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Between the Lines: My Autobiography. Victoria Pendleton
Читать онлайн.Название Between the Lines: My Autobiography
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isbn 9780007459162
Автор произведения Victoria Pendleton
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство HarperCollins
VICTORIA
PENDLETON
WITH DONALD MCRAE
Between the Lines
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
For Scott
Laoshan Velodrome, Beijing,Tuesday 19 August 2008
I’m going nowhere fast. On a set of whirling rollers, with my head down, it feels as if I’m flying without moving. The bike below me shudders a little from side to side but it never moves forward. It just spins on the gleaming drums, the wheels of an otherwise stationary machine whirring endlessly. My whole life shrinks down to these surreal moments. I try not to think about it now; but I can’t help it. I’m just one race away from becoming an Olympic champion.
A new song in my head starts prettily, lilting and yearning in headphones that are meant to shut out the madness and tension around me in the pits. As I get ready to return to the wooden track in another ten minutes, I look up and think of Scott. This song binds us together. I can sense him nearby, even if I can’t see him. He has to become invisible to me between my races, just as we have had to keep each other secret from the world these last few months. Maybe the furtive nature of our relationship should make me feel guilty; but it doesn’t. I allow myself the smallest of smiles, on the inside, behind my racing face.
On a steamy Tuesday evening in Beijing, a long way from home, the opening words to ‘Today’, by The Smashing Pumpkins, ring through me. They tell me that today is the greatest day I’ve ever known.
Today should become the greatest day of my life. In the final of the individual sprint I’m already a race up on Anna Meares, my old rival, the Australian rider who so often tries to bully and intimidate me. Meares is a formidable competitor but I’ll never forget how she once smashed her bike straight into mine to stop me winning. Scott, who is also an Australian, used to be part of the team that helped make Meares an Olympic champion four years ago in Athens. She won the 500m time trial while, at those same Games, I endured one of the most miserable experiences of my life. I cried like I’d never cried before.
Everything should be different now. Everything should be fantastic.
As I keep myself warm on the rollers the song begins to change in my head. I can now hear The Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan singing, with a muffled yelp, of burning his eyes out and tearing his heart out. I know the feeling. Racing, especially the tactical nightmare of an individual sprint, sometimes makes me want to scream. It can feel like torture.
Today, however, is different. Today I seem untouchable.
I can hardly feel my legs turning beneath me. I can see them pumping and pedalling, in a blur of bony knees and fastened feet, but it’s almost as if my legs have disappeared from the rest of my body. Usually, in competition, my legs are in a permanent state of fatigue. A nagging weariness runs through them, telling me how often they have gone up and down, round and round, in ceaseless circles. But during these long weeks in Beijing my legs have been unbelievably quiet. They lead down to my feet, touching the pedals, and I pump them effortlessly, hard and fast, up and down, round and round. There is no ache.
In the first race against Meares these legs of mine were unstoppable. I beat her without really extending myself, winning the first in a possible series of three sprints. If I win the next race I’ll have won Olympic gold – the only medal that I came all this way to take. It will be all over then, the waiting and the fretting, and I can go and find Scott. We can drink champagne and maybe even come out in the open. Then, and this rises up like an image of bliss on my static rollers, we can fly home happily.
I am going to win this race. I feel the certainty coursing through me. That arrogance goes against every neurotic bone in my body. Normally, I’m a seething tangle of doubt and insecurity. I question myself, and my ability, every pedal of the way. But not now, not today, not with The Smashing Pumpkins on a resounding loop; and not with my legs feeling so strong.
It’s taken my whole life to reach this point. The little girl trying desperately to stay in sight of her dad, pedalling up a hill until it seemed her heart might burst, would not believe we’d end up here. There were no Olympic dreams then. That small girl, me in a different world, just wanted Dad to slow down or look back to see that I was all right. But turning the pedals on the rollers, I can now imagine Dad driving me on, never glancing