It was the top end of the Lee Valley where Laura Trott caught the cycling bug, and it was the lower end, on the boards of the London velodrome, where she caught the British public’s eye with her gold medals in the 2012 Olympics: the first in the team pursuit – all about sustained collective speed and perfect pace making – and the second in the omnium, an individual five-event discipline that includes her personal party piece, the breathtaking elimination race.
The 22-year-old can trace her cycling history back to the rides the Trott family would take down the river towpath through Pickett’s Lock and Cheshunt. “We’d go there as a family and we’d only do about 10 miles, because I was maybe nine or 10, but my mum worked out a 10-mile loop that we could do with no traffic. I’d always be half afraid I’d fall in the water, so I’d get my dad to ride between me and the river. I liked the fact I could ride with my parents and sister Emma – it’s a social sport.”
At the age of eight, Laura was put into a single-lap handicap race at Welwyn track – which she won – and the rest is Olympic history, although she acknowledges that sibling rivalry played a part in her development as an athlete. “It probably helped that Emma is older than me,” she says - Trott senior still races, as a professional for the Boels-Dolman team - “because I always wanted to beat her. She was the best in her age group and I always wanted to do better.”
Hitting the Peaks
Trott’s favourite roads are around her home, south of Manchester, out towards Buxton and down into the Peak District. “I like the fact that all the lanes are quiet so you can take pretty much any route and enjoy it,” she says. On Saturdays, she sometimes potters out to a cafe near Lytham with her boyfriend Jason Kenny, himself a treble Olympic gold medallist, for a quiet breakfast, although that’s a rarity – usually she is not a coffee-stop person. “I hate the ‘cafe leg’ feeling, when you have to get going again. I’d rather get home and have a nice rest on the sofa.”
With the Commonwealth Games beckoning in July, Trott’s road-racing season was limited to spring this year, ending in early May with the inaugural Women’s Tour of Britain, a new five-day event in eastern England. The Women’s Tour, which includes a stage starting and finishing in her old stamping ground at Welwyn, is “a massive step forward for women’s cycling,” she believes. “For Britain to step up and have it is amazing. We’ve shown that women can race as hard and as well as men.”
The inception of the Women’s Tour comes at a time when there’s been a dramatic expansion in the numbers of women competing and the number of top-level domestic teams.
“I see so many women now doing the taster sessions at Manchester velodrome – there’s a real buzz about it. It’s just getting bigger and bigger. I entered a race in Britain in April that was limited to 80 riders and it was oversubscribed by 40. When we were younger there were about 20 riders and that was it.”
Strong appeal
Cycling draws women, Trott reckons, because it’s not weight bearing: “The bike bears you so it’s easy on the joints. There are lots of organised women’s rides as well, which makes it more attractive. I remember my mum never liked going out on her own, but in a group you don’t feel that anyone is looking at you. There are the Sky rides and Ride London was massive as well – I think women feel safer when the roads are shut and you can just ride as a family.”
All of which takes us back to the sense of freedom that got Trott hooked in the first place. “It’s so open, going out on your bike. You can just ride for hours on end if you want to and be with your thoughts, out in the fresh air. Even when it rains, it doesn’t bother me. You can just go anywhere, with nothing holding you back.”
