Barker ready to become cycling’s new sensation
Tom Cary discovers how Briton crammed in studies, house-buying and track success ahead of a tilt at the world time trial today
Elinor Barker is clearly a woman in a hurry. An Olympic gold medal, an MBE, studying for an Open University degree, learning sign language and buying a house might constitute a pretty reasonable lifetime’s CV, but Barker has managed to cram all that – and more – into the past 12 months.
And she is not finished yet: today, the 23-year-old from Cardiff takes to the streets of Bergen, Norway, for a tilt at the world time trial crown. Barker is not the sort who likes to look back, but even she sounds surprised by how much she has achieved.
“It’s funny actually,” she says, “when people were doing all those ‘One year ago’ Olympic throwback tweets and saying ‘I can’t believe it’s been a year’, I was thinking: ‘I can’t believe it’s only been a year.’ [The Olympics] sort of feels like something I maybe watched on TV, a bit detached from my life, you know?”
Barker flies a little under the radar in British sport, although quite why is difficult to fathom. Maybe it is because her Olympic success came in the women’s team pursuit, where Laura Kenny’s celebrity inevitably overshadowed her team-mates.
Whatever the reason, Barker fully deserves recognition in her own right and – with Kenny’s future uncertain as she recovers from the birth of her first child – there is a vacancy for the role of British cycling’s poster girl.
Barker is eminently qualified. Hugely talented and already wildly successful despite her tender age – she has three world and three European titles to go with her Olympic gold – she also happens to be one of the more engaging and bubbly riders on the British squad.
When we meet, appropriately, at the Takk coffee shop, a Scandihipster hang-out in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, a couple of weeks before these championships in Norway, Barker is still laughing about an awkward incident she has just had at a local time trial. “Massive faux pas of the weekend: turning up to a TT on my own with a back-zip skinsuit,” Barker wrote on Instagram. “Getting a stranger to help me into it was a bit like the awkward hug at the end of Naked Attraction.”
Barker, it turns out, is a fan of the Channel 4 show, a sort of Blind Date conducted in the buff (“It’s incredible! Awful. But incredible”) as she is of various other forms of popular entertainment.
We spend about 20 minutes discussing the ending to the latest season of Game of Thrones. She is incredulous that George North – the Wales rugby player and boyfriend of Becky James, her former track team-mate – put out a spoiler on Twitter before the final episode. “He’s got like half a million followers!” she says, joking that it was a sackable offence. “Becky needs to bin him. I don’t care if they’ve got houses and dogs together.”
It’s not all low brow, though. Admirably for an athlete who might be expected to rest up when she is not racing or training or hitting the gym, Barker has a clear thirst for knowledge and selfimprovement. She took up an ambassadorial role for the charity Hearing for Dogs, hence the sign language lessons – “I’ve only had three lessons so far, so I’m not that good yet but, hopefully, eventually I’ll be able to have a proper conversation” – and is continuing with her Open University degree.
“I get funding from UK Sport – like an education grant – so I thought it would be stupid not to do it,” she explains. “I feel like I have to do it, really. It would be such a waste not to.”
She also travels when she can. Having just re-signed for Wiggle Honda for 2018, she is looking forward to ticking a number of countries off her “bucket list” next season. Whether her naturally inquisitive mind will help her to challenge for a medal in Bergen today, only time will tell. A former Maindy Flyer – the Cardiff club also churned out Geraint Thomas, Owain Doull and countless others – Barker was a junior world time trial champion in Limburg in 2012, so the pedigree is certainly there.
But having focused almost exclusively on the track for the past few years, she admits she has no real frame of reference. “I think, realistically, I’m looking for a good result in the time trial rather than the win,” she says.
“I’ll be looking for podiums in the future but at the moment it’s all about getting experience.” A conservative target, perhaps, but Barker has hinted more than once at her form this season and could represent something of a dark horse today.
She punctured when well placed in the TT at the nationals in June, where a bold solo attack almost won her the road race before she was reeled in by Lizzie Deignan in the final kilometres. And she arrives in Norway in form, having just won two stages and the overall in the Ras na mban, in Ireland (“A relatively small race. A good hit out but I’m no closer to knowing how I’ll do against the world’s best in Norway.”)
She has also clearly taken this project very seriously. Barker went in to Cyclefit in Manchester a number of times over the winter to work through a few potential positions and then went out to the Specialized HQ in California to test them with different bikes. “I’ve done a lot of tweaking and now I’ve got a pretty stable position, which I’m happy with,” she says, adding of the 21.2km course: “It’s rolling to begin with. Then there’s a steep bit about halfway through [the Birkelundsbakken, a 1.5km
‘Am I a dark horse? Well, I could win or finish 38th! It’s all about getting the experience’
climb which maxes out at 16 per cent). And then a really long, fast, descent before a technical finish through the town, over cobblestones.
“All in all I’d say the distance is perfect for me, the first half suits me pretty well and the second half not so well because there will be a lot of riders who are bigger than me and heavier than me [Barker is 5ft 4in and under 60kg].
“Am I a dark horse?” she laughs. “I really don’t know. I could win or I could finish 38th! But I’ll give it my best.”