Sarah Storey: How to focus on the things you can control

[Music] hello and welcome to the game changers the podcast where you'll hear from extraordinary trailblazing women in sport I'm Sue anus a founding Trustee of the women's sport trust charity and the founder of fearless women a company with a powerful ambition to drive positive change for women's sport I'm thrilled to say that this series of the game changers is supported by sport England who've done so much to tackle the inequalities women face across all areas of sport from the wonderful this girl can campaign and initiatives that help shape School sport for girls to schemes that encourage more female Volunteers in the workforce support female coaches and officials and ensure more women from all backgrounds take leadership positions on the boards of sports organizations my guest today is Dame Sarah story the most successful British female par Olympian of all time with 38 World titles 14 par Olympic goals and 76 World Records Sarah was just 14 when she made her Paro Olympic debut at Barcelona 92 winning five gold medals including two Golds she went on to win more medals in the pool at Atlanta Sydney and Athens before moving to cycling and winning more medals on the track and the road at Beijing London and Rio Sarah's also six times British national track Champion Sarah and her husband Barney now run story racing and Sarah's also the active travel commissioner for the Sheffield City region I asked Sarah to share her memories of that first par Olympics in Barcelona I was racing in Barcelona in '92 a German girl who'd never been beaten Claudia HST and she was kind of the Nemesis of everybody in the S10 category and she was on be as far as everyone was concerned and it was the first time I'd come across this concept that you know somebody was Untouchable in sports and I just you know didn't buy that as a as a as a kid you don't do you kind of like think well I'm not going to believe that make my own decisions so she beat me in the 400 meters freestyle but I did a huge personal best time and one of the things I'd always focused on as a kid because I was never quite good enough for the national age group Champs in the able boded swimming was that I beat my personal best and if I beat my best then that was all we could do um and in going a huge PB in the 400 I got a silver medal so I was absolutely over the moon and it set me up for the week so when it came to the 100 meters backstroke which was my first real opportunity to kind of beat her I was just so excited but also really concerned that maybe everyone was right because she had won everything up until that point and the first sort of 50 meters of the race all I could see was this enormous Splash and I just thought oh that's a leg kick and actually it was our arms and when we got to the turn and I saw the scoreboard and I was a second and a half ahead ahead of her I was just like wow and I like smashed myself all the way up the the second 50 uh and broke the world record by a good few seconds and beat her by about nearly three seconds I think and it was just like wow it's possible she can be beaten so yeah I really remember that excitement of proving that Claudia HST he was a fantastic girl Fair few years older than me I suppose she must have been um but yeah it was so it was really cool and then I went on a few days later to beat her again in the 200 meter individual medley and so I had to come behind her again in the 100 freestyle when I got my bronze medal and be part of a relay team I think um the the Germans or the Americans won the relays when we got two Silvers so yeah she she'd been a big rival all that week and she continued to be for a good few years after and and what was it like being the youngest person on that team I wasn't actually the youngest so bizarrely there was two other girls who were 14 as well Vicky Sims Now call Vicky Foley and Rachel pachy now called Rachel foot and so they were both a few weeks younger you're like I was October Vicki was the 30th of December and Rachel was somewhere in the middle and there was a girl called CLA Bishop who's now CLA Cunningham works for Paralympics GB she just turned 15 and there was a lad cordi and Matthew who was also 15 so there was like five of us who were year nine or 10 at school who were all in that team together um and then a few others who were probably a level Styles so there was quite a big contingent of youngsters there and then a really big contingent of of swimmers in their early 20s and so it was quite a really nice balance I think and what are your overriding memories of that first experience I remember the Roar of the stadium when we walked in for the opening ceremony because it wasn't sort of even coined the idea that you needed to rest at that point um ready for competition and we stood out in the heat for hours on end and just like had an absolute Ball but I think that was the way it needed to be because as a kid I wouldn't have known that it was time to rest I would have been Restless in the village anyway but we just had this incredible Roar as we walked into that stadium and at no other stadium has come close really and maybe the the closing ceremony at London 2012 but yeah it was just insanely good and the the size of the crowds was they were all bigger than anyone had expected the par Olympics was really taken to their heart of the people in Barcelona they loved the competition of the Olympics and they heard the Paralympics were coming and they just wanted to be a part of that as well so they reopened the closed parts of the stadium in the swimming pool so the temporary stands got reopened and they had full houses as they had had for the Olympics so it was amazing excellent and being out in the the heat obviously didn't affect you because you went on to win I think three gold two Silvers and a bronze is that correct two gold three silver and a bronze in Barcelona and um yeah the he I think that was the thing it's kind of like there's so much psych psychosomatic element to this as well and so if you believe that you're going to need that rest then you need that rest and you have that choice um and I think that's the key for any athlete you'll hear about it next year in Tokyo as well having that choice to go to the opening ceremony is really the key part and obviously we know when um we've had uh members of the cycling