Neah Evans: Track Cycling World Championships gold proves it’s never too late to shine

Just five years ago, Great Britain’s Neah Evans was working as a veterinary surgeon. The Scottish athlete comes from a sporting family including her mother Ros, who competed in cross-country skiing at the Winter Olympics Sarajevo 1984 and brother Donald, who won gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Rowing Championships. But while cycling was a passion, it wasn’t until 2017 that Evans left behind her day job to concentrate on the sport full-time.

“Ultimately it’s my choice,” she told Cycling Weekly in 2018, looking back on her decision to swap her career caring for animals for long hours of training in the cold Aberdeen winter. “I could have been in a vet's surgery nice and warm having a cup of tea saving some bunny rabbits.”

A rapid rise to the top of the world

Given the fact she had such a late start in the sport, it’s remarkable to see Evans begin to bloom on the world stage at age 32.

Last year, the then 31-year-old was selected for the Great Britain Olympic team for Tokyo 2020, where she won silver in the women’s team pursuit alongside bonafide Olympic greats Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald. The group finished two seconds shy of Germany who set a new world record of 4:07:307 in the process of winning gold.

A year later, Evans was once again standing on the podium at an international competition, as she secured silver for Scotland in the points race and bronze in the individual pursuit at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

“People look at your age and that’s the bottom line,” she said told Team GB while reflecting on her progress. “But it’s far more important to look at time in the sport and mine is a lot less than other people!”

However, the best was yet to come for Evans, who is currently coached by her partner Jonny Wale, a self-trained cyclist who has revamped her training programme.

On the final day of the Track Cycling World Championships in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines - the same venue where the Paris 2024 track cycling competition will be held - Evans scored her first-ever major individual title with victory in the points race.

The 60 points she accrued was seven more than second-placed Julie Leth of Denmark and included a come-from-behind victory that was only secured on the final lap.

“It was a little bit panicked,” she said after the race. "I just had to try and give it everything to get the lap, get back on, and get back onto the top which I managed to do, which was fantastic.

“It’s a pretty good title to win, it’s been won by a lot of fantastic bike riders so I’m delighted to get my name up there too.”

Next stop Paris 2024

While silver in your first-ever Olympics would be a dream come true for many, Evans still feels she can come away with even greater honours from Paris 2024.

“It was a dream come true to go to Tokyo and come away with a medal,” she said. “But I’m very competitive and there’s a big part of me that thinks we can do better.”

The World Championships, in which she secured the 10th medal of an impressive campaign for Team GB, were the next step on the journey to the next Olympic Games that take place in France in less than two years’ time.

And Evans is certain that the next two years will see improvements made, not just by herself but the rest of the British Olympic team who will fight for medals in the capital of France.

“It’s an exciting team but if you scratch the surface, I don’t think anyone’s in the place they’d ideally like to be,” she told Team GB days before her victory at the Worlds.

“Hopefully it [the World Championships] will act as a bit of a springboard to show us where we are, what we’ve gone and then boom, we’re straight into Paris.”