I refuse to be pressured into marrying and having a baby: Victoria Pendleton

Forty. It’s a watershed age and Victoria Pendleton — certainly one of our best ever feminine Olympians — can’t fairly work out what reaching the milestone means to her.

Is she having a belated episode of adolescent defiance, denied to her in her teenagers as a result of she was so fiercely dedicated to sport? Or has retirement from aggressive biking precipitated a midlife disaster?

Whichever it’s, Pendleton, who had the clean-cut aura of a Nineteen Fifties promenade queen throughout her biking profession, is now extra rock stylish than highschool ingénue.

She sports activities a number of flamboyant tattoos — a Medusa head, a galloping horse and a deer’s cranium amongst them — and plans extra. ‘Two full sleeves of them, at the least,’ she guarantees.

Victoria Pendleton, 40, (pictured) who lives in Oxfordshire, revealed it is taken her a very long time to interrupt free from doing what she felt obliged to do 

‘However will you want you hadn’t bought them while you’re 85?’ I cry. ‘A girl at Ascot requested me that,’ she laughs. ‘However while you’re 85 you don’t care. You’re opinionated, and say: “Thoughts your individual enterprise!” ’

Her hair, pale lilac right now, has been by the gamut of rainbow shades and extra. ‘Blue, pink, purple, turquoise . . . I purchased some colors on-line and alter it up a bit,’ she says.

She celebrated her milestone birthday in September by driving an Aston Martin to a fortress in Scotland (she’d employed it for an enormous bash which turned, due to Covid restrictions, a celebration for 4) whereas dressed, James Bond-style, in a tuxedo and bow-tie.

After which there are the motorbikes. A brace of them. At present she’s togged out in head-to-toe black: snood, biker jacket and boots, plus full-face helmet with visor. (‘The most secure option to journey. I’ve my very own PPE!’ she smiles.)

A yr on from her divorce from Scott Gardner (a sports activities scientist, previously with the Nice Britain biking workforce), she additionally has a new-ish boyfriend she met a number of months in the past on a blind date.

‘Perhaps I’m having my belated teenage rebel or maybe a midlife disaster at 40,’ she agrees, laughing. ‘I really feel it’s taken me fairly a very long time to interrupt free from doing what I felt obliged to do.

‘I’ve tried very exhausting to be a very good function mannequin for therefore a few years. I’m not saying I’m a foul one now, however I’m free to comply with my goals. You sacrifice quite a bit to get to the highest in sport. Every thing else is placed on maintain: household; mates; the liberty to do what you need while you need.’

9 instances world champion monitor bike owner, she additionally carried off a gold medal at Beijing in 2008 and received each a gold and silver on the London Olympics in 2012 earlier than she retired, aged 32, that yr.

Victoria was recognized with extreme melancholy and prescribed a whole lot of medicine, after affected by extreme hypoxia in 2018. Pictured: Victoria successful gold in 2012

Life behind the garlands and the general public approbation has, at instances, been virtually unbearably exhausting, nonetheless. And never simply due to the Herculean bodily calls for of elite sport.

Pendleton, who says she has a ‘fragile psyche’, has all the time been vulnerable to melancholy, and in 2018 it turned life-threatening.

She had undertaken an expedition to climb Everest with TV adventurer Ben Fogle however needed to return to base camp after affected by extreme hypoxia (oxygen deprivation), which she later realized is a set off for melancholy. And her marriage was crumbling.

‘I used to be recognized with extreme melancholy and prescribed numerous medicine,’ she stated shortly after. ‘Antidepressants, beta blockers, tranquillisers and sleeping tablets. But it surely didn’t go well with me, wasn’t serving to me really feel myself, so I went chilly turkey.’

It was then that she reached a nadir. She stockpiled the drugs, able to take an overdose and was ‘minutes’ away from doing so early one morning.

As an alternative, she picked up the cellphone to an outdated pal, Nice Britain biking workforce psychiatrist Steve Peters, who talked her out of it.

Moderately than going to a clinic, she agreed to stick with her mum, Pauline. Since then, her restoration has been regular. Now, again residing in her own residence, a transformed barn in Oxfordshire, she appears upbeat.

‘I’m extra conscious of the indications of melancholy now: feeling unmotivated, uninspired, pessimistic,’ she says after we meet. ‘I puzzled whether or not I’d drop down, as a result of the isolation of the pandemic pushes everybody to the restrict. At my lowest, I used to be most grateful for the help and serving to arms of family and friends. However when nobody can see you’re struggling . . . ’

Her voice tails off, then she picks up. ‘However I’m faster to behave now on something that makes me really feel that method. I do know there might be robust instances, highs and lows; instances once I can crack on and be optimistic and instances once I’m on the different excessive of the spectrum.

