{"id":374563,"date":"2025-12-27T07:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T07:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/374563\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T07:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T07:05:08","slug":"philippa-york-on-the-ambition-that-led-her-to-the-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/374563\/","title":{"rendered":"Philippa York on the ambition that led her to the top"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nHer first competitive experience offered little indication of what was to come. \u201cI enjoyed the speed and the danger and the excitement,\u201d York said. \u201cI thought, this is quite good; I could see myself doing this. I often tell the story of how I came last in my first race and I was first in my last race, [the 1995 National Championships<\/a>]. In between, things happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those things included a steady and self-driven rise through the domestic ranks while working full-time as an engineering apprentice. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a question of, \u2018I want to be a pro rider\u2019, it was \u2018I\u2019m going to be a pro rider\u2019,\u201d York explained. \u201cI figured out that all I had to do was progress a couple of percent every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The turning point came ahead of the 1978 Commonwealth Games<\/a>. \u201cI decided that if I was going to be Commonwealth champion \u2013 because I saw no reason why I wouldn\u2019t be \u2013 I needed to do this full-time. So I packed in work with six months to go on my apprenticeship, much to the horror of my parents.\u201dGoing abroad to fight for her dreams<\/p>\n

After domestic success, York moved to France, riding for ACBB before turning professional with Peugeot-Michelin in 1980. But going abroad is never easy. \u201cI wasn\u2019t happy with getting a pasting in most races,\u201d she admitted. “It’s a bit of a shock to the system the way that races were run then. You would set off quite slowly, and then the last hour the race would kick into action. You’d go from 30kph to 60kph in about two minutes. And that would never stop. I found that quite difficult.”<\/p>\n

And persistence paid off. In 1983, York won her first Tour de France stage, followed in 1984 by fourth overall and victory in the mountains classification. \u201cI\u2019ve had to work at it. Climbing is my natural talent, but when you step into the pro world, everybody has natural talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further highlights included podium finishes in the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a, a Giro d\u2019Italia KOM jersey, and the overall victory at the 1985 Volta a Catalunya. That win carried special significance because of who her main rival was. \u201cSean Kelly was number one, and had been for a couple of years. So, it wasn\u2019t a given. I needed a result like that to reinforce that I wasn\u2019t there just by chance or through others\u2019 bad luck.\u201d<\/p>\n

During her racing years, York was known for her complicated relationship with the media. \u201cHe’s been scared of me because I had a wall up and didn\u2019t want him to waste any of my time,\u201d she said, recalling early interactions with journalist David Walsh, with whom she has written a book called the Escape<\/a>. “If he came to me with a question about Sean Kelly<\/a>, as I think he did once or twice, it would really annoy me. Don’t ask me how they feel, because I don’t know. Just piss off and leave me alone.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Her first competitive experience offered little indication of what was to come. \u201cI enjoyed the speed and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,16742,784,3479,202304,202303,85,2845],"class_list":["post-374563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-commonwealth-games","tag-cycling","tag-national-championships","tag-phillipa-york","tag-sean-kelly","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}