Becky Storrie was 19 years old, training thirty hours a week and studying full time, when she collapsed in a teammate’s hallway and started fitting. She had felt fine that morning. She says she was in the shape of her life.
That was the end of her triathlon career and the start of nine months in which she could barely make a cup of tea. Chronic fatigue syndrome gave her no timeline, no rehab plan and no promise of recovery. It also took away the only version of herself she recognised. She had a five year plan, she knew exactly what she was going to win, and within weeks all of it was gone.
She talks openly about the fear underneath it, whether her friends would still want her around, whether her partner would still want to be with her, when the sport they shared was the thing that had brought them together.
What happened next is one of the more remarkable stories on the Island. She threw herself into her psychology degree, drifted into cycling because swimming and running were still beyond her, entered her first bike race in 2019, and inside five years was riding the Tour de France Femmes.
The route there was not smooth. Her team collapsed financially at the end of November, leaving her with no contract and no agent, emailing teams she knew would never look at her. When one finally interviewed her they told her something she had no idea about, that they had been watching her for five years because a sports scientist at her university had quietly sent them her lab data without ever mentioning it.
In this conversation Beckie talks about the menstrual cycle and how little the sport understood it until recently, the gap between men’s and women’s resources at the top level, what nine days of Grand Tour racing does to your ability to make even the smallest decision, breaking the same collarbone three times in one season, and why she now tells every young rider she coaches to keep something else in their life.
It is a conversation about ambition, collapse, identity and the difference between wanting something and being willing to send the email.