INTERVIEW: TIFFANY CROMWELL
The Aussie rider/clothes designer explains how she keeps all the plates spinning
Australian Tiffany Cromwell is far more than just a bike rider, and she’s not afraid to show it. She tells Procycling about what she’s doing to try and push women’s racing forward and why it’s important to her
“We need great coverage of races, like they have in the UK for the Women’s Tour [of Britain] and the Women’s Tour de Yorkshire. Why can’t we have more of that? There’s plenty of exciting racing throughout the season — plenty”
BEING DESCRIBED AS ’THE DIVA FROM DOWN UNDER’ COULD BE TAKEN TWO WAYS. LUCKILY TIFFANY CROMWELL SAYS,
OR AT LEAST HOPES, that in this instance it’s meant in terms of someone who, like her, enjoys the finer things in life. “Diva in a nice, not nasty, way!” she tells Procycling, with a smile. “I love my shopping, I love my sparkles!”
The description comes from the marketing material for her team Canyon-SRAM’s clothing sponsor, Rapha, with whom Cromwell has recently collaborated to create a signature collection of kit celebrating her roots in South Australia.
Cromwell, if you didn’t know already, is any marketing department’s dream. Not for her a staunch wall of nothingness, an impenetrable façade of pro-athlete blandness, of hiding her true character behind a war mask. Instead, Cromwell lays it on the line - online. She has the same interests as any young woman, and isn’t afraid to show it. Fashionista, foodie: far be it from her to fake it. It’s both refreshing to see and, these days, arguably necessary, especially for the growth of women’s cycling. Or, more precisely, women’s racing which is in a delicate spot right now.
“I’m first and foremost a bike rider: that’s what I love, that’s my passion. But, you know, I’m also very normal, and that’s relatable if I share that with people, to show that we are still normal,” she says. “Yes - we go and race our bikes, and yes, you have to be a bit crazy, but then we’re still women.
“I’m not trying to be something else. I’m not trying to be something to make people like me – it is just me, and I enjoy sharing that.”
And these days, Cromwell says, the general view of what constitutes beauty has swung the way of health and fitness. “It used to be all about runway models being stick-thin, and that wasn’t a great image for young women to aspire to,” she adds. “Whereas now people are a lot more inspired by powerful, strong women. Now you can show that you can race a bike and still be feminine and more brands are really starting to pick up on that idea.”
Social media-savvy athletes now have what she describes as “this amazing platform” to share who they are and what they stand for with the world.
“If it means that we’re able to show the things we’re interested in but that people don’t expect us to be interested in, that might create interest from brands from outside of cycling.”
CROMWELL’S interest in pushing women’s cycling forward reaches far beyond the brave new world that is social media. A more traditional medium - television - remains key when it comes to introducing people to the sport and then retaining their interest, the 29-year-old says.
“We need great coverage of races, like they have in the UK for the Women’s Tour and the Women’s Tour de Yorkshire. Why can’t we have some more of that? There’s plenty of exciting racing throughout the season - plenty! - yet people often just don’t get to see it.”
A good example of that exciting racing: the Women’s Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, in Victoria, Australia, held a couple of days after Procycling spoke to Cromwell. In extensive live online coverage, viewers watched Cromwell
drill it on the front of the bunch to the foot of Challambra Crescent to set up her team-mate, Katrin Garfoot, for an attack on the climb. Garfoot didn’t win but it made for exciting racing as she fought defending champion Annemiek van Vleuten and Waowdeals’s Sabrina Stultiens, before all three were swept up, and Chloe Hosking won the bunch sprint.
While back in her homeland for the southern-hemisphere summer, Cromwell rode for the composite UniSAAustralia team at the Women’s TDU, and then its KordaMentha-Australia iteration at the Great Ocean Road Race and the inaugural Women’s Herald Sun Tour. She’d be back in the more familiar colours of her Canyon-SRAM outfit once she had headed back to the French Riviera, where she bases herself during the European racing season.
For some of the women’s peloton, it proved to be a far more lucrative summer sojourn in Australia than Cromwell, or indeed anybody, could have imagined. During the men’s Tour Down Under it was announced that the women’s event would receive equal prize money from 2019, but that the prize money would also be ‘backdated’ to this year’s event, meaning extra cash would be given to the winners who had received their cheques for this year.
“It came as a big, but really positive surprise for everyone,” says Cromwell. “I think that right now in Australia, like in the UK, there’s a push towards equality and supporting the growth of women’s sport. It highlights that we push ourselves as hard, and fall down just as hard as the men, and that we should be rewarded appropriately for the hard work we put in. And it shows that the South Australian government is really serious about the women’s race and about growing not only the event, but women’s cycling in general within Australia. Let’s just hope it now sets a precedent for other races around the world.”
While Cromwell admits that she has struggled to keep her head above water in the past, things are slowly beginning to improve. “There are very few agents in women’s cycling,” she points out, “because they know there’s not really much money for them to make. So it’s one of those chicken and egg situations. But now there are teams like BoelsDolmans, Sunweb and the new Virtu team who have a really good budget, so things are changing.
