Eluned King is a British international cyclist who won bronze at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, and has since been studying at the University of Nottingham. Eluned is in her final year of studying BSc Economics & Econometrics, and will be taking to the track in the #GreenandGold for one of the final times at the 2026 BUCS Track Cycling Championships on the last weekend of February. Having won gold in 2024, We recently spoke with Eluned as she enters the final stretch of her studies to find out more about her journey within the sport, as well as her time in Nottingham, ahead of the 2026 Championships.
Hi Eluned - lovely to meet you! Firstly, how did you get into cycling?
I started fairly young - around 5 or 6 years old. There was a local outdoor velodrome close to where my mum grew up, so she kind of used it as childcare! I'm the third of four kids, so she could send us to a safe space to ride bikes and see family, and I kind of just fell into it by accident to be honest. I did every sport growing up and cycling was the one that kind of stuck.
Why do you think cycling stuck for you?
I did athletics, hockey and cycling to quite a high level, but then at the weekend on Sunday mornings, all of them fall at the same time, so I had to pick one. I specialised in cycling when I was around 16 or 17 just because I like being outdoors, I don't really like sitting in indoors twiddling my thumbs and stuff, so it was just the best way for me to kind of see the area I lived in. I live in South Wales, so it's really beautiful and cycling's great down there. I don't really know exactly why it stuck, but it just seemed to.
What is it about the sport that helped you to take it to the levels you have?
I was really lucky with the setup I had as a kid. For the few years that I was at the local club, it seemed to have loads of very strong girls, and I think just having that little community really made the sport a fun place to be. Then I've always been very competitive, and I think that cycling was the best outlet for that. But it was probably just the community of people that I was surrounded by and most of my closest friends come from the sport so it's really all I've ever known to be honest.
I think that I'm quite a driven person. Once I've got some goals - I like to do everything to get to that level. It's a mixture of being driven but also being a little bit stubborn. I always seem to view things by thinking - if someone else can do it, why can't I do it? I lean towards that rather than looking at it negatively. As a kid, I was always doing some kind of sports so I think if it wasn't cycling, I would have found that in a different sport as well.
Are you looking forward to the rest of the BUCS season?
It's mostly a spring and summer sport so I've done a little bit over the winter, but we're coming up to the main part of the season. Now that I'm in final year I'm really focussing on the BUCS season. It's a lot to handle if you do a full international season and then try to juggle university as well, so I'm really excited to be able to focus purely just on that aspect of it because in previous years I've had to pick and choose. In that respect I've enjoyed just having one key focus for the year.
Have you always had to pick and choose between balancing sport and university?
Yes, definitely. The course I do is pretty challenging and it can be very exam heavy around race season, I always have to make quite a few decisions on where and what I'm going to race. During my first year, I committed to the full European calendar, which was really difficult to juggle. I'd be going from lectures straight to East Midlands Airport, and then coming back on the Monday morning and going straight to lectures again so that was difficult and not really sustainable.
I've kind of, through the years, picked what my priorities were - academic wise and cycling wise - and I've definitely learnt by doing. In first year for example, I had a pretty significant crash about 24 hours before exams season started which then meant that I had to sit them in the summer instead. As a result in second year I stepped away from racing around the exam season for that reason.
Sorry to hear that. What happened, and did you find it knocked your confidence?
I did something to my hip and then I hit my head pretty badly and wasn't feeling too confident about doing an exam with a concussion! Luckily, I was just first year, but after that, it really made me re-evaluate that I have to prioritise different things. Last year, I had a bad crash in February, and the whole season was written off with an injury. So then picking yourself up mentally is difficult after something like that and being confident in your abilities again. It was a big lesson of trusting the process and getting used to being an athlete again after not being able to. Luckily, I worked a lot with the physios here at the university, and that was really ideal for me. It meant I could take my time to come back, and there wasn't too much of a rush to do it as well. However, it definitely taught me a lot about just looking after myself and being resilient.
What is next for you and your sport?