team like Chris Hoy carried the flag so they made it possible by putting in place the right things to make sure it wasn't an issue for performance but largely now we don't go to the opening ceremony because well certainly for Tokyo next year we're going to be too far away from Tokyo itself to be even even in the right City and when did that actually sink in I guess that extraordinary number of medals that you won at your very first games um I don't really know because I think it probably wasn't until the until I was maybe at at University and going through the the the problems I had with chronic fatigue syndrome that I realized just what had happened to me as a kid and just what a career i' set up for myself and I suppose it's only really as I've got a little bit older that I've realized that the enormity of doing what I did as a 14-year-old and um it was amazing for me to be in in Beijing when Ellie Simmons cuz I was the youngest gold medalist um until Ellie Simmons in Beijing so to watch her do what she did and know what she had ahead of her was just so exciting but also gave me that opportunity to really appreciate that I was just a few weeks older than Ellie um when I won mine and then yeah so I guess it was quite a long time after although at the time I was like yeah you know it's really exciting and I think also in the runup to the games in Atlanta when I was doing my a levels at the same time I probably realized the enormity of the of the the job in Hand of trying to have that that like two careers I suppose and did you just go back to school so I say you're in that year that's 10 so I had I think we got back from Barcelona on something like the Wednesday or Thursday of a week say and I had a few days at home and went on went down to London to go on to Blue Peter with Tanny H gray Thompson Simon Jackson Chris Holmes Dave Morton a couple of the table tennis players um one of two the other track and field athletes and there was a group of us in the studio so high school I think we did that on the Friday so high school said look go do these things then come back on Monday and that's like draw a line under it and come back so I'd had three weeks of the term like off so I got back on the Monday I think maybe we got home Wednesday Thursday I went into school to show the medals Friday I went to BL Peter Monday I started back in year 10 and so it was really quite strange and going back to school was really good to start with and then not great after that because I think because I did just draw a line under it I was like right medals in the box back to school GCS as you know it's kind of like you know so important drilled into you and I didn't really talk about Barcelona again and because I'd been told not to to distract myself or anyone else so then that led to sort of a small faction of girls thinking that I thought I was too good for them and I didn't want to talk about it because I was up a te whereas it was really quite the opposite so I had a I had a fairly um sort of lonely exist assistance I suppose for the final two years at high school and who told you not to talk about it was that the school that had said don't talk about it yeah I mean if you can imagine a school they didn't really know how to kind of cope with this all this press had turned up at school during the games that you know my swimming club had had the press down every night when I the the days had won medals you know that they they'd had another pupil at school who I think she was in sixth former just finished he'd made the team for the Olympics and so they had you know two of us but one of us kind of went into stat asrh measures of medals and so it it's kind of how do we handle this to make it fair to Sarah fair to the rest of the people so the idea was come in don't do lessons and show everyone your medals and have that kind of social time but then you know draw a line under it and concentrate on work and I got back into training straight away so I was arriving at school with wet hair and kind of like move on to the next event which at that point was two years later was going to be the World Championships so I was just like yes let's get on I want to do another one I want to race again like and so for me it wasn't a hard thing to kind of do that because I was doing little juns out I had like the Sunday time school girl of the year that I won and other little events that sort of award ceremonies in the runup to Christmas and but I just kept them to myself I didn't really kind of want to distract anyone in lessons so in some ways if I'd been the big head and kind of look at me guess where I'm going tomorrow I probably would have been in the same position anyway so I guess it was just one of those situations where I was doing something unusual it was exciting and you know most bullying at school is down to some form of misunderstanding or jealousy and it wasn't great at the time and I did have I really struggled with it but I'm kept focusing on what my mom and dad was saying of make sure that you just remember your career in sport or whatever you want to do is forever and it's only however many months left until GCSE start moving on and what made you so competitive so even at such a young age what do you think drove you is that something you've seen within your family I'm not 100% sure I remember watching the Olympics in ' 84 that was the first one I remember and just loved the competition and just wanted to get involved with any sport going my primary school was an incredibly sporty school it had its own swimming club so I was racing um in the school swimming gers from probably being in year four but I was fastest swimmer in the school year four five and six so I was kind of ahead of all my peers even though I was a paddle short as it were and we played netball we played in an adult Table Tennis League even though we were at primary school so I had a really nurturing Headmaster Chris Parker and he he was just incredible and there was so many different opportunities at primary school at State primary school that you know you probably wouldn't find now which is really sad and you know that sporting element that brought all the kids together outside of classrooms and made us you know work really hard when we were in the classroom and and it did it worked and and I went on to kind of take that sport to the to the next level and then