“You still can’t quite call it a lavish lifestyle that I lead,” she warns with a cheeky grin, “but I’m not struggling either. I live a comfortable life: I can race, I can pay my rent, I can eat my food, I can buy a few nice things from time to time and not be worried. And I’ve seen in the last three years or so, how my career and my contracts have changed. Teams have become more professional, brands are working a lot better together. Everyone’s working together so that then we can collectively grow the sport.
“That 2016 Giro stage win was a total surprise. The team gave me an opportunity that day, and I knew my sprinting had been getting better, but no one expected me to win a bunch sprint”
“And each year, salaries go up a bit more and a bit more. There’s still a long way to go,” Cromwell continues, “but I feel as though there are more and more teams who are actually paying wages that women can at least live on without it being a total struggle.” “I love cobbles! I love riding them because it’s so hard. I love the technical aspect of it: you can’t switch off — you have to be focused the whole time” Cromwell says. Her palmarès includes the 2013 Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, a solo stage win at the 2012 Giro Rosa and victory at the head of a bunch gallop on stage 4 of the 2016 Giro between Costa Volpino and Lovere in Northern Italy.
“That 2016 Giro stage win was a total surprise,” Cromwell admits. “The team gave me an opportunity that day and I knew my sprinting had been getting better, but no one expected me to win a bunch sprint.”
The South Australian has proven herself to be highly versatile on the racing side: climber, sprinter, timetriallist, lead-out lady… A true allrounder that former sports director Dave McPartland, when she was with the Orica-AIS squad, praised as a risk-taker.
“I used to be much more of a climber, with zero power,” explains Cromwell. “I was very aggressive - sometimes too aggressive - and, yeah, I took opportunities. But then as I started to get results and get a bit more attention, it became harder… I lost myself a little bit, before starting to learn to sprint a bit more. But I like to think of myself as a rouleur. I want to be a one-day Classic specialist. That’s the type of rider I want to be known as.”
For all her interest in “shopping and sparkles”, it’s the cobbles of Flanders and the white roads of Tuscany that she says appeal most: the very toughest side of bike-racing.
“I love cobbles! I love riding them because it’s so hard. I love the technical aspect of it: you can’t switch off – you have to be focused the whole
“I HAVEN'T actually won that many races - but the wins that I have had have been good ones,”
time because at those races, if you’re off for one section, then it’s game over. That’s the kind of racing I like, because I’ve got a short attention span, so it’s always a case of, ‘What next? What next? What next?’ Those really are my favourite types of races: the ones you really have to be ‘on’ for.”
Many of the one-day races that Cromwell is drawn to are the women’s versions of long-established men’s Classics: Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the Tour of Flanders. Seeing the women race on the same roads and iconic climbs as the men perhaps helps hold a viewer’s interest, and Cromwell agrees.
“We do want our own versions of those races because they have so much history. They’re iconic, and show the true character of bike-racing, and in the one -day Classics, I think that’s great. But we also don’t just want to be piggybacking off any races just to get the coverage, so it’s about finding that right balance.”
However, when it comes to ‘the women’s Tour de France’ – a shadow of the real thing - Cromwell says it feels like an afterthought. La Course was introduced in 2014 and made up of a single-day race. It was extended to two days in 2017, but will return to a singleday format in 2018. “It’s interesting because it’s amazing with its platform and global exposure,” Cromwell says.
“Climbing the Col d’Izoard [in 2017] was a great display of women’s cycling at its best, as it’s such a famous climb, but at times you do feel as though you’re still a bit of a side project.”
The men’s Strade Bianche is considered one of the most exciting oneday races on the calendar, despite only having been introduced in 2007, thanks to the Paris-Roubaix-esque nature of the racing on Tuscany’s white gravel roads. In 2015 it added a women’s event to the programme which has proven to be very popular with both the professional riders and the fans alike.
It’s a race that Cromwell would dearly love to win, having finished consistently in the past three seasons: in 22nd, 20th and 22nd place, respectively. The rough and tumble challenge of the dirt roads, she tells us, is no issue. “I really enjoy that side of it, while the finish of that race is one of the most beautiful in the world,” Cromwell says of the Piazza del Campo - Siena’s walled market square, where both the men’s and women’s winners are crowned. “No matter where you finish, just coming into that piazza… If I could do that and win… “There is still so much I want to achieve,” she admits, naming Flanders as another dream win. The rainbow jersey is also on her list.
And as an Australian, there’s the pull of the Commonwealth Games. In Glasgow in 2014, Cromwell finished fourth in the road race, but this year’s event takes place in Australia on the Gold Coast in April.
“It’s a tricky one this year because it comes right in the middle of the hilly Classics season, so there’s still a question mark over whether we go full gas for that or not,” she says. “But as a home Games, it’s definitely something I’d like to do. It’s just a case of if it fits.”
And, with that, Tiffany Cromwell is off. She has a multitude of sponsor commitments to fulfill and a busy racing programme to try to work out for the year ahead. And, possibly, a spot of shopping and Instagramming.