The past few months have been an unusual period of Neah Evans’ career.
For the first time in nearly a decade as an elite cyclist, her mind was willing, but her body most certainly wasn’t.
2024 was a year of mixed emotions for Evans.
Her preparations for Paris 2024 were severely disrupted after she contracted the Epstein-barr virus but despite this, she won Olympic silver in the madison, which she followed up two months later with World Championship bronze.
So, results-wise, two major medals would be considered a success by most people.
But almost as soon as she returned from the Wold Championships, her body decided it was done for the year and however hard Evans pushed, be it in training or racing the Track Champions League, he body decided not to play ball.
She wasn’t inured, but she was most certainly not riding well and that, she admits, was a disheartening time.
“I had a few challenges last year but then it really all came crashing down after Worlds,” Evans recalls.
“I decided to do the Track Champions League because I thought I’d be able to get through it. But I couldn’t - my body was just saying no.
“I just could not motivate myself - I was trying every mental trick in the book but absolutely nothing worked.
“The worry for me was that I still had the motivation to train but whatever I did, my body wasn’t responding. That’s when the thought starts to creep in, is this the plateau, is my form never going to come back?
“That’s when I realised, okay, I need a proper reset to try to get my head back in the game.”
A warm-weather training camp in Tenerife just after new year was exactly what Evans needed and slowly but surely over the past month, her form has been returning with a vengeance, and just in time.
This week, Evans will spearhead GB’s team at the European Track Cycling Championships, which begin today in Heusden-Zolder in Belgium, where she will be joined by her compatriots, sprinters Lauren Bell and Iona Moir.
The British team has something of a different look to it, with several of the headline names sitting out this championship, meaning Evans will be the rider many of the younger and less experience athletes look towards for guidance.
Indeed, Evans’ partner in the madison, Maddie Leech is 13 years her junior and has considerably less experience under her belt than the Scot, whose list of successes include a brace of Olympic silvers and seven World Championship medals, including two world titles.
Given the 34-year-old from Langbank already has six European titles to her name, it’s not unreasonable to expect her to achieve at least a degree of success this week but Evans is reluctant to set definite targets for herself.
“The make-up of the British team puts a different emphasis on how I’ll have to ride because I’ll be the more experienced rider and so that makes it fun,” she says.
“It will be a different approach this week but I’m looking forward to that.”
She’s signed with Scottish road team, Team Alba for the coming year and despite having dabbled in road racing intermittently throughout her career - she won Commonwealth Games road race silver in 2022 - she’s never focused specifically on it.
The luxury, however, of there being over three years until the next Olympic Games is that British Cycling has allowed its top riders the freedom to do as they please, within reason, this year and so Evans has decided a stint on the road will not only do her no harm, it’ll likely be a positive departure from the norm for her.
“Road has always been slightly unknown, for me” she says.
“When I have dipped my toe into road racing, I’ve often managed to get good results but it’s always come second to track racing. So for a year, I’ll go for it on the road and see what happens.
“With Alba, the focus is on development rather than results so it’s nice to have that room to develop rather than just chasing results. So it's going to be exciting.”
That Evans is planning her route towards the 2028 Olympics says much about her drive to succeed, as well as her appreciation of her career as an elite athlete.
Given she was a working vet before she ever considered taking cycling seriously, she’s in the somewhat unusual position of knowing exactly what she’ll do when she hangs up her helmet.
And this is precisely why she’s making sure she’s appreciating every opportunity that comes her way in her cycling career both this year and in the coming seasons.
“I’m quite sad in that I really like training and I think that’s why I’ve got longevity in the sport, because I like the lifestyle,” she says.
“I have a career waiting for me at the end of this - I’ll go back to being a vet. So it means I’m still a cyclist because I choose to be a cyclist and that takes a lot of pressure off.”
