’. Apart from that, there was a lot of looking at the floor and ceilings. Again, I reflected back on a previous World Championship, in Madrid in 2005, where I had taken along the video of the 2002 race to show the others how the Italians had worked together. This year we didn’t even have that, only a vague aim. There was no detail, such as where to assemble, on the right or left of the bunch, how far from the finish, who would be the sweeper, how many of us would be in the line. What were the others to do? Was it a leadout train of one rider?
The race was an incredibly boring affair. All the main teams were busy closing down attacks during the race to ensure a bunch finish. Clara Hughes of Canada had escaped by herself and was away for a long time, caught only through the efforts of the Dutch with 4km to go. There followed some more individual attacks off the front and crashes near the back of the bunch, as the riders became nervous for the finish. The contenders for the win were all in the first 20 places. I couldn’t see Lizzie and it was too late to go back to find her. She needed to be up near the front and there were still her strong trade team-mates all there with nothing else to do and capable of getting her up to the front section of the race.
We swept round the right-hand bend into the finishing straight with 800m to go. Now as a lone sprinter, my aim was to get on someone else’s leadout train. I was on Marianne’s wheel in the Dutch leadout. The other two teams already prepared were the Germans and Italians. Maybe the Dutch had done too much already, as they had been chasing Clara for a long time. One German sprinted away up the left, with about 500m to go, but too hard for anyone to follow. The Dutch gradually peeled off one by one. The Italians waited until the last 200m when Marianne was left alone, then they accelerated up the right-hand side. They still had two riders left. The result was the same as the previous year: Giorgia Bronzini gold, Marianne silver, but this time Ina-Yoko Teutenberg of Germany was third and I was fourth. Lizzie had come up from a long way back, on her own, and finished seventh, while Emma Johansson was only 14th.
After the race I attended the anti-doping testing and was last of the team to arrive at the hotel, still in my race kit not having showered. As I approached my room, Simon Cope told me Shane had instructed that they were going to have a post-race meeting and it was going to take place in my room, right then. Everyone followed me in. My room-mate Catherine Williamson looked on amazed as the crowd assembled round our beds. Shane’s understanding of the race failed to take into account several key elements, but he was in no mood to be corrected as he singled me out as being at fault. As Shane gave us the benefit of his wisdom, none of the Cervelo girls was going to admit that they could have done more to help move Lizzie up to me, while she was not in a mood to accept that she had been in the wrong half of the race at the critical time. With experience she would understand that positioning at this stage of the race is vital and quite difficult as others want to be at the front as well.
All three medallists had team-mates working for them in the last kilometre, and frankly I could only despair. Two years in succession I had been on my own. Each time, specifically on team instruction, I had not a single rider allocated to help me, yet managed two fourth places. I will let others debate what might have happened if I had been supported with just some of the talent that was available to GB at that time. We were almost doomed to fail before we even got to the start line. British Cycling then dismissed Simon Cope. Certainly he was not responsible for the late change of tactical plan, and I’m not too sure whether he can be blamed for four trade team-mates not learning how to conduct a leadout train or move their team sprinter up into the front half of the race.
Maybe with hindsight, the Cervelo girls will look back and recognise that scapegoating me was not the high point of their cycling careers. Sadly, it was not the end of the issue. When Lizzie Armitstead was interviewed by the media later, an issue that was best kept behind closed doors was suddenly a public spat. I was in Perth, staying with Craig, when the story hit the papers, and even though I was on the other side of the world, it didn’t lessen the blow. Lizzie’s harshest comment was that I was a selfish rider who never did anything for team-mates. It was an unfounded claim, for which Lizzie did apologise when we next met. I have made many mistakes of my own over the years, so I put it down to her inexperience. We both had bigger things to think about, with the Olympics now just a few months away.