at 27 you changed over to take up cycling so why did that occur well basically at the end of 2004 after the games after every games I used to go and do something different for a little bit cross training I suppose quite a lot of the time it was running or something might have been you know going rock climbing and after the games in Athens I went down to the Manchester Val Drome to learn how to ride on a on a fix wheel bike and i' had not ridden a bike much probably all through University um and in the runup to those games I'd commuted um on my bike to college and doing my a levels and then on to swim training so I had used a bike but not a fixed wheel so I went to the vome and I'd been at the Commonwealth Games and the vome had been kind of the site where we'd gone to and from the stadium for those ceremonies so I was really curious um and then I went off to Australia to do some traveling and while I was in Australia it turned out I picked up this ear infection that kind of plagued all of 2005 so cycling just became this thing I used as a cross trining tool until my ears got better except the ear infections just rolled on and on and on and so I ended up racing on a bike as you do and then British cycling spotted me just doing a public session and they were bit curious I still had really huge shoulders and they invited me to a trial over 3,000 meters which is the distance of the individual Pursuit I'm fairly kind of sort of Rough and Ready it's not the The Secret Squirrel Club equipment anyway uh I did a time that was outside of the then world record by just a second so they're like oh right okay well if we put a little bit of effort into you and your equipment you might go quite quick so 3 weeks later I was racing at the European championships with um marginally better equipment and I did go a little bit quicker H won the gold medal broke the world record and um a few days later was outside for the road events because at that point they were still doing combined track and road uh championships and I won the road race in a bunch Sprint and they were like oh we normally have to teach people about the bunch and you've got it straight away I was okay I was just kind of using that instinct of sport and competitiveness so I then had a decision to make was I going back to the pool was I going to stay on a bike because I had Lottery funding in both Sports if i' wanted to do either so there was no kind of financial decision to make it was about you know inspiration and what I had as um you know my end goal and ambition so I had a long long chat with my swimming coach it took us ages to decide because I kept thinking well the home games is the one I could do on cycling but what about doing Beijing in the pool and we had this discussion back too and he said if you were my daughter I would tell you to go and get on your bike because he said I just think you're not old but you're getting that bit too old in the pool um and so he he was right it was the right decision to make and on the 1 of October literally all UK sport is would move my file out of the swimming section put it in the cycling section and and cycling let me have another sort of six weeks to make my personal transition to it because I wanted to do another competition in the pool to um proed to myself as much as anything that I was capable of being back to the best I had been so I raced at the national champs in that very early November of 2005 and was you know a few hundredths of a second outside of the world record on the 100 meter freestyle and was like yep there we go I I was capable of making that comeback it was my decision to change Sports and and what was tough about changing Sports at 27 because you made it sound like it was a fairly smooth transition there I think the biggest dis sort of decision was about the technicalities of cycling because you know I looked at myself as someone who you definitely had a disadvantage on a bike on on in the swimming pool but on a bike you know it's all about your legs isn't it and actually they proved to me very rapidly that the contribution of your upper body and having the grip on both sides is way bigger than most people understand and certainly I understood so the technicalities of being able to break independently change gear either side um have balance and and equal pull on the bars for the biggest of efforts those kind of things put me at a significant disadvantage and I wasn't really sure about it so I said at the very get-go well I want you to make sure that you judge me physically based on the same figures you judge the able bed girls because when you put me on a static bike that's where it's at really and they agreed so we were able to sort of set about a process of really moving on the sport the sport of Paras cycling by having that end goal of being physically as capable and that the only difference that we were going to allow was any technical differences that we had to find a way around so that might have been an adaption of some kind that would plug some of the Gap um but make sure that from a physical perspective I trained in exactly the same way and I was tested in exactly the same way and I was benchmarked in the same way when it came to any of those you know key performance indicators and that's what we did and I think very rapidly that's why I ended up in that position of and going towards the team suit Squad racing on the road and ultimately by the time we got to Beijing the time that I raced on the track would have been seventh at the Olympics and so very quickly we got me into that position where I was you know racing H the likes of Rebecca Romero on the road who went on to win that Olympic gold medal and then you know racing alongside her Joan Rasel Wendy Huen Aro Laura truck Danny King as we prepared for that games in London in 2012 with their first women's team Pursuit and did you have any concerns at the time about the culture of cycling when it came to female cyclists well at the time there was a real drive to make sure that we um sort of change track cycling I came into track cycling first and at that point in Beijing there was fewer events on the program so um if you look what that was where Chris Hoy won his triple gold and Victoria Pendleton won a single gold medal because there was no other event that she could have competed in so there was a very much a need for leveling