FROM PISTE TO PELOTON

In the penultimate in our series on top British female talent, national time trial champion Anna Henderson talks budget bikes, team dynamics and ski school with Owen Rogers

- Owen Rogers

Anyone watching the women’s elite road race at the Flanders World Championships last September might have been forgiven for thinking there was more than one Team GB rider wearing a Jumbo-Visma helmet.

After the British took control through Leuven and onto the Flanders circuit, the race exploded in attack after attack, most of them marked by a white jerseyed rider in one of those yellow and black helmets.

But despite its omnipresence there was only one GB rider wearing the distinctive lid. From the 100th kilometre onward Anna Henderson was rarely further back than 20th position. Indeed she covered 14 attacks for her leader, Lizzie Deignan, before making her own move off the front too.

Though she eventually finished 25th, 11 places and 48 seconds behind Deignan, she was arguably the strongest Brit in the race, maybe even the strongest woman overall. Despite that, there is no hint that she feels she should have been going for the win.

“Unfortunately, I couldn’t follow the last attacks to help Lizzie in the final,” she tells us from a pre-season Majorca training camp. “Surprisingly I had really good legs, I didn’t feel very good at the start of the race and I told Lizzie and she told me to hang in and keep going. I really enjoyed it, the atmosphere was amazing and it was the best British performance anybody’s seen in years,” she says, referring to the whole team.

“It was a long and tiring season for everybody, and I was just trying to keep right for the Nationals and Worlds. You spend the whole of September and October surprised if you have any form.”