In celebration of the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris, GLAMOUR has launched Change The Record, a series dedicated to the women of Team GB, who are flipping the narrative on what it means to be an elite female athlete, from competing on their periods, balancing training with pregnancy and motherhood, navigating body image pressures, and yes, chasing world records.
Here, we chat with cyclist Elinor Barker, who just won a bronze medal in Paris, about her impressive cycling career, getting diagnosed after a debilitating case of endometriosis and returning to the sport after becoming a first-time mother.
When Elinor Barker raced in the women's team pursuit in Paris this week, her partner, Casper, and her two-year-old son, Nico, were watching on. For Barker, it marks a poignant full-circle moment: it was almost exactly three years ago when she won a silver medal in Tokyo and, within the space of a few hours, discovered that she was pregnant with Nico. "It was a huge, huge 24 hours," she told me from her hotel room in Paris over Zoom last week. "A lot of emotions in that 24 hours."
The past three years have been – well – pretty busy for Barker. After having her first child, she (practically) hopped straight back onto her bike to get back to competition form. Within just a few months, she was racing again.
But, of course, Barker is a seasoned professional. After cycling on amateur teams from the age of 10, she became a senior world champion in 2013. She has gone on to win a total of seven world titles and, in addition to her silver medal at Tokyo 2020, she also took home gold in Team GB's team pursuit campaign at Rio 2016. Last year, she won two gold medals at the World Championships in Glasgow, and now, she's gearing up for her third Olympics in Paris.
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A sporty child, Barker discovered her love of cycling through a process of elimination. "Me and my sister [Meg, who, incidentally, is also cycling for Team GB] just tried loads and loads of sports," she says. "I was also going to cross country and netball and swimming and all that kind of stuff. And then gradually, I just started doing more cycling until I was riding six days a week and that was my only sport."
Her natural gift for cycling meant that she fell into a professional career almost by accident. "I was going to apply for uni and then I was just too busy cycling. So, I didn't think about making a career of it until – well, until I already had!"
At 18, she was selected as the replacement for one of the Team GB cyclists who had won a gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics just a few months earlier. "It was a really, really steep learning curve for me," she says. "And I was still going to school, so I took a week off school and went to train and race with them." Soon enough, she was racing with them in the World Championships. "The goal just kept getting bigger and bigger." At 21, she "found [herself] in that in the final five riders that went to Rio." The team won a gold medal in the team pursuit – and broke the world record while they were at it.
Tokyo was a slightly different story for Barker.
"It was such a bizarre Olympics because we had to be so cautious," she says. "I think so much about the Olympics is about getting to mix with other athletes from different countries. And there was just absolutely none of that. Then I didn't get picked for the final, which was really disappointing."
Team GB won silver and, as Barker had already ridden in the heats, she was still part of the team and was awarded a medal. "But for some reason I wasn't allowed to the podium, so I couldn't go on and celebrate with my teammates, which… yeah," she trails off. "I don't know if organisers understand the impact on athletes of that rule, because you miss out on the moment that you've worked so hard for. It just seems unnecessarily cruel."
It was later that tumultuous day that Barker discovered she was pregnant. She hadn't planned to have a child – in fact, there had been a time when she had thought that conceiving a child might not even be possible: Barker had been diagnosed with endometriosis in 2018 after years of debilitating pain that had not only threatened to impact her racing, but had also meant that getting pregnant might be difficult. Barker ultimately had surgery, which made the pain manageable and meant that she could continue racing competitively. Nevertheless, she knew that conceiving a child may never be possible.
"I was really prepared, I suppose, for that outcome," she says. "So to then essentially have a baby by accident – when trying not to have a baby – it was like the biggest shock of my life. But I think it was probably the best thing that could have happened to us as a couple. We were really, really lucky to avoid that stress, which I know so many people that have endometriosis do have to go through."
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Barker was keen to prove that pregnancy and early motherhood was no reason to slow down as an athlete. She worked with a coach who had worked with a number of cyclists who had been through pregnancy. "We had a really detailed plan. I already knew halfway through my pregnancy what training I would be doing six weeks or eight weeks after the baby was born," she recalls. "And that really, really helped with the planning process."
She adds, "Of course, it was a guideline, because we didn't know what kind of birth I was going to have, what the recovery would be like, if the baby would sleep, if I'd be able to sleep."
Barker's partner, Casper, has been exactly that: a partner. "He holds everything down solo when I’m away racing (and often when I’m home too) and there’s no chance I’d be able to do this without him," Barker recently wrote on Instagram.
I ask Elinor if people are surprised to see a male partner be so involved. "I think that's exactly it," she says. "I think that's why people are often amazed that the setup of being an athlete and being a mum can work. So many people assume that myself and other mums are still completely responsible for everything that happens within the home. But it's just not true."
The couple also have a cleaner. "I don't think I'd be in a position if I was expected to also take care of everything at home," she says. "Like, it would just be completely overwhelming."
Barker's last few years certainly have been full. But the new mother hasn't merely managed to get back into shape for the coming games while juggling a toddler – she's more ready to race than ever. "I would say this is probably the calmest I've felt going into the Olympics, actually," she says. Not only is she pivoting her focus to road racing this year, she's also got a new perspective thanks to her son. "I suppose family life all comes into that – I know that whether I win, whether I lose, I'm still gonna have to change the nappies next week, and try and convince my toddler that he needs to clean his teeth. I think that's really, really nice."