up and that was done immediately after Beijing and then probably paralleled to that was a similar situation in Paras cycling because we had fewer events in the female side and more events where we were combined with other categories and every single one of my events in Beijing was combined with another category uh and on a factor as they called it so although I um was beating everybody by at least 20 seconds on the actual track my factored time I only won the race in Beijing by 2300s and the girl I beat went on to go into the same category as me once they refreshed the cat degrees and kind of upgraded the system so there was a lot of development needed that to to be done and it was probably um part of the kind of Honor as I suppose to be a part of that group of women that really pushed track cycling to where it needed to be and now we see that even you know after one games the the team Pursuit moved up to four 4,000 meters and four four athletes um and so it feels like we're kind of on a similar Journey with the roadside it's just taking that a little bit longer because um I don't know it just seems to be more difficult and I guess the men's side of the sport has gone to extreme lengths in terms of race distances that it it makes it almost you know do we need them to meet us halfway to make it completely equal how how are we going to solve this challenge because I'm not sure that it's the right thing to do to have you know 250 kilometer races um the women's racing being shorter it it goes from the gun uh and it's full on full gas race for like three three and a half hours and that means it's it's um a different offering to Spectators as well as um you know the fans absolutely you and your husband barley now head up team story sport can you tell me a little bit more about that so in 2009 we set up team story Sport AS kind of like um an education business in sport we utilized our experiences to either coach people coach businesses deliver motivational keynote speeches and so just that education around what we've learned in our sporting careers and how we can apply that to other people whether that's a corporate you know big corporate business and and their Executives or their High Flyers or whether it's the people who are kind of the they're Beav away on the ground and want to know how to keep their motivation going when it feels like all you're doing is working really hard and not making any progress right the way through to schools um colleges anything really anyone where they want to learn the lessons of sport so we set up our own business to do that that allowed both of us to have another another string to our bow as my dad would put it and gave us that opportunity to kind of do something put back a little bit into sport as well as as finding a way of creating a career alongside our own competitions and then off the back of that we set up story Racing in 2013 just as my daughter was about three months old and we decided we needed to set up a team that would enable me to race where where I needed to race um with Family Ties but also where I needed to race going back into parasyn from my time in team pursuiting was that very much it's not always your own decisions and what happens and and I wanted to protect the Paras cycling racing because although I was very much um getting success and and the Able Body side of the sport my roots have obviously always been parasport and I didn't want to ever have to be forced to make a decision between the two because I would have made the choice to do the Paris sport racing I think but I I wanted that decision to be mine so I could set up my schedule so story racing started out as a sponsor team and we were sponsored by a number of different companies and then we changed the name in 2017 so the name never ever changed again and it became a more regular um UND people understood exactly you know what it was that we were doing instead of it being named after a a brand and everyone saying well who's behind that and what was your vision for that team well the vision's probably changed over the years initially it was to take it into the UCI ranks and to have um a UCI team but along that and alongside that provide opportunities for other women to kind of make that step up but alongside our plans to kind of take that to that level the UCI were obviously working alongside um the the various different campaigners to to bring more equality to the female side of professional cycling so now we have a situation where it's actually um a lot harder to run as it should be a UCI team you certainly can't run it from your garage like we were doing anymore um and so we've readjusted our expectations of where we can take the team and we're very much um a uk- based development team if you like but with that reach into to the professional ranks when needed so we can provide the right opportunities with links to race organizers but we're not a full-time um professional outfit on the road probably from January to October which wouldn't be practical with a young family so we can um we have that experience at the higher level but we obviously also then have that nurturing opportunity at the UK level and at the moment we have Juniors or youth Riders Junior Riders under 23 and seniors and parasit clists and so we um manipulate their makeup of the team according to the the right type of athletes and where we think we can make a difference to an individual and and how was it all going preco well the team was going great we were going to we were looking towards three or four Riders getting selection for the Tokyo games um maybe even five I think if we had an outside you know really really great selection time we you know we were looking to race abroad we have links to the scoda DSi cycling Academy where we're trying to develop and nurture Riders under that Banner whether this is our time campaign that scod have set up so we had kind of like a lot of irons in the fire if you like to to support as many different women as we could who had different challenges and different Ambitions um and so when lockdown happened we had to cancel the trips that we'd got planned abroad we thought we might be racing in the Netherlands and Sweden and various different places in the runup to national championships at the end of June and then obviously that would then lead us into a a final buildup into Tokyo so whether