Victoria revealed she contends with melancholy by doing issues that she enjoys, together with baking a cake and going out on her motorcycle. Pictured: Together with her ex, Scott Gardner

‘I reside with the information that melancholy might occur at any time, however I’m extra ready to cope with it now. That’s the distinction.’

How does she deal with it?

‘I do one thing that offers me pleasure!’ she cries. ‘I bake a cake. I get out on my motorcycle. Go for a stroll. Lockdown made us all conscious of how clear the air immediately was.’ (She is now supporting the Change the Climate marketing campaign — a clear air initiative by vitality agency e.on, encouraging folks to cycle or stroll.)

Victoria additionally rides, and owns two retired racehorses, having skilled and efficiently competed as an beginner jockey, notably ending fifth within the Foxhunter Chase at Cheltenham in 2016. On the time she was euphoric. However the black canine of melancholy lurked.

‘I’ve all the time had low spells. Lots of people in my household have skilled nervousness and melancholy. My older sister Nicola, my dad — each of them undergo at instances from excessive stress.’ However not Victoria’s twin brother Alex. ‘No, we’re yin and yang,’ she laughs. ‘He doesn’t take life too critically.’

Her new man — she received’t title him — is probably one more reason for her present buoyant temper. They spent the primary lockdown ‘very fortunately’ collectively, though they don’t completely reside collectively.

Neither had she been actively looking for a accomplice when she met him. She roars with laughter once I point out a Tinder account I noticed in her title. ‘It was a pretend!’ she cries.

Victoria (pictured) who took up sky-diving final summer time, stated it took some time to get to being pleased by herself after her divorce 

‘After my divorce I’d reached a degree — although it took me some time — the place I used to be fairly pleased on my own. I used to be impartial. I didn’t should maintain anybody else pleased. I’d bought plenty of outrageous hobbies.’

She took up sky-diving, and final summer time bought her accelerated freefall licence ‘only for enjoyable’.

‘Society makes us really feel we want one other particular individual to make us really feel full, however I wasn’t even in search of a boyfriend. Then a pal of a pal set me up on a blind date. And I assumed: “There’s no hurt in it.” We went for some meals at my native pub and that was the beginning.’

I’m asking her for clues now. What does he do?

‘I can’t let you know that as a result of it’s one thing so obscure it could establish him instantly!’ she says.

‘He isn’t well-known and he’s not in sport. Once you’re an athlete, it’s troublesome for different folks to narrate to you — why would you place sport first, at first else? It’s not that you just don’t care about them. You simply should.’ So is it a aid, now, to not should make relationships subservient to sport?

Victoria thinks for a second earlier than replying. ‘I might nonetheless like to be an athlete greater than the rest on the earth. I really like pushing myself to be sooner and stronger. I don’t thoughts it being exhausting work and anti-social. However you may’t be an athlete for ever.’

However certainly it’s liberating to have the ability to get pleasure from life free from the inflexible constraints of coaching?

Victoria stated the strain was unbelievable when she was the reigning world champion. Pictured: Her Medusa tattoo in 2020

‘I actually don’t know,’ she responds. ‘Freedom is paralysing in some methods. You might have choices and also you don’t actually know what to do.

‘It’s very unusual going from all of the disciplines of coaching and residing by a set of inflexible guidelines to life now. I really like realizing what I’m doing a yr upfront. So residing with these routines was reassuring. I actually loved it.’

There’s something affecting concerning the rawness of her honesty.She recognises that on the coronary heart of elite sport there’s a paradox.

After chasing her dad, a profitable beginner bike owner, up hills on her bike from her early teenagers, she devoted her younger life to an enterprise that turned an habit. Even now she strives to duplicate the nervy euphoria that preceded these big athletic triumphs. ‘It’s an unbelievable feeling, like electrical inside your physique, the sense of hysteria and nervousness you get while you’re about to carry out in entrance of giant crowds with excessive expectations.

‘The house [2012] Olympics, once I was reigning world champion — the strain was unbelievable, the nervousness unbelievable. And I realise the sensation of nervous nervousness was one thing I loved pushing myself by. I felt completely alive. I completely thrived on it.

‘I’ve requested myself many instances: “Why do I nonetheless need this?” I rode spherical in circles very quick. It was an train in futility. However then once more, most sport doesn’t actually make a lot sense. And having received gold, you simply really feel numb. Whatever the consequence of a race, you are feeling an anti-climax. There are these unbelievable highs and lows. All the hassle and anticipation has gone. You’re left with nothing besides what are you able to do to be even higher within the subsequent competitors.

‘There is no such thing as a house devoted to having fun with what you’ve simply performed. The reward is that the lifetime of sacrifice has not been in useless. And there’s a sense of pleasure, of honour in representing your nation.

