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Between the Lines: My Autobiography. Victoria Pendleton
Читать онлайн.Название Between the Lines: My Autobiography
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007459162
Автор произведения Victoria Pendleton
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство HarperCollins
Unfamiliar with the rigours of riding twice a day, seven days a week, I was wearily unsurprised when I just missed the qualifying mark. Peter and Marshall invited me to try again a few weeks later.
After some rest back in Northumbria, I returned to Manchester early the following month. There was a freshness to my legs, and a vigour to my riding, as I smashed the qualifying time at my first attempt. Peter and Marshall smiled and confirmed that I had made it onto the England Potential Plan – the lowest rung on the ladder of elite British cycling.
Before I left Manchester they presented me with my kit. As an increasingly fashionable girl, I tried hard to conceal my amazement at the terrible canary yellow colour they had chosen. Instead, I thanked them both for believing in me so much.
‘I’ll do my best not to let you down,’ I promised.
‘We know that,’ Marshall said as he patted my shoulder. ‘You’re going to be just fine …’
I was still dazzled whenever I returned to the velodrome for training during my time away from university. I gazed in wonder at Chris Hoy and Jason Queally, trying to work out what they did to become such exceptional sprinters. Cycling has always been a masculine environment. I was used to the dominance of alpha males, especially with a dad like Max Pendleton, and riding against men as a junior. But Queally, Hoy, MacLean, Wiggins and the rest of the men’s elite squad were remarkable riders. I felt it was a sham for me to be training alongside them.
It was also odd for them. I think they were all slightly disconcerted and despairing of me. I would turn up to training in a GB top matched with a mini-skirt and sparkly sandals. The boys never said anything out loud to me but I did see the odd eye-roll and I could imagine them all saying, ‘Oh my gosh, this girl cannot be serious.’ But I was deadly serious. I wanted to get better and become more like them on my bike. The distinction, however, was obvious. I did not want to try and look like them or act like them off the bike. It felt essential that I should keep on looking like a girl, and acting like a girl, even as I tried to turn myself into a rigorously committed cyclist.
None of the men on the squad believed that competitive racing and femininity worked together. It was almost as if one concept automatically cancelled the other. I set out, in my own way, to prove that it really was possible to both be a very girly girl and an imposing cyclist. It was hard because, in cycling, I had no-one I could look towards. And only a few women athletes inspired me. Denise Lewis had won gold in the heptathlon at the Sydney Olympics and she was strikingly beautiful and graceful. She was a formidable athlete; and a gorgeous woman. I was neither; but Denise gave me the template to which I would aspire over the next decade. Grit and glamour did not have to be mutually exclusive.
At the velodrome I probably just seemed ridiculous. I had a very girly voice and a very girly laugh. I also appeared as a waif on my bike next to Chris Hoy – who had thighs almost as big as my torso and muscles that rippled with the explosive power a great sprinter needs. I was small and slight with thin legs and a small bum. It seemed unlikely I would find the force to generate a natural jump – the acceleration that distinguishes a good sprinter.
Yet all those Sunday mornings, chasing Dad’s wheel, had instilled conviction in me. I would not surrender easily. I might have appeared vulnerable but, deep inside, I was a fighter. I also knew that, when I concentrated my mind, I was capable of surprising people. I was not quite as delicate or as silly as some had decided. I was ready to shock a few cynics.
Martin Barras was top of my hit-list. In the midst of an eighteen-month stint at British Cycling in Manchester, Martin (or Mar-tain, to use the correct pronunciation of his name) took an instant dislike to me. ‘Miss Victoria,’ he said on the day we first met at the velodrome, ‘I’m going to find you very annoying …’
He might as well have slapped me in the face. Martin had never seen me ride my bike and we had not said more than ‘hello’ to each other when he declared his disdain for me. I was cut to the core and rendered speechless – a trait with which I’m not readily associated.
It soon became clear why Martin was so vehemently dismissive of me. He had specific ideas in regard to the physiological and psychological make-up of the ideal sprinter. I was far too puny, in Martin’s view, to generate any raw power. There was no beef or muscle on me – and Martin simply could not see where I would find the strength to overcome my physical frailty. He also took one look at me and decided I lacked the swagger and killer instinct of a supreme sprinter. Martin mistook my diffidence for weakness.
I don’t think he meant to be cruel. He just spoke with, in his opinion, blunt honesty. He could dismiss me physically but I was outraged he could deride my character within a minute of meeting me. Alongside my buried anger, I was shaken by his mockery. It made me wonder if he had seen some intrinsic flaw in me. All the confidence that had begun to flow through me since Marshall spotted me, and Peter Keen endorsed his belief, threatened to curdle over one snide sentence.
Privately, I resolved to prove Martin wrong. Yet, when training dipped or I was tired, I felt wounded all over again. I would have ridden well if I felt he respected or even liked me. But, to Martin, I was a source of pesky irritation. He set me back.
I summoned the courage to mention my problem to Chris Hoy and Craig MacLean – who both tried to reassure me that I had ‘got Martin all wrong’. Chris was convinced that Martin would be too professional not to give me a chance to prove myself. I nodded quietly, but Martin had made it plain that I would never become a decent sprinter. My only slim hope would be to switch to endurance events on the track.
Fortunately, Marshall, Peter and Heiko Salzwedel, the new German-born manager of the sprint squad, believed in me. In July 2001, and still only a twenty-year-old student, I was startled to be selected to ride for Great Britain in the European Championships. The team would be managed by Marshall and, as the Europeans were then limited to riders under the age of twenty-three, Olympic medallists like Queally, Hoy and McGregor were not included. I was still daunted that two of the three other members of the team had been on the Olympic podium less than a year earlier. Bradley Wiggins would race in the individual pursuit while Craig would triple up in the individual sprint, the 500m time trial and the omnium. Steve Cummings, another talented rider, would compete alongside Brad in the individual pursuit.
They were all much more accomplished competitors than me, and each of them was chasing victory in the Europeans as a win would secure automatic qualification for the World Championships in Antwerp later that year. Riding in the women’s sprint and 500m time trial I wasn’t thinking of winning anything. I was just hoping I wouldn’t fall off my bike and look a complete idiot.
The Europeans were held in the city of Brno, which we all pronounced Bruno, in the newly independent Czech Republic. I arrived at the airport in my GB tracksuit, brimming with pride and tripping over with nerves, while the boys managed to look outrageously laidback. I liked them all. Craig showed the first signs of interest in my future – in a way which would eventually help transform my approach to cycling – while Brad was the quirkiest guy in the national squad.
Brad was amusing and charismatic and I felt lucky to sit next to him on the flight across Europe. I also felt hopelessly out of my depth. Brad seemed to know everything about cycling while I knew nothing. He was intensely passionate about the sport, both on the road and the track, and he didn’t seem to mind that I was so ignorant. Brad answered my fascinated questions generously and enthusiastically. I was certain he was on his way to becoming a legendary cyclist – while it was more obvious than ever that I had fallen into a strange new world by pure chance.
When we arrived in Brno, I was in a room on my own and immediately felt disorientated. The boys teamed up naturally and, as the only girl, I was unintentionally sidelined while they met up to chat or watch a film. I sat alone in my room fretting about whether they’d said we would meet at 6.30 or 7.30 for a meal. So down I went to the hotel lobby at 6.25. When no-one appeared for twenty minutes I returned to my room – having worked out that they must have said 7.30.
I should have