"I divide my time between road racing and mountain biking mainly because there really are no women's road racing teams There's a lot more equity in mountain biking and that attracted me. That applies to sponsorships, media coverage, the prize money for the top three placings-it's identical for women and men in World Cup events. There are a lot more things that encourage women to get into mountain biking than into road racing.

Role models are difficult to find, especially for riders in Canada. It's funny because Canada has always had really strong cyclists. Year after year we're ranked high in the world, even though we don't have the resources of other countries, and often paid our own way to go to Europe to compete. Once you got on the national team, there were always really good riders to look up to; until then, you don't know about these people because the media doesn't cover the sport that much. Tanya (Dubnicoff) is a world champion and hardly anyone knows about her. I was fortunate to make the national team right away and get involved with women who were interested in not just going to the big races, but going to win. That was inspirational."