LITMIR.BIZ

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the group. I’d be pedalling flat out, knowing how much easier it would be if I could change gears. Fred, however, was usually around and he’d keep watch with regal scrutiny. Occasionally, at the back of the group, I’d sneak in a gear change just to taste the sweet relief.

      My body was not accustomed to such intense training. It went into a state of shock during my first month in Aigle. I had never seen such big black bags under my eyes – which felt like they had sunk right into the back of my head. Luckily, we were allowed home for Christmas and I had a couple of weeks to recover.

      Ross and I returned in early January. The snow lay thick on the ground and the cold up in the mountains began to bite. I worked hard and tried to keep warm as the temperatures dropped as low as minus 12. During training on the road, my face would be entirely covered as I huddled deeper into one of the red fleecy snoods Mum had knitted for me. It stretched over my nose while my eyes were hidden by shades that could not quite prevent ice crystals forming on my eyelashes. I also wore a thick headband and my helmet but, still, it felt as if the bitter cold had begun to eat away chunks of my face.

      I felt anxious whenever we rode along the river and the path turned into a flat sheet of ice. We cycled in a straight line, in pairs, side-by-side, and we were fine as long as no-one braked or suddenly turned. Even a twitch of a wheel at the front could bring the whole pack of us down like a box of dominoes being spilled across the hard and clattering ice. Some of the Chinese cyclists were not as used to the road as me; and so I was always far happier when it was my turn at the front.

      On the track, I struggled to match the pace of riders who were more accomplished and better drilled than me. Li and Guo were both incredibly strong. They were faster than me on the track and much more powerful in the gym. A few months earlier, at the World Championships, Li had won the keirin. Riding daily against a world champion, and having my times compared after every session to hers, was sobering.

      I was used to training as a lone woman sprinter in Manchester but, in Aigle, I was surrounded. Apart from the Chinese girls, I raced against Canada’s Lori-Ann Muenzer, who had won two World Championship silver medals, and the American Jennie Reed, a recent World Cup bronze medallist.

      Yvonne Hijgenaar was my age, twenty-two, but she was ahead of me. Apart from being the Dutch national sprint champion she had also reached the podium in the 500m at the previous summer’s European Championships – where I had ended up, instead, in the back of an ambulance. Hijgenaar was part of the Dutch squad that used Fred’s school as a training camp. Her compatriot, Theo Bos, had won three medals at those same championships and he strutted around Aigle with the certainty of a future multiple world champion. Teun Mulder, the third Dutch rider, had picked up a couple of medals at the Europeans and was also on his way to various future World Championship victories.

      At different times there were riders from Belarus, Cuba, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Russia, South Africa and Venezuela and I loved the mix of cultures and personalities. I became close to three male cyclists: Josiah Ng from Malaysia, Tsubasa Kitatsuru from Japan and Chung Yun-Hee from South Korea. I always enjoyed it when they showed me their magazines of popular culture, aimed at guys in the Far East, and we soon developed our own private code as we adapted to the rigours of Fred’s serious regime. Fred had once told Tsubasa that he was ‘stupid, stupid, stupid!’ and so we resorted to saying things in triplicate. Someone would say, ‘Ah, Tsubasa … is so stupid, stupid, stupid!’ and we’d fall around amid much hilarity. And if someone was feeling emotionally or physically weary they would resort to a similar quip as they said, ‘Today, me no power! No power! No power!’ The boys were fun and interesting to be around and helped me feel a little less lonely.

      I also had daily banter at lunch with the Frenchman behind the counter in the canteen. He regularly tried to trick me into eating rabbit or veal – even though I always reminded him that, for me, both were off limits, alongside horse meat. I enjoyed French cuisine but I was an ardent animal-lover.

      He thought this was hysterical and would point to another deep and steaming dish. ‘Poulet,’ he’d say with a sly grin.

      His chicken looked suspiciously like rabbit. ‘Lapin?’ I said.

      He smiled mysteriously at me, and then shook his head.

      ‘Cheval?’ I asked more pointedly.

      ‘Non!’ he would exclaim innocently. ‘Poulet!’

      Every lunchtime we had a similar conversation and I’d end up laughing alongside him and choosing a safer option – which I would then eat happily alongside my new friends at Fred’s school. I would often look around and feel fortunate to be in such a beautiful setting, with so many diverse professional riders in a cosmopolitan environment. I also thought Fred was great and I ate up the work he gave me with enthusiasm and, gradually, resilience.

      I was motivated by a need to try and keep up with the other women. Every time we went out on the track our individual times would be logged in the book, and compared by the whole group that same day. There were no secrets. Everyone knew who was flying and who was battling. I was always at the back of the battlers, clinging on for dear life to the rest of them. It felt as if they were miles ahead of me. In the gym it was even more clear-cut. I could not lift the weights most of the women hoisted effortlessly.

      My only advantage on the track lay in my superior leg-speed, while on the road I was more efficient and grittier during longer rides. All those years of chasing Dad had, at last, given me some benefit.

      The months slipped past and I remained at the bottom of the timed track efforts. My lack of confidence was apparent. I was disappointed not to qualify in the sprint in my first two World Cups as an Aigle student riding in GB colours. Travelling full of hope from Switzerland, I would then arrive at a competition feeling suddenly weary and edgy. My qualifying times were never quite quick enough. I felt deflated; but the excellence of Fred’s coaching team and his managerial skills meant that I still savoured the training.

      Gradually I could feel a new strength coursing through me, even if my results did not yet reflect that sense. Tangible proof only emerged during extended training races on the track. My slight build offered some reward here. I tired much less quickly than the bigger girls whose bulkier muscle-mass made them more subject to fatigue over distances exceeding 500m. Small victories in training provided reassurance that, slowly, I was moving forwards.

      As late winter turned into a gorgeous spring in Switzerland, the daily routine barely shifted. But, deep inside the same pattern, I concentrated on developing my qualifying speed. My times on the track quickened. Something was stirring. I kept working.

      The 2003 World Championships were held in Stuttgart that summer. I took a huge step forward, finishing fourth in the sprint behind the winner Svetlana Grankovskaya, Natallia Tsylinskaya and Mexico’s Nancy Contreras. Outside of the tight-knit training circle in Aigle, and my GB camp, everyone else in track cycling was astonished by my apparently sudden leap into the final four.

      William Fotheringham, in the Guardian, was a more generous observer. Already looking ahead to the following summer’s Olympic Games in Athens, Fotheringham suggested, on Monday 4 August 2003, that ‘these World Championships, which finished yesterday, are merely the beginning, not an end in themselves … Perhaps the most encouraging portent for Athens was the surprise emergence of a world-class woman sprinter, Victoria Pendleton, who was narrowly beaten yesterday by Nancy Contreras in the ride-off for the bronze medal in only the fourth sprint series of her career. She has spent this year at the International Cycling Union’s track racing academy in Aigle, Switzerland, and has clearly proved an able pupil.’

      More suspicious glances were shot my way, and dark mutterings were mouthed, by those who knew little of my work with Frédéric Magné. To them, the only answer for my improvement had to be found in doping. It didn’t bother me. The veiled innuendos told me how well I had done.

      I had nothing to fear, being utterly clean, and so I peed cheerfully into every drug-tester’s little vial. I knew that none of the testers or the doubters had seen the journey I had taken over the last nine months.

      They had not seen me rise from my bed early every morning. They had

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