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HOW I BROUGHT MYSELF BACK FROM THE BRINK

AS SHE COVERS THE OLYMPICS FOR THE BBC, VICTORIA PENDLETON ON HITTING ROCK BOTTOM, THE PAINFUL ROAD TO RECOVERY – AND THE NEW LOVE WHO’S KEEPING HER ON TRACK.

BY LISA SEWARDS

When the British cycling team are under starters orders at this month’s Tokyo Olympics, Victoria Pendleton will be pedalling furiously – albeit under her chair. As one of Team GB’S most successful female Olympians, with two gold medals and a silver, you might imagine she’d be wishing she were back in the saddle, but far from it.

After dispensing her expert insight in the commentary box at Rio 2016, Victoria’s thrilled to be back there again for the Tokyo Games where she’ll join former Olympians such as sprinter Michael Johnson, heptathlete Jessica Ennis-hill and swimmer Rebecca Adlington for 350 hours of coverage across the BBC anchored by the likes of Clare Balding, Gabby Logan and Dan Walker. Victoria will be talking us through the cycling action starting on the road today, and in the velodrome from 2 August.

‘I’ll be pedalling furiously under my chair, with my little feet tapping away as I’m commentating,’ says the nine-time World Champion. ‘But I’m very glad to be watching from the sidelines because being an elite athlete is a tough existence. When everyone’s warming up I’ll be glad I’ll never have that anxiety again because I remember what it feels like and it’s really stressful. All the butterflies and the nausea, and you keep having to trot off for a wee because of the anxiety. That feeling – when you’re in your gear, gloves on, helmet on – and you’ve got to sit on the pre-race chairs for two minutes feels like an eternity.

‘But as soon as that pistol goes off you forget everything. A blink, a distraction, and suddenly you’ve lost. You’re trained to be so disciplined and focused that it’s irrelevant what’s going on elsewhere until you cross the finishing line. Then suddenly the noise is deafening, it’s euphoric, and you think, “Wow!” You wish that feeling could last forever but it’s over in minutes, then it’s head down and on to the next thing.’

That first-hand experience is of course invaluable in the commentary box, where Victoria’s hoping the Team GB cyclists can emulate the success of the golden generation from 2012 of which she was a part. ‘There are quite a few very experienced riders in the track team who’ve been there and bought the T-shirt,’ she says. ‘They’ve won medals multiple times before and they’re going to lead the team. You’ve got the likes of Ed Clancy [who has won three golds and a bronze] in the Men’s Endurance. He’s exceptional. He’s barely had a year off in his career since he won his first World Championship in 2005. He’s very dedicated, very calm, a very disciplined rider. He doesn’t take himself too seriously but he always brings the focus when necessary and I think he’s a great role model for the men.

‘Then there’s Laura Kenny and Elinor Barker for the women who’ve done it all before. I think they’ll set an example for the younger riders in the team. There are a lot coming through too, both men and women. I know some of them actually. It’s funny because there’s a guy called Ryan Owens in the Men’s Team Sprint and I used to race on the same team as his dad, Andrew Owens, when I was a pipsqueak.’

She’s also looking forward to meeting up with her colleagues in the studio. ‘The BBC team is like a family. When I was commentating in Rio I was surrounded by my idols from other sports too, like Denise Lewis and Colin Jackson. It was incredible, and everybody was super-friendly.

‘For Tokyo I’m lucky enough to be working with Radio 5 Live commentator Alistair Bruce-ball, we’ve done a few championships together and the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. We have such a great rapport and the time just flies when you’re bouncing off each other. It’s such a buzz. But I do remember in Rio looking down at the track and thinking, “I’m glad I’ll never feel that pressure again.”’

We’re sitting in the cafe of a high-end bike shop that sells the kind of cycles with saddles so sculpted and skinny they look like they could impart some terrible

damage to the rider. As she marvels at these machines, Victoria readily admits she’s not up-to-speed with the technology these days and the bike she’s ridden here today is humble by comparison. That world is very much a part of her, but also very much behind her.

Having dedicated much of her life up to the age of 32 to her sport Victoria, who’s now 40, bowed out

of professional cycling after London 2012 when she was the reigning world champion. The pressure and anxiety were overwhelming on top of the self-sacrifice and the endless quest for physical excellence.

In the end it was what she describes as her ‘fragile psyche’ that overpowered her. ‘I was always full of self-doubt. I’ve never been a particularly self-confident individual and everyone would say, “How can you be so good at your sport and not be confident?” I have such high expectations of myself that it will never ever be enough,’ she says softly. ‘I’m very self-critical and that’s what motivates me to try harder, because I’d like to do everything better and faster. So you’re always pushing and pushing and pushing yourself. But when you push yourself so relentlessly, and you don’t reward yourself, then it’s easy to get into a bit of a slump if things aren’t going your way. The hardest thing is to take a break, because that’s the last thing you want to do. You always want to do more.’

A break, however, was finally forced upon her when she attempted to climb Everest for the British Red Cross with TV adventurer Ben Fogle in 2018 but had to pull out at 21,000ft, 8,000 short of the summit. Her failure to reach the top triggered a highly distressing mental deterioration and she was diagnosed with severe depression. What made it worse was that her marriage to Scott Gardner, whom she met when he was a sports scientist at British Cycling, had just ended and she returned to an empty home.

