Elinor Barker (Uno-X) spent the hours before the start of her debut Tour of Flanders on Sunday very differently from many of her peers in the peloton.
The 28-year-old is embarking on her first full season since having a child early last year. Nico, who is a year old now, is staying with Barker and her partner Casper — who is a performance coach at Uno-X — throughout the classics.
Being a parent takes priority, which means that race preparation is often a little bit different than most of her competitors and teammates.
“It’s been full-on, it’s been quite different to what I expected. I don’t think there are many riders who spent this morning fishing a baby poo out of a bath before they had their breakfast. It definitely added another layer of preparation every day,” Barker told CyclingTips before the start in Oudenaarde on Sunday.
“It’s not quite so easy to predict, but it’s been great and really beyond anything I expected it to be. It’s been phenomenal, the team has been great, and everybody has loved having him around. He’s staying for the whole classics, which has been awesome. I’ve loved it.”
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Last year, Barker was one of just two WorldTour riders taking maternity leave with Trek-Segafredo’s Lizzie Deignan also taking time out of racing to have her second child. However, things have changed for this year and there is a raft of riders already on maternity leave, including Barker’s teammate Joss Lowden, Ellen van Dijk (Trek-Segafredo), and Chantal van den Broek-Blaak (SD Worx).
Maternity leave was only introduced in 2020 as part of the introduction of WorldTeam licenses. Barker is happy to see that a growing number of riders are feeling able to have a child during their career and return to racing afterward and says that the rules prevented her from having to hang up her racing wheels prematurely.
“I think it’s fantastic because now everybody is realizing that you do need to provide that level of support to be an attractive team for the top riders and, obviously, Trek is showing that and I’d like to think that we are with Joss being on maternity leave, too,” she said.
“It really means that riders can prolong their careers for much longer than they otherwise would. Sometimes, people are in a situation where they are putting off having a baby, whereas in my case if I didn’t have the option then I would have had to quit cycling because I didn’t decide to get pregnant, it just happened. To be able to have those options there is huge, it’s everything, and hopefully, I can have a career for another 10 years and who knows what can happen.”
Barker returned to racing in June last year at the British road championships but didn’t compete with her team until October. After a full winter to really work on her form, Barker has hit the ground running and her recent seventh-place finish at Gent-Wevelgem showed that she is moving in the right direction.
“It’s only the start of April and I’ve already had some of my best results. I’ve had more race days than quite a lot of years in my professional career so hopefully, this is the start of something good that will continue. Long may it continue,” she said.
Her performances this year have partly come as a result of turning her focus more on road cycling after years spent on the track. Indeed, she didn’t race any UCI road events in 2021 or 2020 due to her work with the British track squad ahead of the Olympics, where she took a silver medal in the team pursuit.
With 10 days of UCI road racing under her belt all season, she has ridden more on the asphalt than almost any other year of her career — except for 2018 when she did a total of 15.
Barker isn’t leaving the track behind, where she has racked up five world titles and an Olympic gold, but for the first time in her career, the boards will take a back seat to the road.
“I’m focusing on the road and then I’m doing what track I can do in between. I’m still working very closely with the British Cycling coaches and trying to figure out where the puzzles fit, whereas before, I was always a track rider, always available for track so that really came first and then I would fit some road races in,” Barker said.
“Now it’s very much the other way around, I’m still committed to living in Manchester because I want to still ride track and be around the team when I can be, it’s just a bit more planning now and a bit more organization.”
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