Tiffany Cromwell interview

I like going on adventures and exploring. I hate doing the same training rides over and over again. I’ll find roads and think, “I wonder where that goes,” and end up in some dead end or on a dirt road or goat track.

I like all sorts of music, but I’m not the biggest person for knowing song names. I like bands like U2, and the Daft Punk song of the summer last year was good: ‘Get Lucky’. As long as it has a good beat, I’m happy.

I fell into cycling. My whole family played basketball and my dad was a basketball coach. We lacked height, but played anyway. Cycling — wearing Lycra and travelling around the world — certainly wasn’t something I thought about originally. I was wearing baggy shorts and playing basketball, and barely travelled.

I actually hated cycling to begin with. I was tiny and I was one of the worst in my group. I couldn’t keep up; everyone else was so much stronger. I started on the road and in my first race [the state championships] I was third, and I thought, “I like this.”

Live life to the fullest. Live it like it’s your last day on Earth. I believe in living in the moment and having no regrets.

If I didn’t ride a bike I’d be a fashion designer, or something within a creative industry. I love the productions that they do for the fashion shows, so an artistic director or something. I’d also like to be a professional snowboarder!

I’d like to meet Coco Chanel. She was one of the people that really defined fashion. She was the one who created the little black dress, and created modernism within fashion and got women out of couture garments and into suits.

I’m not very good at rest days. My coach would tell you the same. On my programme it’s in bold, red, capital letters: REST DAY or ONE HOUR, because I’m notorious for doing more. I can’t sit still. I call it ‘active recovery’.

In Europe they don’t believe in the chai latte. I drink that in Australia, but in Europe I have a cioccolata calda, Italian hot chocolate, and in the summer a caffe crema, with a piadina with tomato and mozzarella.

I was banned from leading Orica-AIS [her former team] training rides. We had the first training camp in Adelaide, which is where I grew up and where I know the roads, so I took them on some sneaky steep climbs. After that, they didn’t trust me.