I finish out my year with BUCS, and then I'm actually stepping away from the sport indefinitely. I turned professional at 17 and raced professionally for 4 years before coming to the university and I'm just at that point in my life when I'm deciding on a career and deciding on what I want to do in the next few years and it just feels like the perfect time to make that decision. I chased that pro-lifestyle for quite a few years before coming to education, so it's felt like a nice transfer out of the sport. I'm excited to finish it off at BUCS this year with hopefully some good results representing the university - that would be a really nice way to finish.
What was it like making that decision and getting feedback from people around you?
I just had this overwhelming feeling that what I was doing now was no longer what I wanted to do in the future. To be honest, I've never really understood when people step away from a sport, but over the last few months there have been the normal motivation dips, and then you can't pick yourself up as easily. It comes to the point where you're able to see a life outside of sport. I spoke to the staff at the university and have had great feedback with what to do next, and have had support in applying for jobs and things like that. I've never had to go for a formal interview before - I've always just raced my bike and that's been all I've ever known - so that's help has been really pivotal. Overall, I think you just reach a certain point in your career where you've achieved what you want to, and you don't want to push or chase more - you're just happy with where you are.
How did you manage pressure racing against full-time cyclists when it was only a part of your life?
It's pretty difficult because you have to change your perspective on things - before studying, I was putting 100% into the sport, and cycling's not really a sport in which you hear a lot of people studying alongside it. However, I think more people should do it because doing both really gives you a great perspective. If you have a bad race or have a bad time during a training block, you realise it's not your whole life and there are other important things to move to. I think that's been really positive and a good perspective for me to have. It is a full-time sport and a sport that takes up a lot of your time, so it's important to have other things to keep you going. Instead of going from racing 60 days a year, I'd drop that down and just study alongside of it, and personally I would definitely encourage more people to do it.
How did going to university change the way you train and approach competitions?
You just have to do less during the week, but what you do is of higher quality. Instead of having those extremely long rides - I was previously training upwards of 24 hours a week as a full-time athlete - you just cut that down to 15 hours, and you do a good 15 hours rather than just doing it for the sake of doing it. Then for competition - you just have to be adaptable. The amount of times I've revised on planes is crazy, but you just have to adapt to the situation around you. There's no formula for it, you kind of find out what works for you, but you do have to get used to revising on trains and aeroplanes I'd say!
How will you manage training for BUCS with your studies for the rest of the year?
It's nice because most of our events come in March and April, so before the super busy academic period, which works pretty perfectly. We've got a fairly small squad in cycling, but we are quite close-knit, so just keeping an open dialogue with everyone around where you're at and also just checking in on each other is key. I also like having a certain goal or a certain date in your head that you can reach, and I do have a few things I want to tick off before I finish university. We've got BUCS coming up, and then it moves into more academics as I come to the end of my studies. I'm also organising some bike racing for the university after I finish, so I feel like that's a nice transition out of the competitive atmosphere and kind of helping me give back to the sport.
What are the next steps for you after university?
I've got a place to do a teacher training in teaching maths in secondary school. It's something that I've always wanted to do, but before I came to university I was pretty shy and I didn't think that I had the confidence to speak to 30 kids every day! However, whilst being here, I've really had to come out of my shell. I'm going to start that in September and I'm really excited for it.
Lastly, what advice would you give to someone who are unsure how to approach the task of balancing their sport with university?
I would say just give yourself a little bit of grace. You're coming to somewhere which, it's a great university academically and sporting-wise, and you just have to understand that you are doing a lot more than your peers. You're having to balance a lot more, so you may have a lot more stresses comparatively. I think you just have to be kind to yourself, and if you've got a session, you can't always hit 100%. Just turning up is better than not turning up at all - so, try and do everything well, but don't worry about doing everything perfectly and you'll kind of find your feet.
We would like to thank Eluned for her time ahead of the BUCS Track Cycling Championships, and we look forward to supporting Eluned as she finishes her studies here at the University of Nottingham.
You can find out more about the Performance Cycling programme at the University of Nottingham here, and the sports scholarship programme at the University of Nottingham here