Ep 170: Rachel Neylan

Summary: <p class="m_7221685156413382700gmail-p1">Rachel Neylan is a Professional Cyclist who’s a part of the Orica-Scott team, she’s an Olympian, a silver medalist at the World Championships and a very driven and fascinating human being. </p> <p class="m_7221685156413382700gmail-p2">Rachel Came to my house just before Christmas after reaching out to say she listened to the podcast on Twitter. </p> <p class="m_7221685156413382700gmail-p1">She’d even post #podsie photos of her training rides when she was in Rio in the lead up to last year’s Olympics. </p> <p class="m_7221685156413382700gmail-p2">So she came around to my house and we had a chat - a chat that was so engaging, that I didn’t end up talking to her about the biggest thing to happen in the previous year, going to Rio. </p> <p class="m_7221685156413382700gmail-p2">Occasionally as an interviewer I get so caught up in the conversation that the ground we are covering is so engaging that it’s sometimes as good a story as the thing that they’re really known for. </p> <p class="m_7221685156413382700gmail-p2">I texted Rachel afterwards to apologize and she responded that it was in fact a relief to not have to talk about Rio again. </p> <p class="m_7221685156413382700gmail-p2">Reason being it was a quite emotional journey that she’d covered many times - which involves talking about the death of her Father at the start of 2016. </p> <p class="m_7221685156413382700gmail-p2">For whatever reason, we didn’t go there but when the chat was over I didn’t feel I’d missed out on getting an authentic connection with Rachel at all. </p> <p class="m_7221685156413382700gmail-p2">If you’d like to know in greater detail about Rachel’s path to the Olympics there’s a great <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/topics/zela/article/2016/04/15/overcoming-cyclist-rachel-neylan-and-her-hard-road-rio" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">SBS article which you can read</a>.</p> <p class="m_7221685156413382700gmail-p2">So come to our humble apartment in Bronte, the first time I’ve had an Olympian in this house, I still get a thrill meeting athletes of that calibre. </p> <p class="m_7221685156413382700gmail-p2">This is a cup of tea at my kitchen table with Rachel Neylan.</p>