we can replicate that next year remains to be seen obviously lots of things have changed and the commercial side of sport and the availability of sponsorship is is still a little bit unknown and I think um you know you you look down at the the lower ranked teams if you like and those are the ones that aren't as 100% sure of of how they fit into that bigger picture because the bigger picture hasn't been kind of completely ired out yet um so we have seen the return of the Women's World Tour and with strad biani at the weekend and we're hopeful that other races will go ahead but as we see the E and flow of the of the virus um and this sort of threat of a second wave or the the final you know weeks of the first wave however it is it really is a little bit of an unknown and we know already that the uh the women who were planning to ride the Tour of France today ahead of the men those their plans have had to change so it it really is a lot of unknown and we just have to try and be patient and hope for the best and and think that next year there will be you know a way for us to to rectify what we couldn't do this year and still provide opportunities and what's the position like for young women now who want to race professionally I read um Nicole Cook's book a few years ago now that feels isn't it when it was all a bit shocking really but have things changed significantly for women in that space yeah women's professional cycling um that there there are some fantastic teams out there and we had um Ellena backed on our team last year who got Bronze in in Harriet in the junior World Championship time trial she moved on to txa Fredo which is where Lizzie diagn is and they have a superb setup which is linked into the men's team there are other teams like sunweb which is where um a colleague at British cycling Matt Winston is now one of the main main coaches and they have a men's and women's team and I think that's where Fifer Georgie has gone she's a British Rider as well so there's a significant number of very big men's teams who've got a women's team moar there's another one and so all of those teams have provided a very similar setup for the men and the women mitchelton Scott is the Australian team that does that so there there are some very very big teams who are doing the right thing and then there are some incredibly good women's teams who are just Standalone female teams like BS dolmans who were going to take on a new title sponsorship and they're probably one of the sort of Beacon teams if you like because they had a very long-standing sponsorship with B's um rental and the Dolan's um gardening and that ended at the same time but they managed to find a sponsor to take them on to another four years to to apply to be in the Women's World Tour and to hopefully be that um world tour team from next year and so in a market where people were unsure to see that happen was really really encouraging and that's been you know a sort of a Mainstay of the women's Paton for many many years and then you have other teams like team tipco from the states who've also been um a very uh wellestablished long lasting team and they're headed up their head coach is Rachel Hedman who used to race for Great Britain so there's a really strong network of incredible women who are working from off the back of their own careers and they're now working in the sport so that brings around that change that you perhaps need where previously women have said that they've not had the best experience obviously when the women come back into their own Sport and and try and move it along they bring that experience of either being you know a colleague of someone who had a hard time or having had to experience it and not really know how to tackle it so it's really exciting to see those women Georgia bronzini is involved as well in the women's peleton now and so you've got so many names that are coming back into the sport and so I think that gives it a much brighter future I'm so pleased you've painted such a positive picture of of where things are that's lovely to hear you've obviously now got two young children Charlie and Louisa and you've been a real trade BL blazer for female athletes in terms of I guess returning not just after one child but after two were there women that inspired you I guess for me I watched Tanny have her have Caris in well Caris is probably nearly 20 and so it's such a long time ago but I was really inspired by the fact that she came back and I think when I was having Louisa I was like yeah I can race the World Championships Louisa will be 10 weeks old because Tanny had raced you know she' kind of made everything possible she's one of those people who've been present my whole career she won four gold medals in Barcelona and she's always been an incredible support when I wanted to find out how to get involved with the the motivational speaking she was the person I went to and tny gave me that mentorship that I could blossom wonder and I think if you look across there are other women you know Paul Radcliffe had children but even further back than that perhaps um Liz molan and so there are lots of women who've come back after having children but they're perhaps not always been celebrated but then I don't know whether that's so much of a problem because we don't want to make it out to be something that's unusual it's just a normal part of your life when it's ready for you as an individual I think there are some things that don't need to go you know they don't need to be sort of out there are you planning to have a baby is an incredible you know personal question but some somehow um certain parts of the press seem it's seem to think it's okay to ask like well mind join business thanks very much and that's something I actually said after the games in Rio because you know as a woman you just don't know you might fall pregnant you might not but you you you know having one child or having two it's your own personal decision and if you have more then then great but um yeah so I think there there was lots of other women you could look to and think it is something that's possible and I think now we see you know Riders like Lizzy dagnan and Laura Kenny and they've had children and then you you know even a colleague of mine nir Kindred who had her first child Ella um 15 months before the games in London it was just amazing to see her come back