She was prescribed anti-depressants, beta blockers, tranquillisers and sleeping tablets but she didn’t think they were helping so she ditched them. It was then that she hit rock bottom. She started to fantasise about taking her own life and there were points when she didn’t want to live to ‘see tomorrow’.

‘Retiring from sport, finding where you fit into the world, is a tough thing to do,’ she says. ‘So when Ben Fogle said, “Shall we go up Everest?” I thought, “Yes, yes, yes!” But unfortunately my acclimatisation wasn’t right and I couldn’t keep pace with the group. I suffered from hypoxia, which is a lack of oxygen to the brain that’s been known to trigger depression and anxiety.

‘So I think it was a culmination of things. I didn’t know where I was going, my divorce, not wanting to settle down. I’d reached my limit, I overflowed. I couldn’t contain it anymore. And the biggest thing is I felt

so guilty. I felt, “I’m an Olympic champion, I should be able to manage myself” but my mind said that I couldn’t. It took a long time for me to accept that vulnerability and that it was OK. That I wasn’t failing, it was just something I was struggling with. Yes, it took a while, but then I was lucky to have such supportive

‘I’m very self-critical. That’s what motivates me’

friends and family around me. I feel really grateful for that.’

One key friend was Team GB’S cycling psychiatrist Steve Peters, who she credits with saving her life. Thankfully she called him just in time for her twin brother Alex to rush to her home and confiscate the pills she’d been stockpiling for an overdose. Rather than going to a clinic, Victoria agreed to stay with her mother Pauline in Hertfordshire, and Dr Peters then helped her during her recovery. ‘He’s a legend. He is actually my hero. My physical resilience was good but my mental resilience was weaker so I chose to work with him and I was blown away by his compassion and generosity. I call him Uncle Steve, because I literally love him. He’s like part of the family,’ says Victoria.

‘He read me like a book on our first meeting and some of the stuff he told me basically made me feel like a child and it really embarrassed me. But he said, “The good news is you can fix it. You can do things to make yourself feel better and I can help you do that. If you want to put the work in it will happen for you.”

‘I said, “Yes, please. I’m willing

to put the work in.” It doesn’t mean it was always perfect. He was very good at giving me rational ways to think about things that made me feel uncomfortable, like not being able to achieve something. He helped me understand that usually, when you get overwhelmed, your perception might be slightly out.

‘You need to take a step back and actively search for positives, and to be reassured that you have the tools to fix any situation. And if you don’t have the tools, you know someone who does. So you’re never alone. It was more to do with my psychology as a human being, rather than sports-related.’

Victoria has bravely spoken openly about her mental health in order to help others. She famously wrote in her autobiography, Between The Lines, about how she cut herself with nail scissors on the night she won her first Olympic gold at Beijing 2008 following a row with coach Jan van Eijden, who had just found out about her

‘I used to feel I had to look and dress a certain way’

relationship with Scott Gardner. It was felt to be unprofessional that two members of the team were romantically involved.

‘I think there’s a lot less stigma attached to mental health issues now and I think people are more vocal about their suffering,’ she says. ‘The biggest thing was that I needed to find joy and I think everybody’s responsible for finding their own joy. One thing Steve taught me is that you have to plan stuff for yourself that brings you joy, even if it’s just a small thing like visiting a cake shop.’

Victoria has found salvation in her passion and talent for other hobbies. She fell in love with horses after training as a jockey six years ago, and credits riding out her two retired racehorses every day as playing a major therapeutic role in her mental health battles. Another boost came when she decided to take herself surfing in Costa

Rica and stay with an American banker turned B&B and surf school owner. ‘I was feeling low and I thought, “Enough is enough. I need to be proactive about this.” At the time I’d been surfing for a couple of years on and off and one of my most enjoyable experiences had been in Costa Rica. So I went back and stayed at Monty’s B&B. Even when I was feeling a bit flat he insisted that we went out surfing at 7am. He just pushed me. He understood where I was at and got me being physically active. I needed that time for myself, being in nature. It was magical.’

Victoria being Victoria though, she found room for yet another challenge. Despite warnings from her elder sister Nicola, she agreed to go on a celebrity series of SAS: Who Dares Wins in 2019. ‘My sister said, “Don’t be a wally, you’re in recovery. Do you really want to be doing this? It’s psychologically and physically very demanding.” But I said, “I need to do it because this is what the old Victoria would have done.” It was one of the best decisions I ever made, because I survived, I got to the end of the show. It reassured me that I still had resilience.’

So much so that her family don’t worry about her as much these days. ‘I’m really close to my mum. I’m very lucky to have that relationship with my whole family – we’re very open and very close and I’m very blessed. Mum doesn’t really worry about me because she said it was very hard to know what to do to help when I was lost, but she can see I’m myself again now.’

Further testimony to Victoria shaking off her shackles is the proliferation of tattoos adorning her arms, including a Medusa’s head, a galloping horse and a deer’s skull. ‘I just find I need more, more, more,’ she chuckles. ‘It’s so strange, even the way I’m dressed today. Before, I felt I always had to look and dress a certain way to be accepted. Now I’m wearing the same clothes I wore when I was about 15 – combat trousers and T-shirts. I look like a 14-year-old boy but that’s OK.’

So is there anything the intrepid Victoria Pendleton wouldn’t try? ‘When you talk about fear, the one thing that would scare me is going into space. I don’t ever need to go into space, thank you very much. That’s a step too far.’

Victoria will be on BBC1 and BBC Radio 5 Live throughout the Olympics. For confidential support, call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit samaritans.org.

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