What's next for retired cycling great after golden year

Imagine you're an international award winner at the peak of your profession, enjoying an all-time year of success that draws universal acclaim. Then you walk away from it all, pack up your overseas base where you have achieved your greatness and head home. You'd have some idea of the potent mixed emotions for Australian cycling great Grace Brown. In June, the 32-year-old stunned the sport when she announced this season would be her last. But there had been clues - Brown was a latecomer to the sport and would regularly have mid-season breaks so she could return to Melbourne, her home base. Brown talks often about the pull of family, friends and home. What happened after her announcement made it all the more remarkable. The following month, she won Australia's first gold medal at the Paris Olympics while taking out her speciality event, the road time trial. "Grace inspired the nation," Cadel Evans said. A few weeks later, Brown achieved a cherished dream when she won her first world title in the same discipline. She was also in the Australian team that took out the mixed relay at the worlds for the first time. Brown even won her retirement race, last month's Chrono des Nations time trial. Combine those triumphs with her win in April at the Liege-Bastogne-Liege classic, and Brown's 2024 is right up there in Australian cycling history. Before retirement, Brown also put her name up for a board role at The Cyclists' Alliance, a professional union founded seven years ago that has made massive progress for women in professional road cycling. Her offer escalated quickly and Brown is now succeeding co-founder Iris Slappendel as the TCA's executive director. "I've been looking for an opportunity to somehow stay connected in a meaningful way with the sport, that's not racing and not being a staff member on a team. That would require me to be in Europe as well," Brown said. "I saw that and thought that's actually a really perfect thing for me, right now. "(Then it became) 'We think you'd be perfect for the president's role ... that was that." Brown is acutely aware of the importance of her new role and the massive challenges that still face women's road cycling. The death of Swiss junior Muriel Furrer in a crash at this year's world road titles - and the stunning lack of any video footage, or witnesses - underlines the ongoing issue of rider safety. "It (safety) has become a different beast in recent years and (we're) really trying to come up with some proper solutions, how we can improve that, give riders more power over what is appropriate," Brown said. "That's always going to be a big focus."