Back on track

After a year out, and parenthood, in 2013, Storey returned to action in 2014 without missing a beat in her march towards a seventh Paralympics.

The 2014 season brought four more para-cycling world titles while, on the road, she joined with husband Barney Storey to form the Pearl Izumi Sports Tours International women’s team which fielded strong domestic amateur teams over the next two years before being re-born as the professional Podium Ambition Pro Cycling in 2016.

Meanwhile, Storey won a third national track title at the British championships, in the points race in 2014, and attempted to break the UCI hour record at London’s Lee Valley VeloPark in February 2015. Storey covered a distance of 45.502 kilometres - just 563 metres short of the existing world record set 12 years earlier - but had the consolation of setting a new British record and new world record in the C5 Para-cycling class.

Despite commitments to her own road racing team, there was no drop-off in her success in the para-cycling ranks, with 2015 bringing four world titles and the 2016 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships seeing her win the individual pursuit. Not surprisingly, given her record at major events, Storey maintained that form at the Rio Paralympics where her three gold medals re-wrote the Paralympic record books.

She caught team-mate Crystal Lane in the final of the C5 individual pursuit to win a record 12th career gold medal and would win a 13th when she took the road time trial gold a week later. Finally, on the last day of 2016 Paralympic cycling competition, Storey won her 14th career Paralympic gold with a dominant performance in the C4-5 road race, crossing the line nearly three and a half minutes ahead of her closest rival.

Storey had time away from the bike following Rio - with her family expanding with the birth of her son Charlie in October 2017. A return to international duty was set for the 2018 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships in Rio - but Storey withdrew from competition in Brazil following an outbreak of yellow fever which would have posed a risk to her and her son.

The comeback was delayed - but Storey pulled on Great Britain Cycling Team colours once again for the 2018 UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships in Maniago, Italy.

It was a sensational return as Storey completed the time trial and road race double - taking world titles in both events for the sixth time in her career, a feat which she then replicated the following year in Emmen, Netherlands.

On the track, she has remained equally dominant, with the pursuit, scratch race and omnium victories she claimed in Milton in 2020 taking her career tally up to 38 world titles.

Despite the 2020 and 2021 seasons being disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, Storey did not have long to wait to push that total of to 40. At the 2021 UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships in Cascais, Portugal, she won the individual time trial and road race in her C5 category.

A frequent breaker of world records, Storey currently holds the fastest time in the C5 3,000m individual pursuit, riding 3:31.394 at the Rio Paralympics in 2016, the tenth time she had set a world record in that discipline.

The 45.502km she rode in setting a new world hour record for the C5 category in London in 2015 also still stands.

Not surprisingly, given her astonishing career, honours have flooded her way off the bike, also. In 2008 she was a nominee for the prestigious Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year with a Disability and, also, the 2012 BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. She was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Manchester in 2012.

Palmarès