Still, cycling wasn’t her childhood dream, although she did have a poster of Mark Cavendish above her bed. Initially, she wanted to be a doctor but settled for physical therapy, which is what she continues to do alongside her cycling. Cycling can be fickle, with one bad injury or one crash being enough to end a person’s career, it’s a practical move from Majo to have this backup plan.
It is, however, a plan she hopefully won’t need to rely on fully for a good while yet. She agrees that the best athletes are selfish – their entire lives have to be tailored to their goals. This tunnel vision can seriously affect athletes’ mental health, particularly if their results aren’t what they hoped for.
“You have to decide for yourself, what makes me feel happy in life? Is that fully 100% being a pro cyclist, or do I get happy doing other things? And I think that’s why mental health is such a big deal in sports because people get so focused on the sports part and get so selfish that they forget about other things that make them happy. And then when the cycling is not going well, their whole life is just not fun anymore.”