Elinor Barker: 'He's a well-travelled toddler' - world champion on Olympic prep with a two-year-old
Training for an Olympics is hard enough at the best of times, but throw in a two-year-old and seven-time world champion Elinor Barker has got her work cut out.
"He's an incredibly well-travelled toddler," she told BBC Sport Wales. "When he gets in the car, he doesn't know if we're going to Tesco or Belgium."
That is where Barker is training this week, but the travelling with her son Nico does not end there.
"In the last six months he's been to five different countries I think," she continued. "He spent a month with us in Australia while I tried to qualify for Paris [Olympics].
"Having that freedom and being with a team [Uno-X Mobility] that thinks outside the box is really what makes it possible."
The 29-year-old from Cardiff has been to the past two Olympics.
The first, as a 21-year-old at Rio 2016, brought her gold in the women's team pursuit.
The second, at the delayed Tokyo Games in 2021, was a very different experience.
Again riding in the women's team pursuit, Barker helped the team reach the final, but was dropped for the gold medal race.
The Great Britain quartet finished more than six seconds behind Germany to leave with silver.
Barker still got a medal for her ride in the earlier round, but had to watch from the sidelines as her team-mates Laura Kenny, Katie Archibald, Josie Knight and Neah Evans received theirs on the podium.
The secret behind the smile
With no bad feelings towards her team, she later posed happily with her own medal round her neck.
But behind her smile was a secret. In her pocket was a positive pregnancy test.
"Unfortunately I wasn't put in the final, which sucks, but it has to happen to somebody," she said.
"I was handed my medal afterwards alone, which was a very underwhelming experience.
"But I was also very lucky that two or three hours later I took a pregnancy test and found I was pregnant with my first child.
"So I didn't really have a huge amount of time to sit and reflect on getting my medal in that way. I actually just had a huge amount of planning to do and it was all about looking to the future."
That future was uncertain. More and more female athletes are having children and returning to the top of their sports, but Barker still admits she did not know how people would respond.
In reality she was shown a lot of support - not least from her team, Uno-X Mobility - who last year gave her a four-year contract to 2027.
After Nico was born in March 2022, Barker's first training sessions would be on the turbo trainer - rocking Nico's cradle alongside her as she rode.
For her strength and conditioning, she would use him as a weight.
Within months, she was competing again and represented Wales at the 2022 Commonwealth Games that summer.
But it was last year when Barker really announced her return to the top. She won two gold medals at the World Championships in Glasgow, taking her overall tally of world titles to seven.
Perhaps even more sweetly, one was in the women's team pursuit alongside her younger sister Meg.
"It's been a hugely challenging couple of years," she admitted, "which I think is the case for anyone who's a parent. There's not really an easy way to do it.
"But I do feel really, really proud of the World Championships last year. When I was pregnant I didn't think I would make them. I thought it would be too soon.
"So to go and win two gold medals was amazing."
It has fuelled the fire for more success in Paris this summer, although Barker says that desire never went away. The advantage of having Nico alongside her is the perspective it brings her.
"When it's hard, it feels impossible, but when it's good, it's amazing," she said.
"You get the best of both worlds. I get to fit my exercise and social life into one neat four-hour block, which not many parents get to do. Then I get to come home and spend the rest of the day with my little boy. He's changing so much - it's such a special time.
"He provides that distraction. He reminds me that actually everything that's really important is right there at home with me."
Nico may not know where they are going when they get in the car, but his mother hopes the destination will be Paris come July.
