Teary-eyed Pendleton looks to life away from the track

VICTORIA Pendleton had just lost the Olympic sprint final to her rival in the last race of her career, and could not dry her tears. This was not sadness. It was relief. The poster girl of British cycling was relishing the possibilities of a completely different life unfolding away from the track.

“What happens next?” the ninetime track world champion said. “I’m never doing that again. I won’t ever don a skinsuit ever again ... I’m going to continue cycling to keep fit, and that’s it, that’s seriously it. I’m looking forward to doing other sports again. I’m looking forward to going skiing, that’s for sure, and doing normal stuff.”

Pendleton, 31, rode in her first competitive race when she was 9 and has always been interested in other topics than cycling. Before becoming a multiple world champion and a double Olympic gold medallist, she had completed a degree in Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Northumbria.

Cycling, she says, “just fell on my lap”.

“My father is a cyclist, so it was a way to do stuff with him, and I just happened to be quite good at it,” she said. “It wasn’t my dream or my ambition.”

She’s engaged to a sports scientist who has worked with the British Cycling team, and says getting married is “high on the agenda”.

Pendleton said she went through the hardest four years of her whole life trying to get ready for London, where she won the gold medal in keirin.

In losing Tuesday’s race, she missed out on the opportunity to become the most successful British Olympic female athlete. She retires, though, by writing one of the most successful stories in British cycling history.

Apart from her two Olympic gold medals from Beijing and London, she holds nine track world titles, has been a Commonwealth champion, has posted 17 World Cup wins and has been crowned national champion 26 times.