Cycling great dodges potholes in life after sport It’s been a daunting process for Rushlee Buchanan, making a new career after retiring from professional cycling. She’s now discovered a love of coaching, which has its own challenges, she tells Suzanne McFadden.
She’s a three-time Olympian, and four-time world championship medallist, who claimed silver on the cycling track at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
So why has Rushlee Buchanan been suffering from imposter syndrome?
One of New Zealand’s most celebrated track and road cyclists when she retired after the Tokyo Olympics, Buchanan admits she’s struggled with the transition from two decades as a professional athlete to a nine-to-five working life.
She left cycling “wanting nothing to do with coaching”, and needing a break from the sport that had consumed her for so long.
When her husband, American Olympic cyclist Adrian Hegyvary, would come home each day from his new job, coaching the New Zealand men’s endurance track team, Buchanan wouldn’t want to talk shop. It was all too hard.