Victoria admits there is not something she would not strive, though many issues frighten her. Pictured: On the Strictly Come Dancing 2013 launch occasion 

‘I don’t remorse a single second. It was exhausting, however even the unhealthy bits are character-building. Then comes life after retirement . . .

‘Individuals are extra taken with post-athletic profession struggles now, however some sports activities do it higher than others.’ She doesn’t elaborate.

The self-sacrifice, the countless quest for bodily self-improvement, has left her with a compulsion to exert herself to extremes.

‘I need to maintain pushing the boundaries. There isn’t something I wouldn’t strive. I need to eradicate all my fears. A number of issues frighten me — like actually deep water, so I need to be taught to free-dive — however I don’t imagine worry is a deterrent. I really feel compelled to face it.’

Nonetheless, reaching midlife has introduced self-knowledge. She used to suppose she ought to conform to what was anticipated of her; now she will merely do as she needs.

‘I don’t suppose I’ll get married once more,’ says Victoria. ‘I realise I felt pressured by society to take action. It was a requirement. Now I’m older and wiser I do know it isn’t one thing I genuinely need.

‘I felt it was socially acceptable: you get to your early 30s, marry and have a household. I’d by no means dreamt of doing that, however I didn’t pipe up and object to it.’

Her marriage ceremony to Scott, at a lush nation manor home in Cheshire in 2013, featured in Hiya! journal. Staff GB mates gathered and the Strictly home band carried out. (She was a contestant on the present in 2012.)

‘The marriage itself simply bought larger and larger, and farther away from what I needed,’ she remembers. ‘I’d have settled for naked toes and a seashore in Thailand; one thing personal and easy.

Victoria  (pictured) retrained as a jockey and competed at Cheltenham in 2016

‘I’ve bought to the purpose, too, the place I realise I’m completely pleased not having youngsters. In my 20s I knew folks needed me to cool down and reside the fairy story. And since I spent a lot of my life residing an atypical existence, I assumed I wanted to cram all of it in earlier than it was too late.

‘Then I retired and an intriguing thought occurred to me: what wouldn’t it be like to not attempt to please folks?

‘I’d put all the things on maintain for sport, and hadn’t had the liberty to do what I needed once I needed. So clinging onto normality — like getting married — was a type of safety blanket. I used to be becoming into the system.

‘Then you definately get to your 30s and everybody begins watch-tapping. You’re supposedly pre-conditioned to need youngsters. However the fact is I’ve no need to have them, and now I really feel way more inclined to be sincere with myself and go together with my intestine intuition.’

She concedes that her divorce was traumatic: ‘It was disruptive and torturous for a few years and I don’t want one other one.’

For somebody so garlanded with success, self-doubt nonetheless lurks. Not helped by the perspective of others in direction of profitable girls.

‘I take into account myself to be delicate, massively pushed, disciplined, decided and really resilient. I can put up with a whole lot of struggling earlier than I break. They aren’t unhealthy qualities, are they? But it surely appears as a lady, I ought to solely have them carefully. Individuals desire girls to be much less profitable.’

Victoria (pictured) stated she hopes to be nonetheless using horses aged 80, in addition to match sufficient to get her leg over the saddle of her motorcycle 

She says this ruefully. It’s a theme she explores with Judy Murray (mom of tennis aces Andy and Jamie Murray) in her TV sequence Driving Drive on Sky Sports activities. Pendleton says she has been judged harshly for displaying a surfeit of emotion: ‘I cried on the rostrum once I received gold. Everybody pointed it out and made an enormous deal of my being a weak and wobbly feminine. Did they are saying something when Chris Hoy cried?’

It’s straightforward to heat to Victoria. She is open, sincere, participating and humorous. I inform her I learn that she’d had £1,500 value of Botox when she turned 40 and she or he hoots with laughter. ‘If I did, it didn’t work very properly, did it?’ she says, corrugating her brow with a frown.

What does she see herself doing at 80? ‘I hope I’m nonetheless using horses. The Queen nonetheless does at 94, which delights me. And I hope I’ll nonetheless be mountain climbing, and match sufficient to get my leg over the saddle of my motorcycle. And if we’re reincarnated, I’d like to return again as a jockey. It’s massively harmful and also you’re filled with adrenalin. It’s terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure. Every thing I really like.’

In the meantime, her motorcycle is ready: it’s time to go. As she roars off into the dwindling daylight, you sense her midlife rebel received’t be over for some time but.

Driving Drive, an 11-part sequence from POW TV for Sky Sports activities, is introduced by Judy Murray. Victoria’s episode is tonight at 9pm.

Victoria can also be ambassador for e.on’s Change the Climate marketing campaign, a clear air initiative.

For confidential help if you happen to’re struggling to manage, name the Samaritans (samaritans.org) on 116 123.