Women’s pro cycling pioneer Tiffany Cromwell finds her happy place

Twelve years after helping to pioneer women’s professional road cycling in Europe, Tiffany Cromwell is enjoying some of the best results of her career.

Tiffany Cromwell with her boyfriend, Formula One driver Valtteri Bottas

Tiffany Cromwell is in a happy place.

Twelve years after helping to pioneer women’s professional road cycling in Europe, the South Australian is enjoying some of the best results of her career.

Personally she is settled and content: her boyfriend of more than two years Formula One driver Valtteri Bottas gives rock solid support; her cycling contract with the Canyon/SRAM racing team includes the new discipline of gravel, adding depth and spark to training, and finally living in the South of France she feels so relaxed she can even tolerate midwinter visits to Bottas’s home in deepest Finland.

Now aged 33, Cromwell says she is training smarter, not longer, in her pursuit of stage wins in the classics, or as team captain assisting her team members, including leader Elise Chabbey of Switzerland, conquer the Women’s Tour de France.

She is also looking for podium spots at both the Birmingham Commonwealth Games’ flat road course and the World Championships in Wollongong later this year, which boasts some spectacular scenery and gruelling climbs.

Where some athletes in 2022 are hankering for a post-pandemic return back to Australia, Cromwell is more and more rooted in the comfortable rhythms of the sport on the other side of the world.

It was not always so.

“I had my ups and downs and I wasn’t performing at a level I knew I was capable of and I just couldn’t seem to piece it together,’’ Cromwell told The Weekend Australian.

“As my career went on and you keep doing the same races and if you aren’t consistently performing you get a bit stale.’’

Pressed, she admitted to such frustration and loneliness that she was ready to give up the sport. Up until 2016 she was gradually improving, but then in that Olympic year “I know I crumbled under the pressure … I was just a bit lost in my world trying to work out what exactly I wanted”.

Looking back, Cromwell now thinks she was overtraining and not resting enough and her reactions were too extreme.

“I have stopped being so sporadic with crash dieting, and started training less, and recovering more, and all these simple things work, but at the time you tell yourself otherwise.’’

It is no coincidence that since partnering with fellow Monaco resident Bottas in early 2020, just months after his divorce from Finnish swimmer Emilia Pikkarainen, that Cromwell’s aggression on the bike, identifying key breaks and attacking up the road, returned in force.

She enjoyed some top 10 results in 2021 and then on the new road discipline of gravel — a hybrid of mountain bike riding and road racing which is booming in the US — she won the prestigious Belgian Waffle Ride Kansas at the end of the year.

“It comes back to confidence,” she says. “I built that throughout last year and had probably my strongest season in years, I just want to race my bike and be part of the race when it counts and not just making up the numbers. I feel I am on the upward trajectory.”

Bottas, who switched from Mercedes to Alfa Romeo this year, has ensured Cromwell attends to the smallest details in her preparations: watching that she eats properly after a hard ride when all she wants to do is collapse on the couch. He goes on short rides with her (long rides are not conducive to keeping his reactions super sharp) and when the calendar allows, he is roadside handing Cromwell water bottles and food bags.

“Having community or family in Europe, or wherever you are based, is the key to having longevity in the sport,” Cromwell says.

“I went through periods I was just there by myself. I didn’t have a partner, but just friends to rely on in the tough times. But obviously having someone like Valtteri now, he is in an equally, if not more high pressure sport, so he understands what it takes to be at the top and how important it is to have people who support what you are doing.

“There’s a good balance because with professional athletes it is tricky to find that balance because you both have to be quite selfish to achieve what you want. But you know I think we are fortunate in that we enjoy travelling with each other, we make it work … I come to his races and my team is also supper supportive with him coming to my races, it has been a big part of finding my own self again. By just having that home life I feel comfortable.”

That includes spending a chunk of the year in northern Finland where the snow and subzero temperatures see Cromwell training with the Zwift indoor training system to keep her motivation fresh. The virtual training app company has been linked to her team from the earliest days and so she was an early convert, but it has really helped her winter training.

“The last two winters I have been in Finland and Zwift has been super useful. I often find I meant to do an easy ride and then suddenly my friend is on or others, and you get people in your face and I’m like, ‘I’m going to go for it’. Even in your head, there are these different elements that are in your face to drive you that bit more, to find that competitive edge.

“My coach structures sessions and it’s a very controlled environment. You can be just 100 per cent focused on the power and the effort and not worry about if you are going to have a downhill or a stop sign. It is just one of the elements I am using in my training.”

Unfortunately, as Cromwell is immersed into a month of gravel races, the competition is enmeshed in tragedy. A love triangle among gravel competitors resulted in the shooting death of one rider, Moriah Wilson on May 11, in Austin, Texas. Wilson and another woman, Kaitlin Marie Armstrong, had both been in relationships with 35-year-old professional cyclist Colin Strickland. Armstrong is now on the run and wanted for murder.

Speaking before the tragedy, Cromwell says the relaxed atmosphere in her sport enables her to switch off from the hard classics and race in extra long and extra tough events. And being able to switch off from distractions is key.

Cromwell admits that being one of the female pioneers of the road cycling world just as the circuit was becoming professional has been challenging.

Now there is maternity pay, a minimum wage that sustains a living, many races that align with the mens events and more exposure on television.

The Australian women’s program has been quite up and down too.

“In my early contracts I made 10,000 euros a year … the reality is you can’t survive on that. But that’s just how the sport was back then,’’ she says.