This Sunday Evie Richards will compete for a gold medal at the Olympics, a prize she tells me has been in her dreams her entire life. She’s modest about her talents – “I’m no Tom Pidcock,” she tells me – but as one of the most talented riders in a generation, a former World Champion, and with World Cup win as recently as April, Evie could very well win in Paris this weekend.

There is one major headache though, the Team GB rider suffered a bad concussion at the World Cup in Brazil, and only jumped back on the bike six weeks ago. Can you compress six months of training into just six weeks? I’m expecting to find a slightly deflated Evie on the other end of our Zoom chat. Where are you now, I ask?

Evie at home in Malvern, Worcestershire, where the dream started to race in the Olympics

“I’m in a house in France with some under 23 riders. And for me thast’s perfect because I’ve trained really hard and I’m really happy and it’s really simple,” she says. So much for lethargy.

“Obviously I want to win a medal more than anything at the Paris Olympics, it’s what I’ve dreamt about,” Evie says. Her training has been what sounds like a mountain bikers paradise, until you dig into the details at least. She stayed on in Morzine after the Les Gets World Cup, principally to avoid travelling too much but also to get some laps in. Incidentally, here’s how to watch the Paris Olympics mountain biking this weekend.

“It’s funny, I’m doing all the downhill trails and all the riders see you, they’re on their downhill bikes and full face helmets and I turn up in little shorts and a vest at the top of the trail,” she says. “They must think ‘are you really going down here?!’ I’m on the uplifts all day to try and step up my confidence that I lost.

Evie won the Worlds at Val di Sole in 2021, and backed that up with multiple World Cup wins

“Loads of people say something to me on the uplifts, and we think it’s normal because that’s what we always do, we do think it’s weird. But for everyone else, they say it’s really impressive! But it’s just second nature for us, we don’t really think about it.”

Lapping the downhill runs doesn’t sound like work to me, or if it was work it’d be the kind of labour I’d dream about. I tell her this and she laughs, “that’s not all of it though,” Evie says. It’s been really hard work, I’ve been training through all the races, I’ve just done everything to try and get ready.

I’m getting strength back, fitness back and also my confidence back descending

I’ve got one more really hard session tomorrow and then hopefully things look bit easier after that. I’m getting strength back, fitness back and also my confidence back descending.”

It turns out that riding black graded descents on skinny tyres and a bike with 100mm travel is just a warmup, or more accurately brain training to handle the technical requirements of a modern XC course. The real fitness work happens on a road bike, straight after the uplifting. 

“I’m doing some pretty hard CO2 workouts and the TSS(training stress score) from these workouts are pretty pretty high, she says. “I still need to just be really pushing until until the last minute. I stepped up my fitness the week before the World Cup with dedicated fitness blocks on the road. Then it’s been riding more features on the mountain bike, and now I need to step up my fitness and my technical training.”

Evie overcooked one of the jumps at Araza in Brazil, missed the landing and crumpled into the takeoff of the next

Concussion in Brazil

“The final jump, I went in far to hot. Luckily no serious damage just battered and bruised. We go again tomorrow.” Evie posted this message just after the Araxá short track race in Brazil, despite being more than “just battered and bruised.”

“I went so fast into that jump and didn’t push at all because I was so tired and just landed into the take off of the next jump,” she tells me. “I crumpled under it and landed on my head. I was up straight away, I’m always up faster than I go down! I got up really quick, and I’ve even won races where I’ve crashed, got up quickly and finished.”

I just ignored everything – the sickness, the confusion, in my stubborn ways

“All I could think about was Olympic selection. I didn’t want to show any sign of weakness to anyone. When I crashed I never thought about missing the next day, it didn’t even come into my mind. I figured I’d go to the hospital when I got home and get checked out then.”

She raced the next day, after taking ninth in the short track, but things didn’t feel right warming up on the rollers. “In the race I had to concentrate so hard on everything because my brain just couldn’t process anything, all the descents I’d normally make up time I just couldn’t gauge anything,” she says.

“Back home I was stupid again, I thought it was just jetlag, I wanted to do hard training blocks. All the symptoms, I just ignored everything – the sickness, the confusion, in my stubborn ways.

“I did that for over a week where I just kept trying to get through and it just got to the stage where I went on a ride and I couldn’t cross the road and I just started crying, then I struggled to get home.”

“I put myself under so much pressure because it came at just the worst time. I hadn’t got my slot for the Olympics yet, and Nové Město was one of the races I really wanted to win. I was like, ‘I don’t have time to take this break’ so I just kept trying to push through and just making it worse and worse.”

A pre-crash Evie relaxing at home

Back from the brink 

Letting your brain heal takes time, Evie tells me, she had six weeks off the bike, the longest she’s ever had without exercise.

“I would do it all so differently now if I had another concussion,” she says. “I didn’t appreciate how bad a concussion was. It got to the stage where it had to really scare me, after five weeks, and now I really understand how serious a concussion can be. I wouldn’t touch my bike now, I wouldn’t exercise. I felt frustrated with myself. 

“After you’ve got a concussion it’s almost too late to learn about all the symptoms, you need to know about it prior, and I was so uneducated. It was too late to learn when your brain’s not working properly. It’s the same when you get ill, as an athlete you try and push through it but it’s best to just have a rest.”

Evie says it was Team GB that looked after her in this period, linking her up with a neuroscientist and physios to help her recover in time for the Olympics. “We spoke every day for six weeks and they basically got me back up to where I am now.”

29th place in Val di Sole was a great comeback ride for Evie, and it got better from there with 5th in Crans Montana and 6th at Les Gets

Return to racing

Evie’s made pretty decent progress back up the ranks, since getting back the bike. She took 29th place at Val di Sole, then shot back to 5th in Crans Montana, arguably the hardest and most technical track on the XC World Cup circuit. 

The Olympic track is nowhere near as challenging as that stage in Switzerland, but there are plenty of drops and gaps and manmade features to overcome.

“It’s a good course, but building up to the drops and jumps – there are lots of those on the course – I’ve really had to push myself mentally to get over that fear,” she says. “It’s been really hard.. I’m excited to see what has changed in the last months. 

That gold medal moment

Can Evie Richards win gold in Paris then? I ask her what the chances are “I’m realistic,” she says. “I’m not superhuman and I’ve done everything possible in the last six weeks to get as strong as possible, but there’s only so much you can do so we’ll see.

“Riding at the heart of it is so simple,” she says. “Just ride and be happy. Ride with your friends, somewhere you love doing it.”