Anna Shackley retiring with cardiac issues

[pjclinch]

Boo, this is rotten, https://www.cyclingweekly.com/racing/pr ... om-cycling

[kylecycler]

It's an awful shame. It was quite a story - SD Worx, even though it's the most successful team in women's pro cycling, was Anna's first ever (and now, sadly, only) pro team. Danny Stam, the team's manager, signed her purely on her power to weight figures without ever even having seen her race. I think it was kind of an experiment - instead of just buying up talent, as SDW tend to do (much to everyone's frustration - just when a rider looks as if they'll challenge SDW, next thing you know they've signed her), it seems he wanted to take a raw talent and develop it, however long that took and Anna was nearly there - she was ready to win this year.

Don't know what she'll do now; she said in her Instagram post that she doesn't know herself, but she's a resilient, positive wee soul and I expect she'll find a way. Her pals at SD Worx might help, advise and encourage her to come up with something. She's surely too young and inexperienced to be a DS (Dani Christmas, who co-commentates on the women's races on Eurosport, is now also a DS at Canyon//SRAM, but that's obviously after years of racing, almost the polar opposite of Anna), but she'll have learned a lot in her time there. It was certainly an adventure.

(This doesn't seem so funny now but one of the funniest things I heard last year was when Anna Shackley was racing in the Mixed Relay at the Glasgow Worlds. Rob Hatch, the Eurosport commentator, whose pronunciations of 'foreign' names and places is usually immaculate - he works hard and takes a real pride in it - pronounced Milngavie, where Anna is from, the way it's spelled except in a broad Scots accent! He was being serious, he just didn't know (it's 'Milguy', for anyone else who doesn't know) - Anna would have been laughing her socks off if she'd heard it! It wasn't so much that he got it wrong, it was the Scots accent, same as he pronounces Italian names like 'Gan-na' in an Italian accent, and so on. To be fair, though, at least he tries - some of the rest are clueless - although I don't think the French, Italian or Spanish commentators make any effort whatsoever - they just pronounce everything in French, Italian or Spanish.)

[Audax67]

It'd make you cry. It's something you'd expect in ancients like me, but to have it hitting someone so young is heartbreaking. Not that I'm a doc, but there's nothing I can think of in the way of treatment that wouldn't clobber her performance. I hope she can still cycle, even if not race. I don't think I'd live long if I couldn't get out on the road.

[pjclinch]

It'd make you cry. It's something you'd expect in ancients like me, but to have it hitting someone so young is heartbreaking. Not that I'm a doc, but there's nothing I can think of in the way of treatment that wouldn't clobber her performance. I hope she can still cycle, even if not race. I don't think I'd live long if I couldn't get out on the road.

My impression is it's being an elite athlete that's the issue, rather than riding a bike at all (but I'm not 100% sure).