and take silver in the pool after you know a baby just a few yeah baby that was still very tiny really and did you ever think you would come back stronger after motherhood I really really didn't know whether I'd be one of those women that'd come back stronger um another colleague of mine Janette chippington who now now is in the canoe she um raised when she was six months pregnant in the pool with her first and I remember just being in awe of this bump gliding through the water so beautifully and she came back stronger and she's obviously gone from strength to strength because she switched borts and she's now in you know in the boats as well in the canoe so um I think you you kind of Wonder n told me she definitely didn't come back stronger but I was really fortunate that I was one of those ladies that blossomed in pregnancy I had no sickness it was just something that I absolutely loved being prant and I raced with Charlie when I was pregnant with him I didn't race with with Louisa I red national champs when I was very early pregnancy and then race time trials right the way through till about 22 weeks um and then kind of got a bit too big and how do you juggle the life of a an elite athlete and a parent especially in a sport that does require so much traveling and training well I have the most amazing husband and having Barney on side who knows all about the ins and outs of it was an elite road racer before he turned to the track so he understands both sides of the sport brilliantly and I think that's probably one of the reasons why I am one of the few athletes who's doing track and road to the same level because you know I have his support and he's like well why can't you you you know you don't need to specialize and I didn't want to specialize as a school girl when I was told to choose between swimming table tennis net ball cross country rounders and all that so why would I want to choose to to to specialize as it were now so his support he's been a full-time dad since Louisa arrived with his coaching business um as and when he can find the time to tap one his keyboard and and that's the beauty I suppose of the mobile phones and he stays in touch with his riders that way so we're really fortunate and he obviously then can be right at the the the wheel for for the team car when we were away on the road my parents have always traveled everywhere so with or without the grandchildren they've always been alongside the racing from the stands or from the roadside so they've come along with two extra little ones and we've got some fabulous pictures the Tour of California we we seem to get loads and loads of pictures it maybe have been the American journalist we just in a of this little girl who was with me at all the press conferences as well and it was just lovely and then I guess the only time that we've had to kind of make decisions is around school time so we've we've done a lot of um homeschooling I suppose so it did set us up well for lockdown but we didn't want to do too much we wanted to make sure she had um that sort of settled status of being in the classroom and and and knowing her routine at school as well so we've been fairly selective probably since Charlie arrived on just how much time out in term time we will take and and it's just worked well and I think being selective as I've got older in the sport means that I can kind of pick and choose and maintain the very best performances without that risk of injury from being on the road you know week in week out everybody needs a Barney it's a proper team story isn't it really yeah Barney is the absolute hero of the whole family and he doesn't get enough credit we give him a big shout out there um you've obviously won so much competing over the years and I know it's a question you're often asked but what does drive you now to keep going back for more medals well I think now that the children are with us it provides a completely different Dynamic and their enjoyment and experience and learnings are all part of the motivation for me because I can provide the opportunity for us to do rather unusual things as a family by still being you know right at the top of the sport and they get to meet people that perhaps they wouldn't have met otherwise and we get to go to places and and and parts of places that you don't normally go to off the beat and track say so I think it's part of that whole life experience and that Journey that we're going on together you know my enjoyment of racing hasn't waned I I love racing um I still get the butterflies and think why am I doing this you know what's the outcome going to be am I going to be good enough today the natural experience that any athlete will have but then challenging yourself in that way and giving that challenge and and sort of learning to your kids is is is a completely different level and I know a lot of athletes who have children who said what now that I'm racing with my kids here it just feels even better so for me I think Charlie experiencing his first games a year older than he would have done if it was this month then it means hopefully he'll remember it and then Louisa said to me the other week and before before lockdown it was we were on a training camp she goes you know what Mom you can't ever stop racing because I just love these training camps like right okay so yeah I'm gonna be going to the games her first games will'll be my last games and all this joking um but yeah it's one of those situations where I think hopefully I'll know when I know and I think I remember hearing someone like Matt pinsent say that you know when it's the right time and I don't think I'll ever declare you know get me off my bike and don't never put me back on again as as Steve red grave did at that time but yeah it's just it's just a way of life now that involves that hard work and I've always thrived off really hard work so I think that's a good thing and did that extra year to Tokyo affect you in a different way perhaps to other athletes at the stage of career you're at I think a lot of people expected the extra year to be a really a really big thing for me a really big problem I think I'd kind of accepted before the decision was even made that something was going to happen to the games because it was logical that we unless they came up with a a really clever quarantine plan it didn't seem possible that we could all