Victoria Pendleton CBE

Victoria Pendleton CBE is Great Britain’s most successful female cyclist of all time.

Inspired by her father who was a national grass track and hill climb champion, Victoria started cycling about the same time as she started to walk and spent most holidays on youth hostelling trips with her family from the age of six.

At the age of 9 Victoria started grass track racing with her twin brother Alex as a hobby in the summer months. She started to show potential at thirteen and was talent spotted at the age of sixteen by the assistant national track team coach at the time, Marshall Thomas.

However despite his efforts to encourage her to train, Victoria decided to concentrate on her education. Whilst studying at the University of Northumberland she started to train more constructively for track sprinting, inspired by the Olympic gold medal success of Jason Queally at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

In 2001 and 2002 Victoria Pendleton competed at the European Championships and later that season at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester. Then as a further indication of her incredible potential she was sent to the UCI (Union du Cyclisme Internationale) World Cycling Centre in Aigle, Switzerland for two seasons in the lead up to the Athens 2004 Olympics where she was trained by Frederic Magné, a seven times World Champion for France.

Unfortunately the Athens Games came too soon for Victoria and so disappointed with her performance she considered quitting the sport.

Persuaded to continue cycling by British Cycling sports psychologist Dr. Steve Peters, Victoria stayed on the programme, living and training in Manchester with the rest of the elite Great Britain Track Team.

The persistence paid off the following year when Victoria won her first World Champions rainbow jersey at the 2005 World Championships in the individual sprint.

That first rainbow jersey set her on the path to greatness and she went on to win a total of 9 World titles. In 2007 she achieved the unique feat of winning all three women’s track sprint events (Keirin, Team Sprint and Individual Sprint) at the World Championships.

In the form of her life and full of confidence Victoria Pendleton went to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games with just one opportunity to win Olympic Gold and she did so in great style.

The next four year Olympic cycle proved extremely challenging for many reasons, on and off the bike, but in 2012 Victoria regained her World title in the individual sprint in Melbourne then demonstrated her class and strength of character once again at the London 2012 Olympic Games winning Gold (Keirin) and silver (individual sprint) to end her competitive career in style!

Victoria Pendleton is well known for being an extremely eloquent and intelligent who is as comfortable in a corporate environment and with the media as she is on her bike.

Victoria is available for Q&A led motivational presentations.