One of the hardest things in elite sport is knowing when to quit. For athletes who strive to go faster, jump higher, break records and win more, quitting is an unnatural thought. The extraordinary level of determination required to reach the upper echelons of any sporting discipline makes choosing when to pull the pin an agonising decision.
All of which underscores how remarkable Grace Brown’s golden and in some ways premature swansong has been this year. The 32-year-old Australian announced in June that she would retire at the end of the season, despite being in career-best form.
Having come to cycling late – it was only in 2015 that the former runner “bit the bullet and bought a bike” – Brown already had an established life in Australia when she began competing on the European circuit. That made the long stints away from home extremely taxing; for most riders, the predominantly European World Tour season begins in February or March and concludes in September.
“I know that I could have many more years in cycling,” Brown said in June in a video announcement. “But I really miss my life in Australia with my husband, my family and my friends and it is something that is harder and harder to leave.”
Brown wanted to go out on top. Having picked up the bike less than a decade ago, she made a rapid rise through the sport. She won her first domestic tour in 2018, and was soon racing professionally. It was in the gruelling race against the clock that Brown made her name – winning the individual time trial national title in 2019 and finishing fourth in the discipline at the Tokyo Olympics two years later.
Since then, Brown has rarely been off the podium in any time trial. At the 2022 road world championships in Wollongong, the home favourite won the silver medal. It was second again a year later.
But entering what would become her final season Brown had, aside from a Commonwealth Games gold medal in 2022, continuously fallen just short of the top step of the podium. If the Australian was going to call time on her career, she wanted to go one better.
In April, in an ominous sign of early season form, Brown became the first Australian woman to win one of cycling’s “Monuments” – the five pinnacle one-day races – with victory at Liège–Bastogne–Liège. And then it was all eyes on the 60-odd kilometres that would define her legacy; 32.4km around the streets of Paris at the Olympics, and 29.9km in Zurich for the world championships.
In less than an hour and a half – 39.38 minutes in Paris and 39.16 in Zurich – Brown emphatically demonstrated that she is the best woman against the clock. At the Olympics, in slick conditions, she won Australia’s first gold of the Games. While others slid around the treacherous road, the FDJ–Suez rider was composed and consistent – her victory was never in doubt as she bettered second-placed Anna Henderson by over 90 seconds.
At the world championships in Switzerland on Sunday, it was a tighter affair. Following an initial biting climb and then a fast descent, Dutchwoman Demi Vollering held a slight advantage midway through the race. But for the latter, flatter half of the course, Brown was in her element – regaining the lead and ultimately winning the rainbow stripes by 16 seconds.
It was yet more history for Brown. Gold in Paris made her only the third Australian to win an Olympic title on the road, after Kathy Watt’s legendary road race win at Barcelona 1992 and Sara Carrigan’s glory in Athens. Following Sunday’s effort, Brown is now the first Australian woman to win the time trial world title. She is also the first cyclist to win Olympic and world championship time trials in the same year – joined later on Sunday by Remco Evenepoel, who completed the historic double in the men’s time trial.
And with that, Brown’s career comes to a close. Barring an even more exceptional victory in the road race later this week, Sunday’s win will be the last time Brown stands on the podium. In less than a decade, the Victorian has gone from not owning a bike to racing on the world stage in a shiny golden one – custom-designed for her by bike manufacturer Lapierre after the Olympics.
With gold in Paris and rainbows in Zurich less than two months apart, Brown bows out in a blaze of glory. Some cycling commentators have suggested she should reconsider her decision to retire, but that seems unlikely. What better way to go out?
Speaking to the Guardian ahead of the Olympics, before she had publicly announced her impending retirement, Brown reflected on the difficulties of spending most of her year half a world away from family and her husband. “I’ve had to make that sacrifice this year,” she said at the time. “It’s hard. But when you make sacrifices, it makes you even more determined to make it worthwhile.” A historic end to a shining career on Sunday no doubt made those sacrifices worthwhile.
