Meet the Olympian adjusting to life outside the fast lane

Elinor Barker was dragging her bike through a muddy field in Cheshire, ever so slightly lost, five weeks after becoming a world champion. And loving it.

The upheaval of coronavirus doesn’t discriminate and the track cycling star is fighting an internal battle shared by all Olympians after the Games were postponed by a year.

Barker won’t get the chance to defend her team pursuit title in Tokyo as planned, but how can the preservation of humanity compare to competing for one of its highest honours?

“It's hard to get out of the mindset of having to make the Olympics the focus of every single day, of every choice that you make,” said Barker, self-isolating at her home in Manchester.

“Every meal you cook and every ride you go on, you question what impact it'll have on your chances at the Olympics.

“It’s not just been since Rio, the last decade of my life has largely been spent thinking about the Olympics. There was just a sense of crushing disappointment it can’t happen this year.

"I did feel a little bit selfish to be sad about it, considering that people are losing their families, losing businesses and things that can't just be put back a year.

“The biggest problem we had a month ago was whether as cyclists we could emulate Britain’s success in the past few years. Now I’m just thinking ‘god, I hope everyone’s OK.’”

Britain have topped the track cycling medal table at the last three Olympics thanks to a high performance hothouse initially designed by Sir Dave Brailsford.

The current crop looked set to fall some way short, with Barker’s scratch race success at the recent World Championships in Berlin her country's only gold.

Such concerns now seem almost churlish and Barker’s main worry has been for her elder sister, stuck in deep countryside in Goa, India with no way of joining the hordes rushing back home.

Getting back on the bike is the only solution and daily rides are a small slice of freedom the Welshwoman holds dear, even if she’s taken the odd rogue route.

“To be honest, riding every day is what's been keeping me sane for this long,” said Barker.

“On apps like Wahoo you can use heat-maps to find the most popular routes, I’ve been using it to try and find quieter streets to avoid people.

“It hasn’t always gone amazingly, I’ve ended up doing some mountain biking and unintentional off-roading! You’re going in blind if you don’t know the area well.

“I've needed to cross fields, go down muddy tracks and climb over fences to avoid going round the long way. It’s probably not great for the wheels. but it’s been fun. It takes you out of your cage.”

Reality is biting for Olympic sport with UK Sport's £340m government funding cycle running dry next March, four months before the rearranged Games, with a bridging fund yet to be agreed.

UK Sport chief Dame Katherine Grainger envisages ‘serious’ implications if such a fund isn’t agreed, with the best case scenario seemingly a reduced funding cycle for Paris 2024.

Barker says: “It’s carnage. I don't feel like I know enough to give a knowledgable comment other than it’s a bit of a mess.”

As an Olympic champion, what has she been told? “Most of what I'd heard has been around sponsors. Contracts come up at the end of this year and more money is needed through to 2021.

“I guess I feel as secure as anyone can feel. It's massively disappointing for athletes if funding gets redirected, but I don't think anything could argue if it’s used for public healthcare.”

Adding to the anxiety for track cyclists is the fact that governing body UCI planned to switch the sport to a summer schedule from 2021, meaning as it stands there will be no winter races to tune up for a rescheduled Olympics.

"It's such an uncertain time in sport generally, but for track cycling in particular it looks like this will be the longest period of time we'll ever have without racing,” Barker says.

“We have a European Championships in October, but aside from that, the next major race is in about a year, which is quite a while.

“We've got extra time to prepare for it, but we'll certainly be ready for Tokyo. It'll just be a strange journey to get there now.”