Would you want your children to follow your footsteps? It’s harder to win races now, but physically I’m as strong as ever. I might not be winning as much but that’s because the peloton has changed. There’s an assumption that this will create a better performance but it’s not always the case.
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It feels like an admission as a professional athlete to say I have another life, because the expectation is that you should be all-in with cycling. But what I was doing wasn’t sustainable because there’s no point being dominant in races if you have no one to celebrate with when you get home afterwards. There was a time prior to being World Champion when I was hyper-focussed. Do you think this approach has helped you have a long and successful career? You’ve said before that you need more than just cycling in your life. I suppose coming back from maternity leave, there are questions marks in my head like, ‘Will I still have it?’ or ‘Will I still be able to compartmentalise my brain to not think about the kids?’ But once there’s a number on my back I’m a very different person to the person around the dinner table the night before. I get tunnel vision and go into race mode. That’s one of the reasons why the decision to retire keeps getting put off – there are so many more opportunities and to be able to compete in the Tour de France is not something I would like to miss. How do you feel about riding the Tour de France this year given that you missed last year’s through pregnancy? Times have changed a little bit between my era and Beryl’s – she was a much harder woman than I am. I’ve been very lucky to be surrounded by a family who think it’s totally normal for me to go back to work. It was never a question of whether I would retire. But I also remember that when I announced my pregnancy to my family, my grandma was one of the first to ask me when I would go back to cycling. My grandma used to work in the same school with Beryl Burton, and she would recall that Beryl used to cycle to work pregnant and how everyone thought it was so strange. You’re from Otley in Yorkshire, near to where Beryl Burton was from.
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