Article: Mountain Bike World Championships 2022: 'Young female athletes need to know what's normal and what's not'

A brave and authentic article written by Evie Richards who shares her story about her pathway to MTB, the environment of elite sport and dealing with relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S).

Article was written by Evie Richards, Cross-country world champion and Commonwealth Gold medalist for BBC Sport.

24 August 2022

I love my life as a mountain bike racer, it's everything I dreamed of, but it's taken a lot of work to get here.

It took me a long time to realise what makes me happy as a bike racer, and as 'Evie' - the person I am when I am away from my sport - but, since I worked that out, I've seen my life on and off the bike just get better and better.

I don't think some of the issues I faced are focused on enough by anyone in professional sport, so I like to speak about them as much as I can.

After leaving school at 16 to join the British Cycling Academy and focus on becoming a professional rider, my periods stopped. In the following five years I only had three menstrual cycles, because I was over-training and not eating properly or enough.

When I spoke to doctors I was told that losing your period was very common as a professional female athlete, and it was nothing out of the norm or something to worry about.

I know now that it shouldn't be happening, and Red-S [a condition called Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport that affects men and women] isn't a sign that you're going about being a professional athlete the right way.

Looking back, I can see that as a young athlete it's drilled into you that if you want to reach elite level, you have to make sacrifices - like cutting back on your social life, or working extra hard to control your weight to be as light as possible to go as fast as you can.

At the time I assumed it was just the choice I had to make but, at 25, I know differently. When I joined the British Cycling Academy I stopped seeing so much of my friends and family and cut back on the food I was eating, then dedicated every hour of my day to training. I thought that was what you did to go fast and win.

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