By Ed Clancy
Where it all began
My relationship with cycling didn’t start with medals or power numbers. It started with hand-me-down bikes from my big brother, scraped knees, and my mum taking us out at weekends, not to train or achieve anything, simply to get outside and explore the great outdoors in South Yorkshire. I never set out to be anyone or do anything in particular. The bike was just fun, freedom. a way to explore. A way of feeling independent long before I had any way of articulating what that meant.
That sense of freedom carried me a long way. I didn’t have much academic ambition, and I happily left that behind. At 18, I left Yorkshire with pretty much nothing but a bike and stepped into the Great Britain Cycling Academy. From there, everything else followed: travelling the world, racing in settings I’d never imagined seeing, and eventually standing on Olympic podiums. From the outside, it probably looked like the dream, and in many ways it was. But elite sport has a strange way of turning simple things into complicated ones.
When cycling became a career
For most of my adult life, cycling was a business. I wanted to be successful, and everything reflected that. Every pedal stroke was monitored, every watt analysed, every training session reduced to numbers on a screen. Marginal gains ruled everything. The feeling of riding was replaced by science. Medals and accolades came, but they never really landed the way I expected. Over time, they felt more like markers of races finished than sources of satisfaction. Success did change my life; just not in the way I thought it might.
The shock of retirement
Retirement didn’t feel like relief. It felt like freefall.
For twenty years, cycling gave me structure, purpose, clarity and meaning. It also gave me friendships, belonging and routine. Those were the real wins, not the medals in hindsight. There was always a plan, a goal, a next race, something on the horizon. When that disappeared, so did the framework that had held my life together. I went from being measured every day to suddenly having no one checking whether I’d ridden at all. That silence is louder than people realise. I’d had this romantic idea that I’d reconnect with old friends and family, but in reality almost all of them had moved on, physically or metaphorically.
Searching for what next
I tried to fill the gap. From the outside, it probably looked like I was doing fine. I was doing public speaking, working with performance consultancy companies, coaching within British Cycling and British Triathlon, and spending time in innovation and research roles.
But in those first eighteen months, nothing really stuck. For all the activity, I felt like a leaf blowing around in the wind: busy but without the cohesion or meaning that comes from committing fully to something I truly believed in. Losing sport isn’t just losing a job; it’s losing an identity, a language and a way of understanding your whole world.
Rediscovering the joy of riding
What surprised me most was that cycling slowly gave itself back to me, but only once I let go of performance. Riding without targets, without power meters, without purpose beyond the ride itself. Quiet trails. Electric mountain bikes. Commuter bikes. Just being alone, taking a breath. Flying through the woods on a mountain bike felt like being a kid again, and that joy was real.
Then came a phone call from the Mayor of South Yorkshire, asking if I’d like to become Active Lives Commissioner. It was a chance to go back home and try to bring that same sense of fun, freedom and exploration to others growing up where I did. That call was the single most important moment in my transition into retirement.
Redefining success
Working as Active Lives Commissioner gave me back what I’d lost: meaning, cohesion, purpose and friendship. It also led to other opportunities. I’m now working within the new British Cycling Foundation, which aims to remove barriers so more children and families can experience the freedom that a bike once gave me and continues to give me.
Alongside that, I’m incredibly proud to act as a brand ambassador for CAMS, supporting work that enables more people to experience the joys of cycling.
That’s where meaning lives for me now. Not in medals or records, but in impact: helping people find confidence, independence, or simply a bit of joy through movement and the great outdoors. The bike is no longer a tool for winning. It’s a way to give something back.
Life after pro cycling wasn’t a neat next chapter. It was, and still is, messy, uncertain and unfolding. But I’ve learned that success isn’t about what you’ve already achieved. It’s about finding a purposeful struggle and making the most of what you’ve been given. And perhaps our most enduring measure of success isn’t medals or accolades at all, but the positive contribution we make to society. That’s where I find my meaning now.
