LITMIR.BIZ

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strife. Fred does not live in the hotel with the rest of us but, still, I instinctively know it’s best to keep my personal choice secret from everyone else. I don’t want to think about the cutting in the day. It’s only sometimes, on rare occasions at night, when I bring out the knife.

      Today, I turn up for breakfast and reach the train and the track on time. I am about to pull on my helmet when Fred sees me. His gaze lingers on my lower left wrist. I see him staring. The bottom cuts are visible.

      ‘What’s happened?’ he asks, in surprise.

      ‘Nothing,’ I say quickly, as I move towards my bike.

      ‘Aren’t you hot?’ he asks, pointing to my long sleeves on an early summer day.

      ‘No,’ I say, forcing a smile. ‘Don’t worry …’

      I turn away before he can look more closely. It feels the same as when I speak to my mum on the phone – only it’s less graphic. On the phone, calling home, it’s easier to put on a brave face. Mum can’t see me. I speak to her in a deliberately bright voice. I tell her that I’m working hard, that everything’s alright.

      ‘Are you sure, Lou?’ Mum asks. ‘Are you looking after yourself?’

      Every time I tell her that I’m fine – just a little bit tired from the training. I don’t want Mum to worry.

      I also, really, do not want Fred to worry. My issues with the knife belong to me alone.

      I’m on my bike and down the banked wooden tier of the track before we can talk more.

      Slowly, I circle the track again. My arms are covered. My head is helmeted and lowered. My legs turn. Round and round I go, picking up speed as I pedal.

      I’m on my own, going nowhere fast.

      A visitor comes to see me in Aigle. Steve Peters is a grey-haired man. His face is kind and warm. I like him the instant his hand takes mine. Dave Brailsford, the new head of British Cycling, asked Steve to fly to Switzerland. Steve is a psychiatrist. But I can see, immediately, that he is a man before he is a doctor. Compassion and understanding pour out of him even before I begin to talk to him.

      I melt into his company. He explains that they were worried about me. Fred had suggested to Dave that I was struggling. Steve wants to help me. His whole life is built upon his desire to help people.

      Steve asks me a few routine questions and, within five minutes of meeting him, I am hunched over in tears. It feels as if I cannot stop crying. I cannot answer the simplest questions that Steve has asked. One of the first, delivered in a quiet and gentle voice, invited me to list my qualities. I am mute, but for the crying. I am silent, but for the crying. I am empty, but for the crying.

      Then, changing tack with sensitivity, Steve turns his attention away from me. He asks me about my family. We stumble over the imposing figure of my father. I haven’t even begun to tell him about the girl on the hill. But it feels as if Steve already knows. Steve can read me like a book he has just opened.

      The words and sentences and pages about me are brought to life in his head. Steve Peters reads me. He understands me. Steve starts talking about me as if the truth is written all over my scrunched-up face.

      I look at Steve, through the blurring tears, and I say, ‘Oh my God, this is so embarrassing …’

      He smiles back at me. It’s his way of telling me that we need to move beyond embarrassment.

      I’m still shocked. How can a man who has just met me know the secrets I’ve lodged inside myself for so many years? Am I that transparent? Am I that exposed?

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Steve murmurs. ‘I’m not here to judge you.’

      He waits and then, after I have nodded my grateful understanding, he says six words of salvation.

      ‘I am here to help you …’

      Later, Steve and I look back at our first meeting in Aigle. He tells me then how proud I make him feel. Steve says that when he meets people who are vulnerable, or damaged, it’s important that they should want to change their lives. Some people, Steve suggests, are happy living a life of misery. I am not one of those people. I want to get better. I’m tired of the guilt and the feelings of worthlessness. I want to feel more hopeful about myself. I want to improve – as a cyclist and, more importantly, as a person.

      I trust Steve and so, together, we start to unravel the darkness within me. He becomes my friend, rather than a psychiatrist. I talk to Steve and I listen to him.

      And so, when we know each other well, Steve tells me the truth about his return to Manchester in May 2004. He flew back from Geneva and, at the velodrome, Dave Brailsford pressed him. The Olympic Games in Athens were just over two months away. Could Steve have me ready to chase down a medal?

      Steve looked at Dave and shook his head. ‘It’s going to take more than a few months,’ he said of his aim to make me better. He knew he was right about me. ‘This is going to take a very long time to sort out – at least a year. Maybe longer. There’s no quick fix. This girl has serious issues.’

      Fred Magné was, again, disappointed in me when I flew home early in the summer of 2004. He felt I had made a mistake that would haunt me for years. Fred did not understand the extent of my distress; and he was convinced that training in Aigle remained the only possible route for me.

      Eighteen months, however, marked the end for me. I had to break the cycle. Sometimes I felt it so literally I could have taken a hammer to my bike and smashed it to pieces. I sometimes wanted to quit cycling and start a new and happier life. Escaping the isolation and depression of my last months at the academy became essential.

      Steve Peters had urged me to not to make any impulsive decisions about my long-term future. He reminded me how hard I had worked to secure my selection for the Athens Olympics that summer. Rather than walking away from cycling forever, I should pause, draw breath and give myself a chance to think more clearly. The prospect of achieving such serenity would be enhanced if I was back with people I liked and respected. It was time to return to my team.

      Fred had little faith in the coaching system in Manchester. But world champion riders like Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins were improving constantly. I wanted to emulate them and so, for a few days before we left for a pre-Olympic training camp, I took a room in a rented flat with Chris. The routine was very different to Aigle. Rather than being on my own at night in a small box, feeling lost and alone, I kicked back in the living room with Chris Hoy. We watched television and ate lots of cereal in a surreal combination that would not have earned the approval of Fred Magné. But I liked the way that Chris, who always seemed to be hungry, would regularly jump up during a night of slobbing out in front of the telly to grab another bowl.

      ‘More cereal, Vic?’ Chris would ask.

      ‘Yeah, go on,’ I’d say with a laugh. ‘Why not?’

      After eighteen regimented months of eating the same sort of food, at the exact same hour, day after day, week after week, it felt deliciously decadent to have another bowl of cereal at 10 o’clock at night.

      It did not fit the brief of the UCI training academy; but if it was good enough for Chris Hoy, it was great for me. In training, with his imposing will, no-one worked harder than Chris. I knew he was on course to win his first Olympic gold medal in Athens. I was just going to try my best – a statement I would have found impossible to say a month earlier.

      My fragility was obvious amid the stress of an Olympic Games. Everything felt sharp and clinical in the Olympic village in Athens. There were white walls everywhere, and small rooms. It resembled an institution. Surrounded by thousands of athletes, most of whom were edgy and jittery, I felt vulnerable and insignificant. Minor issues caused yet more anxiety.

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