When I’m referred to as an amateur winning the Olympics, it helps people identify themselves with me. “Oh, hey, I also ride a bike for fun - she’s just like me.” For selling my story, it’s quite handy. But the truth is cycling was the centre of my life in 2021, like it had been for years, and so much sacrifice had gone into it. I was training as much then as I do now, and I’d won on Mont Ventoux, been national time trial and road champion and been in the mix in the European Championships. I was only an amateur in the sense that I didn’t make money from cycling before Tokyo. What most people then learned about me is that I have a PhD in mathematics and bachelor’s degrees in physics and maths. It’s fun figuring out problems, but I’m more than just my academic achievements.
I’ve never really bought into the Olympics hype in the sense of just going there to say you’ve been. For me, the Olympics were a big target, I wanted to perform well in the same way as I’d targeted other races before – Gran Fondos and National Championships. Because it was Covid and there were few official races, to be selected for the one Austrian spot meant taking part in an internal selection race in April 2021 with the other five girls on the longlist.
A national team DS designed a course similar to Tokyo – flat and then a pretty hard climb before a flat finish – and we even had some elite men ride at the front so that we went into the climb with some fatigue. I gave myself a 70% chance of winning because I knew I had the best card to play, but I still had to cross the line first to get the spot. Thankfully, I did.
I wasn’t signed to any team and was coaching myself at that point. I’ve had coaches on and off, and I felt the best preparation for me was to use all the knowledge I had gathered and do it myself. At the beginning of 2021 I bought myself a new Scott Addict from my local bike shop – they were friendly enough to even give me a bit of a discount.
Arriving in Tokyo 10 days before the race meant I had plenty of time to do recons of the course. Plan A was to attack from kilometre zero, which I did, but the idea was not to win but to be able to get into a good group later on in the race. I struggled with positioning in the bunch, and still do a bit, so I knew getting to the front early on and then hanging onto the new lead group when they caught the break would be the best strategy for me. A top-10 for an amateur rider would have been really amazing.
At the end of the first climb after 80km I could see that the other three riders in the break were fatiguing and getting weaker, and I was almost a bit annoyed. “Come on, they’ll catch us,” I was thinking. I didn’t want to be stupid and ride on the front and drag everyone along, so the only other option I had to go faster was to attack with just over 40km to go. That was not the plan, but it was a necessity as the others were going slower than I wanted to.
I knew the gap to the bunch was pretty big, but I was also worried about my breakaway companions catching up to me so I went all in and burned a few matches to build a gap as quickly as possible. My energy was draining with a long way still to go and I was panicking about my time advantage. I didn’t know if I would make it – I was empty, my muscles were super-fatigued, and I was feeling that my body would collapse at any moment. It was only in the last 50 metres that I knew I was pretty safe and crossing the line felt like taking revenge. I have a love-hate relationship with this sport: I’ve struggled in the bunch and with the whole tactical game; my character isn’t really made for this sport and all the playing around, so winning felt kinda cool and like I had got my own back. But all the interviews I had to do after? That was tough. It was the main headline news in Austria and I didn’t like all the attention at the time. I’m an introvert and all I wanted to do was see my family.
I’m definitely more of a marked rider now, and I sometimes feel like I’m not living up to the expectations that other people have of me. They expect me to be a supermachine but that’s not going to happen – I put so much energy into preparing for the Olympics, it really was a peak, and I can’t carry that on for eight months a season.
People will always remember me for what I did in Tokyo because it was special and not just any gold medal. People like underdog stories, and I was one.
- Anna
You can read more from the In My Words series here.
