Olympic AND world champion Brown won't change her mind: "For Europeans it's incomprehensible"

Grace Brown rode around on a gold bolide as a fresh Olympic time trial champion and added a rainbow jersey Sunday in Zurich, but it will not be shown in the pro peloton in 2025. That is because the 32-year-old Australian is retiring. After several years in the northern hemisphere, she wants to return to her home country. To IDLProCycling.com, she explains why. 

Brown is certainly not the first top Australian athlete to retire at the peak of her potential. Take tennis star Ashleigh Barty, who ended her age in 2022 at 25 after winning the Australian Open. After all, for an athlete from Oceania, there is simply much more involved in building a career in top-level sports.

Perhaps, in a way, it also gave the woman from FDJ-Suez the rest she needed this season. Knowing she would end her active cycling career in 2024, she recorded her most remarkable results. In the spring, she won Liège-Bastogne-Liège, then proved herself the best time trialist at the Paris Olympics and the World Championships in Zurich.

"I didn't know exactly what my energy level would be like after winning the Olympics," Brown revealed. "After the Games and the Tour, I gave myself space to turn the switch a bit and not worry too much about this World Championship. Once I started building up workouts again, I was surprised that I was still so strong. With that, I was also confident I could accomplish it here."

"I don't know if it made a mental difference that I knew I would quit. Maybe it gave me the state of mind I needed to go all-in," she says. "I've been asked a thousand times if I'd better not continue after all; in that respect, I've lost count. I would have liked to continue, but the reason I am stopping has nothing to do with my love for cycling. For the past six years, I have had to put my life in Australia on hold, and that love is stronger than my love for my sport," Brown said.

As a European, it may be hard to understand all that. "I also don't think that's possible, even for my opponents. I give up a lot. I have a partner, but he is mostly in Australia. I can't visit family between tours, so sometimes it's lonely. Even though I have great people around me in cycling and Europe, it's still different from your family. The culture is also completely different; the pressure falls off me there. I live in Melbourne and have all my family and friends around me."

So what lies ahead? "I want to be in Australia more, so I won't be joining a professional team. But maybe I can do some commentary or work for the Tour Down Under; those options are available. Right now, though, I'm still keeping all options open. I want to stay connected but not spend eight months a year in Europe anymore."