Read the transcript of the Get Set interview with Shanaze Reade a year after her experiences at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
The morning of the time trial event in my discipline, when I put my race shirt on, I kind of thought, “this is it” and it was the proudest moment I’ve ever had. And just to stand there and just think – at home, my family must feel so proud of me.
The Village itself was in absolutely lovely surroundings. All the grass was perfect and all these apartments were kitted out with all the best stuff. The food hall consists of… you have your Chinese there, your normal, traditional food, your Indian food… it caters for, you know, virtually every origin that there is out there.
It was great for me to meet some of the athletes who I used to look up to. I was only 19 going into the Olympics – still only so young – so, you know, your average 19 year old person, whoever he looked up to, or whoever she looked up to was there. So for me, it was fantastic.
I’ve matured so much as an athlete, and as a person. I brought all of the bad things that happened to me there, and tried to turn them into positives. At first, I thought, you know, I can’t put myself through another four years of that again and not be able to… you know, for that to happen to me again. I thought I hadn’t got it in me. And then you know as time went by – they say time’s a great healer, and it definitely was. I kind of took a step back and looked at everything and assessed my life and thought, you know, what better life is there than to ride your bike everyday for a living? What else can give me that same thing and that same excitement and enjoyment? And BMX and cycling and sport in general is where I want to be.
I have such a strong desire in my stomach now to win a gold medal, and the likes of Chris Hoy… to achieve greatness like being a Sir and Knighted and… that, to me is something that I really aspire to and I really want to happen to me, and now I’ve just got to do it.
I’m going to actually be going for four events in the Olympic Games in 2012. Obviously BMX racing, and then I’m going to be doing track cycling and also I’ll be doing match sprint – hopefully against Victoria Pendleton. And then there’s another event which has just been added in, which is Freestyle BMX. So yeah, there’s four opportunities there for me and I’ve got a lot of making up to do from China, so I’ve got the hunger.
This year, especially, is called the developing year. So whatever happens in that year, if there’s no World Titles won along that year, I want to be able to at least, at the end of that year, think – well I haven’t got the title, but what I have got is, I’ve developed in areas that I hadn’t ever developed or looked at before in my sport.
To anyone that wants to become an Olympian: It takes hard work, dedication, and the biggest thing that overrides both of those is enjoyment.
