'It's mostly my feet that suffer' - Gillespie on surviving intense Giro d'Italia heat

LARA GILLESPIE DID everything she could to prepare for the heat.

The Irish rider spent weeks completing heat-training sessions in a sweatsuit and under a heat lamp before heading to the Giro d’Italia Women.

It still wasn’t enough. “The heat is definitely something that I was battling and fighting for my life with,” said the Irish cycling star.

By the time Gillespie escaped the sweltering conditions, she had also made history. The 25-year-old became the first Irish woman to start and finish all three Grand Tours.

It’s another milestone for Ireland’s first female track world champion, though the achievement only came to her attention when she spotted it on social media days later.

“I thought Mia (Griffin) was the first, but I guess she was the first to start all three (in a calendar year) and then I was the first to finish all three,” she said.

“So yeah, that’s really cool, and I hope there are many more girls to come and follow along. It’s definitely possible.”

The record came at the end of a demanding Giro in which Gillespie was in the mix for the points classification and even came close to wearing the pink jersey as GC leader.

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A sprinter by trade, she finished fourth overall in the battle for the maglia rossa after nine stages.

After crossing the line third on stage one, Gillespie was promoted to second when original winner Lorena Wiebes was disqualified because her bike failed to meet the UCI’s minimum weight regulations.

The result left her within touching distance of the leader’s jersey. “That was a little bit interesting and a bit sad,” Gillespie recalled.

“We only found out when we were on the way home. It was just a bit of a shock because it rarely happens in cycling that someone gets fully eliminated from a whole stage race.

“I got a little bit boxed in during the last 200 metres and if I had done one thing differently then I could have been in the leader’s jersey for a day or two.”

However, the intense heat was a constant problem. “My Italian teammates didn’t find it hot at all, but I’m just quite sensitive to it,” she explained. “It’s mostly my feet that suffer. They’re burning off of me, and it’s all I can think about.

She dealt with the conditions as best as she could. “My coach was like, ‘We did so much heat training. Why are you still suffering?’ He’s Italian. I was like, ‘Yeah, but I’m still Irish at the end of the day.’”

The second stage offered a stark illustration of the toll the conditions were taking. Somehow, she finished second in the sprint to the line.

“I could feel at the end that my heart rate was about 210 and it took a while to come down, which would be quite unusual. I think it was more my heart feeling the heat,” Gillespie admitted.

As the race developed, Gillespie’s role shifted within UAE Team ADQ to supporting the team’s overall ambitions and it was about surviving the mountain stages, though she felt stronger than ever on those days.

She left the Giro encouraged by the experience. “I learned a lot,” she said. “Unfortunately we didn’t get the GC win, but the whole team really fought for it until the end.”

Gillespie has settled into life in Kaiserslautern with her boyfriend, German track cyclist Luca Spiegel. She describes it as her “dream lifestyle”.

“It’s really amazing because I think this lifestyle is very hard to understand if you’re on the outside of it,” she says. “Having that understanding and that extra support definitely makes a huge difference for me.”

Home for a short spell, Gillespie will compete at the national championships later this month before targeting the Tour of Britain.

“They’re not home roads, but they’re almost like it in a way, with the short rolling climbs and maybe a bit of bad weather. I think that will be really cool,” she said.

“I think that will suit me a bit better than the 40-degree Italian heat.”

After that comes October’s Track World Championships, where she hopes to defend the rainbow jersey she won last year. “I would love to defend my title there,” she says.

“Obviously that’s a big feat, but the plan is just to go there in really good form.”