Tokyo Paralympics 2021: Cyclist Emily Petricola one of Australia’s best medal chances

Too scared to even sit on her bike the first time she went to a velodrome, Emily Petricola is now one of Australia’s best medal hopes in Tokyo.

Emily Petricola (L) and Paige Greco at Anna Meares Velodrome. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Richard Gosling

Emily Petricola was too frightened to even sit on her bike the first time she went to a velodrome.

A relative latecomer to elite cycling, Petricola had been assured by her friend and mentor Shane Kelly, the former multiple world champion, that she was a natural for indoor track racing and was destined for big things.

But when she first saw just how high and steep the wooden curved banks were, her heart skipped a beat and she momentarily lost her nerve.

“I couldn’t get on the boards at all, I was too scared,” she said.

Emily Petricola flies around the velodrome. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Richard Gosling

“But I did, and at the end of that first session, I told Shane ‘I’ve got a really good feeling that I‘m going to win gold medals on the track. I just feel like this is what I’m destined to do.’”

Petricola was right. She’s now a multiple world champion and world record holder herself, in women’s pursuit, one of the most exhausting and demanding races in track cycling.

Now making her Paralympics debut at age 41, she’s the overwhelming favourite to win the first of possibly two gold medals in Japan on Wednesday, but there’s a catch.

“There’s an expectation from everyone that I will win gold medals because I’m the world record and I’ve been the best in the world for the last few years so I’m hoping that will be proven this week,” she said.

Emily Petricola (L) and Paige Greco. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Richard Gosling

“But there’s only so much I can control. I’ve ticked every box that I can and I’ve prepared myself as well as I can so the result will be whatever will be.”

Every elite says that but in Petricola’s case, she isn’t being flippant. She literally does not have complete control.

Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was 27, she experiences tremors in her arms and legs and has upper body weaknesses that give her only a limited grip on the handlebars of her bike.

“I don’t have great co-ordination,” she said. “And that makes it really scary and challenging on a velodrome.

“Every day is a little bit different and there’s always a different challenge to overcome because I can’t control how much tone I have in my body on any given day.

“I can’t control how unbalanced I feel, I can’t control how well my hands are working, there’s so much that I have no control over.”

When everything goes right, Petricola is a sight to behold. She and her teammate Paige Greco, who competes in a different classification, are tipped to win Australia’s first Paralympic gold medals in Tokyo.

With no brakes or gears on her bike, Petricola just motors around the track as though she doesn’t have a care in the world but that wasn’t always the case.

For the first seven years after doctors first spotted lesions on her brain, she was deeply depressed and struggling physically, unable to walk her dog around the block let alone pedal a bike at high speed.

A competitive rower before her life was turned upside down, cycling unexpectedly became – in her own words – the ‘biggest silver lining of this horrible disease that you have so little control over.’

“The reality is my life changed in one moment,” Petricola said.

“I’ve been through so much as a 41-year-old, I’ve had so many difficult moments, not just through my disease, but just in life that I just think, at the end of the day, it’s a bike race. It’s a really important one, but it’s still a bike race.

“I feel grateful that when I get on that bike, I‘m just this phenomenal cyclist that can go and do these amazing things. It’s the only time I really feel like that.

“I‘m really very lucky because I work with fantastic people who drive me to be the best I can be.”

Originally published as Tokyo Paralympics 2021: Cyclist Emily Petricola one of Australia’s best medal chances