ERIN BOOTHMAN

The record-breaking teenager tells Tom Davidson about her triumphant final year competing as a junior

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The medals the teenager is wearing for her photoshoot this morning were prised out of a frame in her bedroom. She has three – “massive, thick frames” – one for her Junior Track World Championships golds, one for her Junior European Track Championships golds, and another for her 2023 European Youth Olympics silver. How many medals are in the first two? “Three in the Euros one, and four in the Worlds one,” she says. “When I wake up in the morning, they’re all there.”

This season, in her final year as a junior, Boothman’s medal collection ballooned in size. She doubled her tally of world titles, earned three new European track titles, plus three national titles, all the while stamping her name on three world records: the junior women’s team pursuit, individual pursuit and kilometre time trial. The Scot knew her form was good when she clean-swept seven out of seven events at a track meet in January. Everything after that, she says, was “eyeopening – I couldn’t be happier with how it has gone this year.”

Pedal to the medal

Our interview, held across leather armchairs in a side room of British Cycling’s HQ, has spared Boothman the morning’s rainy road ride. We start with her personal highlight from the year: a sunny May day in Belgium, when she won the junior Ghent-Wevelgem with her team Tofauti Everyone Active Majaco. The race came down to a two-up dash. “I knew I was the better of the sprinters,” she says – so much better, in fact, that she was able to start celebrating with more than 25m to go.