“I got dropped on the first climb and it was honestly the worst experience I’ve ever had in my life. You go from being on top of the world to just being absolutely hammered by the best riders.” Nine years on from competing in her first ever professional race, Lucy van der Haar (née Garner), now retired from cycling, still remembers the occasion with striking clarity.
It was Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in 2013, the first race of the season’s ‘Opening Weekend’ and one of the most prestigious on the calendar. Won by Tiffany Cromwell – then in her fifth year as a professional – in a two-up sprint against Megan Guarnier, it was an attacking race, dominated by Cromwell’s Orica-AIS team.
Of course, it was the Australian rider who made headlines, as the winner always does. The adrenaline-fuelled post-race interviews, the emotional victory salute, the champagne splattered on the front of TV cameras… These are the stories we read – ones of euphoria, of success, about the best of the best. But for many riders who began the race that day, the reality was a much harsher, bleaker picture.
Much to her surprise, Van der Haar was one of them. A two-time junior world road race champion, in 2011 and 2012, she went into Omloop that year with the expectation of carrying the talent she’d displayed in the junior ranks across to the elite category. Instead, she found herself struggling to finish the race, stuck at the back, watching the peloton disappear into the distance on the grey Flemish roads.
“It was a wake-up call for me. I realised, it’s not going to be easy,” she says.
Van der Haar was riding for Argos-Shimano at the time, a team that had picked her up straight after her performances in the junior category. At 18 years old, Van der Haar became a professional cyclist. She packed her bags and moved from England to Holland, armed with some fast legs and a whole lot of naivety. “I left my family home, where my mum did everything for me. She spoiled us. I was like, how do I cook pasta? What do I have to do?”
It wasn’t just the shift in lifestyle that presented a challenge to Van der Haar. The huge increase in training load that was required to compete in races nearing 130km, as opposed to the 70km races common in the junior category, also put strain on the British rider. “It was mentally hard,” she explains. “As a junior, I was still at school. I was just doing turbo sessions and then on the weekend, I’d go out on a club…