\u201cIt\u2019s a standard procedure for skateboarders, ligament reconstruction surgery,\u201d Millard explains to Cycling Weekly. An ankle break <\/a>doesn\u2019t usually spell the end of a skateboarding career, she says, but for Millard, time away from the board had unearthed a new desire.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n It had been a quiet voice that had been gnawing away at the 27-year-old. As she focused her rehab in the gym<\/a> and on the bike, the voice got louder. It was the first time in a long time that she\u2019d allowed herself to try other sports.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a turning point for me in my career,\u201d Millard says. \u201cI had my eyes opened to this whole new world.\u201d<\/p>\n And she refocussed to gravel cycling<\/a>, with the intention of setting out on multi-day off-road adventures.<\/p>\n \u201cI never went bike packing <\/a>in the end because as soon as I bought the bike I became obsessed with riding for riding\u2019s sake,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Within a year of riding, Millard had turned up to race 111km offroad at UCI Gralloch,<\/a> kitted out in crop top and baggy shorts, with chalk bags hanging off her handlebars and a numberplate tied on askew.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the start line the commentator was calling out names of Olympians, and I was just like what the hell am I doing here!\u201d Millard laughs. \u201cBut I loved it so much; I just thought ok I\u2019m just going to race and enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n By the end of the following summer, Millard had completed her first set of races, and by the next, her first complete season. She finished fifth in the Gravel World Championships<\/a> in 2025 and came third in Nationals, alongside her future Ribble Outliers<\/a> teammates, Sophie Wright<\/a> in second, and Abi Smith<\/a> in first.<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n \u201cUnbeknownst to us, we would become teammates,\u201d she grins, genuinely passionate about the sport that has gripped her life. \u201cThat\u2019s a main goal of mine – that the three of us can share a podium again.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Josie Millard with her Ribble Outliers teammates, Abi Smith, Ben Thomas, Harry Tanfield, Jenson Young, Metheven Bond and Sophie Wright.<\/p>\n (Image credit: Ribble Outliers)<\/p>\n Millard tells me that her ability to change sports and excel completely at them is a fact of her athletic upbringing. Maybe she\u2019s right, but her steely determination – and total belief in her own capabilities – was honed in the skatepark, too.<\/p>\n \u201cIn skating you fall again and again and again and again and it teaches you to persist, and to just sit in the pain,\u201d she explains. \u201cAnd I think that is just exactly the same on the bike. You have those hard training days <\/a>and you have to just go again and again and again. It\u2019s similar. Both require a mental fortitude.\u201d<\/p>\n Millard draws other similarities between the two sports that have shaped her career, chief amongst them a team spirit honed in hours on team buses,<\/a> in Nike vans, skateparks and competitions.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously it\u2019s a totally different sport and requires a totally different demand,\u201d she concedes, \u201cbut it\u2019s similar in that way. I do think that I\u2019m doing the same thing, just with a different\u2026I don\u2019t know\u2026vessel! I just dropped two wheels and here we are.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a video in one dusty corner of the internet of a young Millard exploring an abandoned industrial site with her dad. They shimmy under fences and drop down through blown-out windows and tip-toe up rickety stairs. This is maybe where she gets her adventurous spirit from, from the same man who would get up at the crack of dawn to drive his daughter to Belgium for races, only to drive back a day later.<\/p>\n Because Millard stresses that she wouldn\u2019t have been able to progress this fast through her sport if it not were external help, most especially from her coach, Paul Delani.<\/p>\n \u201cI literally came to him having never trained on a bicycle<\/a> in any capacity whatsoever and said I want to get to the World Championships and literally he’s done that and now I\u2019ve signed with a professional gravel team and I\u2019m doing it full time,\u201d Millard says, as close to disbelief as I see the self-assured Brit allow herself to be.<\/p>\n Back in the clip of Millard kicking up dust at the abandoned industrial site, she says that she\u2019d like a life of many careers. I ask her if that\u2019s still true.<\/p>\n \u201cI have had many mini careers,\u201d she says. \u201cSkateboarding was my longest one, then it was carpentry and bespoke furniture making, […] and now it\u2019s the bike. This is what I want to do now, for as long as I can. I look at people like Tiffany Cromwell<\/a> and I think, ok that\u2019s me in 10\/15 years. And people like Marianne Vos<\/a>\u2026she gives me hope that I can have a long career.<\/p>\n “But I know that even after that, that something fun and exciting and new will take my attention. But for now I know it will be a long and happy time, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josie Millard\u2019s cycling career began with a broken ankle. She was, at this point, a professional skateboarder with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-443265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Josie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/BmtCRw7LRhMhDEwPqK9DVm.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n