Armitstead Lizzie - Steadfast: my story

STEADFAST

LIZZIE

ARMITSTEAD

STEADFAST

MY STORY

WITH WILLIAM FOTHERINGHAM

Published by Blink Publishing

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HB 978-1-91127-425-4

TPB 978-1-91127-432-2

Ebook 978-1-91127-426-1

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Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

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Copyright in original story Lizzie Armitstead

Text copyright Lizzie Armitstead and William Fotheringham 2017

Quote on p.160-1 reproduced by kind permission of Elisa Longo Borghini

All images Lizzie Armitstead unless otherwise stated. Lizzie Armitstead has asserted their moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE IMPERFECT STORM

T he drive from Monaco to Lausanne takes about six hours. We travelled through the night, and there wasnt a lot either of us could say to fill the time. Phil then my fianc, now my husband did the driving while I sat in the front seat in the full knowledge that my entire future would hang on the next couple of days. It must have been hard for Phil to go through those hours in near silence, wondering when he would get me back from the strange mental state that had taken me over for the past few weeks. I was terrified and exhausted

We listened to the Irish folk singer Luke Kelly, one of Phils fathers favourites; he is an acquired taste, but soothing in a way. We had him on CD, as the car is too old for an iPod connection, and there are too many tunnels as you drive through the Alps for the radio to work. The Olympic Games were just over a week away, but my pre-Rio diet went out of the window; I had lost so much weight that it didnt matter whether or not I went back to my emergency motorway staple of a white Magnum ice cream or two.

Two weeks earlier, on 11 July 2016, I had been provisionally suspended by UK Anti-Doping after (UKAD) receiving three strikes within the Whereabouts system that monitors an athletes availability for random anti-drugs testing; the hearing at the Court of Arbitration (CAS) for Sport in Lausanne on 28 July would decide whether those strikes stood. The first strike had come when UKAD alleged I had missed a test at the World Cup round in Sweden on 20 August 2015; the second a paperwork error rather than an actual missed test in October that year; and the third, a missed out-of-competition test, on 9 June 2016.

The Sweden strike was the strike that we decided to focus on in the hearing, as I hadnt challenged it with legal support at the time and in my heart I felt sure of discrepancies in UKADs case due to their Doping Control Officers (DCO) actions on that day. When he came to the team hotel at 6am and asked the hotel receptionist for my room number without any explanation, the receptionist refused to provide the number to the stranger in front of him. This was a small hotel the only one in town where every womens team in the World Cup was staying, and by his own admittance in court, the officer knew I was there; he just didnt try to find me. My team mechanic was at the fully branded Boels-Dolmans truck at the front of the hotel working on the bikes, and the DCO had only to go and ask him where I was, or to explain who he was or the importance of his visit, and the hotel would have obliged with my room number. He had tried to call my mobile, but it was on silent as it was 6am and I was asleep. It is not a UKAD requirement to have your mobile on at all times and, in fact, in their rules the DCO is not allowed to phone you as it would be considered an advance warning.

I had appealed against that strike immediately to UKAD (as the rules dictate in appeals), providing what I felt was a complete explanation and perhaps unsurprisingly since I was appealing to the organisation who had issued the strike, it was turned down. I then had the opportunity to take my appeal further, to an independent panel, but this had to be done within two weeks, and to stand any chance of success would have required me to appoint lawyers and put together a full dossier of evidence, including witnesses and statements. Aside from the cost, at that point I was in the final run-in to the world championships in Richmond, USA I was in the form of my life, in a different time zone, part of a team working towards a team time trial title, as well the individual road race two weeks after that, and time and logistics were against me. The problem was that I didnt get a second chance for an appeal after those two weeks, unless I had received a further two strikes and had been hit with a provisional ban, which was the situation I found myself in now.

It had been an excruciating wait to learn the final date of the hearing and its location, London or Lausanne; the CAS had an immense backlog of cases as they worked through the appeals coming out of the Russian doping disaster in the run-in to the Rio Games, so we were only informed 36 hours before the hearing was to take place.

Since the third strike on 9 June, and the confirmation of that strike which didnt come until two weeks later, I had begun going through all the possible life implications in my head and the enormity of the situation. There is your reputation, which you will never get back; as it is now, its damaged, but I am not a banned athlete. I am not, never have been and never will be, a cheat, and it hurts that people might think of me as one no matter what I say or do now because of an administrative error. More personally, I was terrified about how it would affect my relationship with Phil if I was banned: I would go from being the independent person that I had become, from having a job, success and a focus, to being dependent on my husband. I hadnt realised how important my independence was to me. I need my personal focus in life, my job, my income, my contribution to our relationship. You examine everything: would I lose friends? Would we be able to pay the rent? What about my contracts Would we stop? Would you have to pay everyone back? Would we have to move? Being banned would be monumental in the impact it would have on my life and on those around me, and all the people that had supported me as I progressed to where I was. Among it all was the fear of losing one of the things I love most in my life: cycling. Everything depended on the decision.

Most of the time, I am a daydreamer, a talker, a planner; I couldnt do any of that before the hearing because I simply had no idea what I could plan for or dream about. I would swing from one extreme to another, from thinking that a ban would be OK, that I could live with it, embracing the possibility, then falling apart at the idea of losing the identity that I have built. Id be thinking, This is fine, I can deal with it, Ill go off and start a family and we will do different things, and then I would realise that I was kidding myself. That wasnt what I wanted to happen and it would be devastating after everything I have worked for and the sacrifices I, and my family, have made.