When did you transition from riding bikes for fun?
I’ve been on two wheels since I was two. I have an older brother by three years, so I’ve very much always been of the mindset, ‘I can do anything he can do’. I used to ride a mountain bike to commute to school with my mum and she eventually said, “Okay if you stop riding off curbs, then I’ll get you a road bike,” because I liked going fast.
When I was 11, I joined the Victoria Velodrome Association and then Triple Shot where it was me and six boys. We did cyclo-cross, mountain biking, road, track… there was no specialisation. It was just about having fun on a bike. It’s funny, when you start cycling you don’t realise how much the difference of a bike can make.
I didn’t even want to race, I just wanted to ride my bike, but that quickly changed being in that environment with the boys. I’m a very naturally competitive person and every training session we would do these mock races or mini-intervals and it was always a competition.
What was the trigger to know this was a career path?
Probably less than a year into riding I was like, ‘Okay, I want to race’. Then it was just a pretty natural progression going to Cycling BC (British Columbia) and starting to do camps at Burnaby.
I then started attending Provincials which were the first ‘big’ events for me, then I upgraded to race the Under-17 Nationals. That was when the first realisation hit of, ‘Okay, this is what I really want’.
I attended Junior Worlds on the track over two years. Was I successful? Definitely not. Things have improved now, but I went from racing Nationals straight to World Championships without any international racing experience. So, coming over to Europe where riders are racing constantly; they have Euros, C1s, C2s and we’re coming over with no other experience–that was not successful. It was disheartening, but I’ve been able to use any frustration as motivation going forward.