Bridie O’Donnell has never been one to do things the easy way. In her 20s, and as a qualified doctor, she knocked back coveted opportunities in medicine to pursue an elite triathlon career, convinced she was destined for sporting greatness. By 26, however, she realised that her running times would never match her cycling prowess, and, inspired by the fervour of the Sydney Olympic Games, switched allegiances to rowing.
But, at 32, and resigned to the fact that she was always a “little too far off the pace” for national selection, she changed gears again: this time to focus solely on cycling. “Finding the right sport for your physiology is kind of like finding the ‘one’ in a relationship,” she laughs. “You have to go through a few crappy ones where you go, ‘what on earth was I thinking?’”
A pivotal moment in O’Donnell’s sporting trajectory came in September 2006, when she caught Australian Institute of Sport head cycling coach Warren McDonald on TV bemoaning the lack of Australian time trial talent. McDonald concluded that the sport might benefit from a talent transfer program: taking athletes “with big engines” from other sports.
Galvanised, O’Donnell wrote him an “unsolicited” email that read: “Dear Mr McDonald, I watched your post-world press conference with interest. I was a rower, and am now a triathlete, so I am JUST the kind of athlete you’re looking for!”
To McDonald’s credit, O’Donnell says he “replied immediately,” encouraging her to go ahead with her intention to participate in the World Ironman Championships. Her strong showing there resulted in her being accepted into the AIS’s talent transfer program. From that small window of opportunity, O’Donnell would go on to become national champion and Oceania champion, and accepting professional cycling contracts in Italy and the US, before, finally, at 41, breaking the Union Cycliste International (UCI) hour world record: a gruelling event in which a single rider sprints for 60 minutes inside a velodrome.
Lest those achievements give the impression of smooth progression, O’Donnell’s newly released book, Life and Death: A Cycling Memoir, documents in sometimes painful detail the substantial difficulties she encountered along the way – not least of which included participating in a sport dominated by men, with very little funding or investment for women.
“Cycling is inherently expensive because it involves equipment and, generally, the better the equipment and the more expensive it is, the better you’re likely to perform,” O’Donnell explains to Guardian Australia.
“When I was racing the national team still existed and many women were given the opportunity to win a scholarship, as I was. But [realistically] it ends up being coffee money. You don’t have any expenses if you live in the national team house, [but] unless you’re like me and you can borrow, self-fund, quit your job and have either a supportive partner or no partner, it’s pretty hard to do.
“The added humiliation is, you see your male peers with all these pathways – and some aren’t making money and are being exploited [too]. But they can see Cadel Evans and Chris Froome in the distance and think ‘I could be that’.”
O’Donnell explains that cycling is effectively an individual sport that is raced as a team, with riders only able to enter races when they are aligned with a professional team. For women in particular – where resources are scant and places limited – O’Donnell says this can create an environment with “a whole lot of ordinary or unsafe standards”.
“It becomes an aspirational environment where the power imbalance is extremely apparent,” she says. “For every 200 women there are three or four great teams and women are just clamouring [for their spot]. That means the environment becomes ripe for exploitation. If you’re being poorly treated, you don’t have an alternative.”
As examples, O’Donnell recalls witnessing other riders subjected to abuse at the hands of their coaches and superiors, something she also endured during her time as a triathlete. In a chapter entitled #UsToo, O’Donnell describes a former triathlon coach as “violent, aggressive, manic, paranoid and suspicious” – and recalls being humiliated in front of other squad members about her weight, times and inferiority to other women in her squad.
“Mine certainly wasn’t a unique situation,” she says. “We have these vulnerable young women, or ambitious hard-working women, who have in many ways probably isolated themselves because they’re very talented, they’re exceptional, and someone has come along and said: ‘I see you. I see what you’re doing here, you’re amazing. We’re in this together and we’re going together to the Olympics or the world championships’. No girl is going to say: ‘I feel the power dynamic here is a little inappropriate, I’m not going to accept money, support, coaching and love from you’.”
One of her most eye-opening experiences in this regard was O’Donnell’s time in the professional peloton in Italy. After proving herself in Oceania and national championships at an age where few gave her any hope to succeed, O’Donnell remembers receiving her contract offer with a feeling of vindication in her self-belief and persistence. Upon arrival overseas, however, O’Donnell says she quickly learned that women’s cycling teams were a “joke” in Italy, while she experienced further emotional abuse from coaches and team officials. She was told repeatedly that she was too old, slow and overweight to succeed.
“People would say to me that I was fat or needed to try harder, or if I was skinnier they would compliment me on how I looked,” she says. “It really creates – if you don’t have a strong sense of your self-worth – disordered thought and behaviour.”
Eating disorders amongst her team-mates were not only common but “condoned” by the cycling team. As both a qualified doctor and someone invested in women’s health, O’Donnell remembers this as an incredibly challenging experience.
“I would eat every single meal with eight women who all hated themselves, who all weighed between 10-15 kilos less than I did and I’m not overweight. They would look at the size of the meal I would eat – a big pile of veggies and salad – and say: ‘Bridie! What are you doing?’ A team-mate of mine, every time we got bread with every meal, she would be ravenous, but she would just grab the bread, tear all the inside out and throw it in the bin and eat the crust. You think: What am I doing here? How can I allow this to continue? She looks miserable.”
Most problematic, says O’Donnell, was that for most of her team-mates and competitors, having an eating disorder actually paid off, and was in effect a “legal version of doping” encouraged by the men around them. “The same team-mate, she reached her goal weight, won her national championships, got a bonus from her federation and climbed amazingly at the Giro. She was an awful, miserable mess, but for her the ends justified the means.”
O’Donnell says she constantly thought about the long-term health effects for the women she was surrounded by: including osteoporosis and amenorrhea amongst others. She also grappled with the question: how do you ever retire? And how do you feel good about your body and what it’s for?
Although O’Donnell hasn’t officially retired from cycling herself, she has taken up a new role in the last six months that enables her to tackle some of these inequities head on – she is now the Head of the Office for Women in Sport and Recreation in Victoria – and enjoying another unexpected career change.
During her time in the role she has already racked up a formidable list of achievements with a tenacity that mirrors her elite sporting career. These include securing a $15m investment from government in a “female friendly facilities” infrastructure grant, introducing a minimum 40% quota of women on state sporting organisation boards to take effect in the next 15 months and overseeing a professional development program for CEOs of eight sporting organisations – to support them in achieving gender equity. She is also passionate about welcoming women back into sport post-retirement, something she has thought about deeply after her pro-cycling career.
“Why are we losing all our retired cyclists to the sport? Where are all the women who have stopped racing and want to be coaches, referees, team directors? [The answer is] they’re burnt out, they’ve given their body and their child-bearing years to a sport that gave them nothing. They’ve got no money, their relationships have suffered and they are starting to think about a professional career outside of the sport.”
The existence of these very real barriers, says O’Donnell, means she is focused on mentoring women in sport, ensuring they have the networks and supports she and so many others lacked.
“What often happens in women’s sport is that we don’t necessarily feel like we’re in a position to mentor and help others, because we never feel safe. By that I mean security, a contract, money, being famous, whatever it is – and we imagine that everyone feels safer than us.
“What I’ve found in this job is that I’ve met all these incredible people, where when I ask them for something they try and help me. There are champions and the willing are everywhere, and I’m trying to work with the willing.”
-
Life and Death: A Cycling Memoir by Bridie O’Donnell is out now, published by Slattery Media
