I’d rather break both my legs than suffer like this again
Pendleton’s winning biggest fight
VICTORIA PENDLETON lay in bed looking up at the ceiling, unable to eat and unable to move. ‘I didn’t want to go anywhere or see anyone. I didn’t want to speak to anyone, I just wanted to stay and disappear, just disappear from everyone forever. I was stuck and I didn’t know whether I would be unstuck ever again. It was terrifying.’
That was three months ago. Today Pendle ton still looks fragile as she walks over to the coffee shop on the seafront in Brighton after a morning’ s surfing with young children.
She’s wearing a wetsuit which does nothing to hide how incredibly thin she is. She greets me warmly and sits down, sinking so far into the chair that she looks almost childlike, laying tiny arms on the table, both of them decorated with tattoos, and looking up Princess Diana-style from under her baseball cap.
‘I can feel myself tearing up,’ she says, with a hesitant smile. ‘It has been an awful, awful time.’
Pendleton is referring to the depression she suffered after her attempts to climb Mount Everest with Ben Fogle in May. The climb was for Red Cross and Pendleton was up for the challenge.
‘I was told it involved leaping across 100ft crevasses in the biggest, most dangerous ice fall you’ll ever travel through. Oooo, I thought. I want to do that!’
She spent 18 months preparing and turned up fit and ready.
‘I’d done a 6,500-metres climb before we left but it turned out my tipping point was just after that height,’ she said. So the early part of the climb went well.
She describes it as ‘magical’ but then she started to get ferocious headaches and a severe loss of coordination, ‘like I was drunk... but not in a good way.’
The former cyclist, who won Olympic golds in 2008 and 2012, remembers standing on base camp two and crying on the shoulder of her guide as he urged her to acknowledge it was a mistake to go on. She spoke to doctors that evening, all of whom said they couldn’t guarantee that taking more drugs was going to help. ‘They said I just had to accept my physiology at a cellular level was not suited to the atmosphere. I really wanted to keep going but to climb any higher would have risked death.
‘They explained that I was experiencing hypoxia through lack of oxygen to my brain. At altitude your brain swells in your skull and there is no space for it to go.’
She came down against all her competitive instincts and expected to feel much better. But at sea level things got worse. Chest infections and a hacking cough, then her heart started racing and she felt nervous all the time. Then a feeling of lethargy and hopelessness. That’s when she took herself off to bed and stayed there, day after day. ‘ It was horrible, the worst feeling. I’d happily take two broken legs over that any day. No one who hasn’t had a mental illness understands. It crushes you. Even reading a book feels like hard work. I could do nothing. I felt like I was nothing.’ The doctor diagnosed severe depression. He prescribed anti-depressants and sleeping tablets, but she refused to take them. ‘I felt poisoned by them. I didn’t feel myself on them, so I spoke to counsellors and psychiatrists instead and that has made a massive difference. I sometimes have low points, I still don’t feel fully well and I know I need to put on weight, but l feel like I have more good days than bad.’ It’ s not the first time. Pendleton has spoken about her compulsive teenage hand washing and how she used to cut her arms with a Swiss Army Knife when the pressures of her Olympic cycling became too much. She slashed her arms with nail scissors. Leading sports psychologist Steve Peters helped her then and it is psychologists who have helped her now.
‘I’d advise anyone who suffers from mental health issues to talk about it. Talk about how you’re feeling — to friends and family. If you feel under pressure don’t be afraid to speak out. Be nice to yourself. Don’t bottle things up.’
She stays in touch with Fogle. He sent videos from the climb he went on to complete.
‘He’s such a great friend and such a nice guy,’ she says. ‘I get emotional talking about it because I feel like the time we spent together was great. He’s as lovely as he appears on television.’ Depression has changed her. ‘My whole mindset is different. I think maybe I should get a more steady job, maybe I should invest my time in creating something of my own charity- wise. Charity work is important to me. I feel different, less sure of things.’
The surfing she’s been doing is part of that charity drive. She is an ambassador for The Laureus Waves Project which aims to introduce children with mental health issues to surfing to offer them support and encourage them to talk.
‘ I’ve loved it so much. I’m a huge surf fan. I’m now going off surfing for three and a half weeks in Costa Rica. I’m going to go on a hard-core surf camp and take my surfing to another level.’
She looks so excited about the prospect of the trip, I think she’s going to jump up out of her chair.
‘I know, I know. I get so excited about things. It’s probably really annoying for people. I’d love to be all mysterious and in control, but that’s not me. I can be an emotional wreck at times and at other times I can be ferocious and courageous, other times I’m full of happiness. That’s just being a human being, isn’t it? It’s certainly being me.’
On top of the problems Pendleton faced after returning from Everest, she had to deal with the break-up of her five-year marriage to Scott Gardner, a performance scientist and coach for Team GB.
‘It doesn’t rain, it pours,’ she says. ‘It’s all been very difficult but I think that’s part of life. I’m not the first woman to separate from her husband and I won’t be the last. It’s difficult and it’s not what I would have wanted at all. I thought I’d be with him forever.
‘It’s difficult when any relationship splits up but onwards and upwards, I guess. We’ll both be fine but it’s hard right now.’
Pendleton says her love of horses and the charities are keeping her going. ‘And my friends — my friends have been amazing.’
She fell in love with horses after retiring from cycling, when she took on the challenge to race at Cheltenham, and declares herself much more joyful on the back of a horse than she ever was on a bike. She has two horses of her own, Sarah and Vesper.
‘I adore them. It’s like having the biggest chocolate bar in the world every day.’
One of the tattoos on her arm is of a sketch of a horse and she looks at it lovingly.
‘Riding them is amazing. They’re everything right now. I’ve taken a real battering.
‘I’ve never felt so overwhelmed with illness as I have these past few months, but I know they’ll help me get over it and be back to myself again.’