travel to Japan within a few months given the severity of the virus so when the announcement came I was like yeah there we go it was coming we just needed to be patient and it was difficult that you know no one had ever experienced lockdown or this chance you know certainly swimmers had never experienced not been allowed to go to the pool and it must have been horrible we were fortunate as a road cyclist you know we had that one slot of exercise a day so the only decision we had to make was whether that was a walk with the kids or a a bike ride for yourself so turbo trainers came in very handy um and I think I expected something and I was delighted it wasn't just completely cancelled because I think that would have been one of the real possibilities given all the other logistics that are around the games so it was good to hear that it was only a postponement as it were because it could have been a lot worse so now we hope we just keep and wait and be patient and not KNN when I was going to start racing again whilst I was pregnant I think it's a similar mentality of patience you know it's going to happen at some point you just have to be ready and that's an adaptability athletes have had to have before but we have to be adaptable and and this is a case where you know we're needing to be very very adaptable and what events are you training for in Tokyo so I'm training for the same four events that are won in London that I won three of the four of in Rio so that the individual Pursuit um is on the day after the um opening ceremony I think that's now the 25th of August it was announced yesterday then the two days later is the 500 meter time trial which is an event um I won in London I came for in in Rio the Sprints turned up in Rio so if they don't turn up again in Tokyo I'll take them out again and then on the 31st of August it's the uh Road time trial and the 2nd of September is the road race so then there's a couple of days and it's the closing ceremony so yeah it's it's it's good to have the schedule out again it's exactly the same as it was had it been this year in terms of the order of events so yeah we just build back up again and see see what next year holds are you 44 this year and I'm 43 this year so I'll be 44 just after the games next year next year how does your body respond Now versus to training when you were like a 14 year old it's interesting um looking at how my Budd responds because I had chronic fatigue syndrome as a 2021 year old and so I really couldn't I really was in in a right State I got to the point where I ended up having six weeks complete rest and then started on five minutes a day in the pool and my coach at the time Colin Hood was just incredible like keeping me on the straight and narrow to get me to recover so now I kind of feel that this strength I have is a real blessing because I can go out for you know hours and hours on end and the main challenge for training is just being correctly fueled and having enough fluid so you know that the the amount of food I take on a ride is absolutely ridiculous I eat and eat and eat all through my rides um and yeah just keep on top of those fluids but I think it's the intensity that um online racing has given me during lockdown because we haven't been able to race out side and that's maintained a level of Fitness but yeah so far I I'm kind of holding on to this sort of gradual rise I think I feel like I'm still improving there's still things I can do better which is good and we're exploring some of the technical things that i' never had the opportunity to do before so I went into the wind tunnel um at the the bardman performance center which I think is sadly a casualty of lockdown now in terms of a business but I went in there for the first time last July and now I'm working with a a company to to design some 3D printed handlebars so you know I said to my husband can we really justify the cost of this I'm in my forties he said yeah but you've got to do all the bit you can to find the absolute best version of you and so yeah so I was like right okay I I write the check shaking hand um but we're we're we're looking at the opportunities to to make me better from all different angles and that whole idea that you you leave nostone unturned and the marginal gains concept that's cycling so well known before absolutely and you talked there about eating fueling is obviously so important so has that always been uh I guess a key part of your training and the whole package through your career well I suffered with an eatan disorder when I was 15 I think coming back from the games I was a big well I wasn't a big athlete but to some people I was a big athlete I was I was a 14y old who looked like she was in her 20s I was strong I was very physically capable and so there was just one comment about and I just got oh I'm not I'm more musly than I should be so I had maybe I don't know seven eight months of really disordered eating um and I was never diagnosed with any formal condition but it was very close and my GP was amazing and she said you don't want to be diagnosed you don't want to be put on that path because there are significant things that then you have to move through in terms of a process to come off of that diagnosis so she sorted me out which I was really grateful for um well I am now I don't know whether I was at the time cuz it was a bit of control that I had and maybe it was also a bit of reaction to the reaction I'd had from my peers at school and and bullying I felt like I had control over my eating whereas I didn't have very much control over anything else at school in terms of their you know their attitude towards me so um having had that experience I think that I'm well placed to kind of spot it in other people how I help them get through that I'm not so sure but if I can help them to understand the importance of nutrients and of having um a nutritious diet so we focus on the things that are going to do your body good instead of whether or not it's got a calorie in it then those things really help and now um you know very very aware that we don't we don't count calories we look at the nutrition value of food and what it does for your body as a you know as an engine rather than you know anything else so um it's interesting for me now as well working in active travel and the whole idea of the Obesity strategy that links into getting