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Becky James named as Sunday Times and Sky Sports Young Sports Woman of the Year

Double world champ is Team GB's new queen of the track...

Track cyclist Becky James, 22 was last night named as the Sunday Times and Sky Sports Young Sports Woman of the Year for her achievements in 2013.

James missed out on riding at the Olympic Games in 2012, but refocussed her training to target the world championships in Minsk at the beginning of this year. She won world titles in the keirin and sprint and bronze medals in the 500m time trial and team sprint to become the first British rider to win four medals at a single worlds.

She is currently in Mexico ahead of the second round of the UCI Track World Cup so was unable to collect the award in person, but said she was honoured to be reecognised.

She said: “It’s just incredible to receive the award and it rounds off the best year of my career so far and I’m proud to see the long, hard hours of training have paid off.

“There’s so many people that I owe thanks to, but in particular I’d like to thank my coaches and all the support staff at British Cycling who have helped me over the years, and also my family and friends for their constant support. I’m looking forward to building on what I’ve achieved so far, and hopefully 2014 will be another great year.”

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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allez neg | 10 years ago
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She's kinda got absolutely everything going for her hasn't she? Chapeau

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