Grace Brown Urges Change Ahead of Final Race

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Grace Brown’s final appearance for Australia at the road world championships should have been a happy occasion.

The road race fell days after the 32-year-old – who will retire after Chrono Des Nations on Sunday – won the rainbow jersey in the women’s time trial.

The golden bike that she defeated Demi Vollering on was a symbol of an immense summer in which Brown became Olympic champion in the same discipline.

But death hung over the event, affecting even those who won medals the size of Swiss cowbells.

The passing of junior women’s racer Muriel Furrer after a crash left an impregnable mark on the collective peloton in Zürich.

Speaking to Velo the morning of the elite women’s road race, the FDJ-Suez star had every right to focus on herself and her own perfect season. Deciding not to travel back to Australia mid-year, where her husband and family are based, was a sacrifice that paid dividends.

Moreover, each of her title-winning performances – including Liège-Bastogne-Liège in the spring – were the combination of brilliant mentality, physical strength, and a trained ability to persevere through suffering.

But having heard of Furrer’s tragic passing the day before, Brown admits the general mood in Switzerland was down.

“When we got the news that she had passed away, yeah, that was a bit of a hit. It makes you question the sport a bit,” she says.

“I definitely don’t want to take risks to put myself in a position like that and I’m sure it’s a wake-up call to some other people as well.

“I think it feels like the last couple of years the sport’s been heading in this direction where we’re seeing more fatal accidents and really horrific crashes. Something really needs to change in the mentality of racing.

“It’s hard to know what’s spurring it on, whether it’s the money in the sport, or there’s a lot of pressure to take risks.”

Head of the Alliance

Cycling has long been known and even promoted as a dangerous professional sport, but in recent seasons one could argue that it’s become deadly – and riders seem to be more aware of that now too.

Brown lined up at Tre Valli Varesine in Italy on Tuesday for the penultimate race of her career and her last road race as a pro. She was a DNF but not through lack of form.

An Instagram post later explained what happened: She’d dropped back to speak to a commissaire about road safety in the pouring rain, “achieved nothing” and then “voluntarily abandoned.”

Only 35 women finished the event.

The men’s race was later suspended, then stopped due to extreme weather, with Giro, Tour, and newly minted world champion Tadej Pogačar leading a protest.

Brown says when it comes to change – a topic she’ll surely speak more on in future having just been elected as president of The Cyclists’ Alliance – the onus is on everyone.

“In the end it’s the riders that are making the choices out on the road, so we have to take responsibility for that. I think there’s a lot happening in terms of trying to make courses safer, but the speeds are just a lot higher now,” she says.

“And also, I think with the increased information and communication on the road, the style of racing has changed, we’re fighting all day to be in position and whatnot.

“There’s a lot of elements that come into then riders feeling pressure to maybe go down a descent a bit faster than they’re comfortable with or, you know, dive bomb a corner to be in front,” Brown continues.

“There’s no one who should take full responsibility for it. I think it’s a real shared thing, but we definitely need to put our heads together to work out how to start changing it.”

Self-talk and suffering

There isn’t one thing that Brown puts her unparalleled success this season down to.

Her decision to retire, announced in June, may have taken a bit of weight off her shoulders.

“In retrospect, I’ll work it out,” she says.

It goes without saying much work has gone into Brown’s physical shape, especially when it comes to time trials that she’s now the benchmark in. However, her mindset has been equally consistent and admirable.

“It’s not as easy as just being like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to think,’ but it’s a process of I guess, like, planning well enough for the event that it becomes a bit more like autopilot,” she says.

Central to Brown’s success this season has been her mentality. Moments after becoming the first Australian to win a gold medal at the Paris Olympics, she mentioned being able to keep negative self-talk at bay.

“For the Olympics, for example, I really worked on preparing to be in pain and like, ‘OK, I know that this is going to hurt but that doesn’t mean I can’t do it.’ So then when I got to the point of being in that discomfort the negative thoughts didn’t creep in being like, ‘OK this is too hard,’ because I prepared myself to be in an uncomfortable feeling.

“I’m thinking in the moment here, but preparing for the hard moments allows you to go through them and not talk yourself down in those moments, or just say that you’re not good enough, because you told yourself that it was going to hurt and that’s expected.”

Liège and the Olympics had been targets since the beginning of the season but her success at the world titles was more organic.

“I think the confidence from the year that I’ve had allowed me to push myself really deep in the end there,” Brown adds.

“When Demi Vollering actually came faster in the last time check, I was able to not take that negatively and find that little bit extra to come home faster than her.

“It’s super nice to end my career with a [rainbow jersey] that I didn’t really, like, it was always within reach, but now I’ve finally got it.”

Tour circuit breaker for gold at end of the rainbow

Competing in the Tour de France Femmes days after claiming gold in Paris, as opposed to basking in Games glory also aided Brown’s rainbow jersey campaign, even it was mentally very tough.

“To go and do such a big race after the Olympics, I found it hard to motivate myself in that race, but I just put my shoes on each day and got on the bike and did it,” she reflects.

“The Tour was a bit of a circuit breaker in a way. I didn’t go back to Australia and have all this hype and get really overwhelmed by that, it was just like on to the next job.”

Brown took a week off the bike after the Tour to see her parents, and by the time she got home was refreshed for the next, big assignment.

“I got onto my time trial bike and felt surprisingly strong when I did my first sessions that were targeted towards the world championships. Maybe if I’d struggled in those first sessions it would have been really hard to keep motivating myself to get out to do the work. The feeling was there that I could do it, so that made it easier in a way,” she says.

Brown will return to her native Australia on October 17 to start a new chapter of her life with no regrets. But before that, she’s got a final time trial in France to complete in the rainbow bands and on a golden bike.

“I need to make a proper trophy room,” she says.