people more active is that focusing on the positive that you can do rather than you know counting the negative and that's something that I've not seen yet and I think we need to focus on how you can make yourself better by doing things positively rather than um Banning things because they're you know that they're negative so I think we still got some way to go on that side absolutely we we've obviously seen a massive increase in cycling during lockdown and I realize you're now the active travel commissioner for Sheffield region City region a new role but it's not always been a sport that women have flocked to in the way they have running why do you think that has been in the past well cycling has a significantly fewer fewer women in in the than men in terms of everyday cycling as well and we did a study at British cycling and found that 66% of women just cited safety and actually most people just cite Safety Not Just Women but it seems to be something that um is more prevalent in in the female population that concern around you know the behavior of other Road users and and and how the greatest threat of harm and and of a motor vehicle or a larger vehicle could do to them and you are incredibly vulnerable on you know on a bike on a horse when you're running with pedestrians and we see far too many instances of pedestrians killed on Pavements by Vehicles as well so the whole spectrum of you know out and about on our roads is is just one that needs uh you know looking at and that's what was announced last week the government want to you know redress the highway code and finally pull it to the 21st century because it's been added to but never kind of taken away from I suppose it's a sport that can give us so much if we can address those safety concerns and running feels you know a lot less of of an issue um in terms of safety because you can take yourself off the Beaten Track and it's a a little bit of me time away from having to think about other things and we're cycling there's a huge amount of concentration perhaps needed or or it's perceived that you need a huge amount more con concentration and actually cycling is no more dangerous you're just as likely to trip over when you're running as you are likely to fall off your bike but I think it's just that the road conditions feel so horrible and we just need more segregated infrastructure so it keeps us incredibly busy because it's it's important that when we're starting to reallocate Road space that it's not seen um by a huge motoring lobby as being an attack against them it's actually for them as well because if we can get many more of those short car Journeys off the road then those businesses that rely on vehicles to deliver equipment um and to carry out the services that they do they'll have more space for themselves and for their you know um employees and the vast majority of car Journeys that are made less than 5 kilm which is um an absolutely cyclable distance and and even in the UK 14 kilm is our average commute and with the Advent of ebikes you know if we have the right infrastructure almost every single Journey could potentially be done without the need for a motor vehicle fantastic yeah that's so true um and just in closing if you had the chance now to go back and talk to that 14-year-old self standing on the blocks there what advice would you give her today I'd give her the same advice as I was given because I think one of the reasons why I've been able to do what I've done and and continue to enjoy my Sport and and have success is because I was you know looked after so well as a a teenager so my parents always told me to focus on my own performance and to control what I could control which is was a very um you know profound thing to say because it's all um part of the marginal gains concept and the the way that Steve Peter's taught us also well within cycling so to have all of their advice confirmed as being kind of gold standard was just you know it thrilled me that I'd been following it anyway and also a piece of advice that my swimming coach in the run-up to the games in Atlanta said he said you know everybody can be ordinary but you need to be extraordinary and it was a really clever way of using the two words and I just thought you know what that's right you know you watch other athletes that have done things and they've been talked about that that the high jumper that stayed back to do extra work or the Johnny Wilkinson's that stayed back to do extra kicks or whatever and that for me was all part of it and I remember watching a documentary about Sarah Hardcastle who was one of my absolute Heroes of the 84 games because she was called Sarah and she was so young as well at 15 but she would talked about working by herself and training on her own and really thriving as an individual not needing to have any external you know motivation she had it all intrinsically and for me that you know really rung true with this idea of being extraordinary so um yeah those two pieces of advice have stuck with me my whole career what an incredible woman and I do love that idea of being extraordinary in order to succeed in sport I wish Sarah every success in her new role as the active travel commissioner and also for her and her team ahead of the Tokyo games if you're enjoying the game changers please do take a minute to review and rate the podcast as it makes a big difference to raising our profile and ensuring more people get to hear the stories of these trailblazing women in sport another big thank you to sport England for their kind support of the game changers and thanks also to Sam Walker from what goes on media who's our very talented executive producer you can find out more about all 41 of my incredible guests from this and the previous series at fearless women.co or come and say hello on social media where you'll find us at Sue antis or at theame Changers on Twitter Facebook Facebook and Instagram my guest next week is Allison Oliver the chief executive of the youth sport trust the charity building a brighter future for young people through the power of sport I've come across plenty of women for whom sport has damaged them whether that is the way it's in which it's been delivered or whether there's been sort of no sense of the value and purpose of this thing called sport ever articulated to to girls the game changers Fearless women in sport [Music]