Lizzy Banks: 'Cycling's gender prize money gap is glaring - I'm lucky I could afford concussion rehab'

To say this has been a tough 12 months for Lizzy Banks would be an under-statement. On March 6 last year, a heavy crash at Strade Bianche in Italy left the Sheffield-based rider concussed, completely stalling her career. From one of the rising stars in the women’s peloton – a two-time stage winner at the Giro Rosa and a bundle of energy on her bike – Banks struggled to perform even mundane tasks as the symptoms stubbornly refused to go away.

Initially, she spent most of her time “either asleep or trying not to move” because she felt so sick from vertigo. Then, as weeks turned to months, and her dream of competing at Tokyo 2020 withered and died, she took to painting the walls of her house white as it was a simple activity she could do for short periods “and the white paint meant the visual stimulus was very low”.

When the weather improved last summer, Banks sat motionless in her garden, her cat for company. A short walk with a friend, she recalls, “was enough to knock me out for a couple of days”.

Imagine Banks’s frustration then, when having finally overcome her symptoms, and signed to a new team, EF Education-Tibco-SVB, for the 2022 season, and got herself half-fit, she travelled out to Spain for her first race in Valencia last month, only to test positive for Covid-19.

All of a sudden the nightmare returned. Her headaches were back, her nervous system was out of whack again, her mental health suffered. “It was scary because it felt so similar to concussion,” she says. “I had to reassure myself that it was temporary, that it was just another s--t thing that attacks your nervous system.” She pauses. “But I admit there have been times in the last 12 months when I was like ‘F--- my life. Why is this happening to me?’”

Fortunately for Banks, who came to professional cycling late, quitting medical school at the age of 25 to chase her dream, she has been supported throughout her ordeal. As part of the GB Cycling Team, Banks qualified for medical insurance. She admits her experience might have ended the career of a more junior rider. “Obviously paying for private post-concussion treatment, neuro-psych and neuro-rehab, is expensive,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been able to afford it. I know I’m one of the lucky ones.”

It is one of the reasons Banks says she is delighted to support Telegraph Women's Sport's Close The Gap campaign calling for equal prize money in women’s sport. The disparity between men’s and women’s professional cycling, she says, is “glaring”.

Take this month’s Strade Bianche, for instance (a race Banks was due to ride, almost exactly 12 months to the day since her fall, only for Covid to intervene). The men’s total prize pot was €40,000 (£33,578), with the winner taking home €16,000. For the women the total prize pot was €10,260, with €2,256 going to the winner. You do not have to look hard for even more glaring discrepancies. Infamously, at last year’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, then world champion Anna van der Breggen picked up only €930 for winning compared to men’s winner Davide Ballerini’s €16,000. It remains much the same this year.

Banks snorts. “I mean, let’s be honest, the inequality of the prize money is stupid. It’s really stupid.” But it is not, in Banks’s view, the biggest issue holding back women’s cycling.

“If you think about it, the men finishing on the podium at Strade don’t need the prize money, do they? And the women winning Strade also don’t really need the prize money. Ninety-nine per cent of the time it just goes to riders who already get really well paid anyway.

“So yes, we should be paid the same. Yes, it’s a glaring inequality. And yes, it’s completely stupid. But it’s not the No 1 factor. The absolute No 1 factor is getting our races on TV, increasing the exposure of women’s cycling.

“I don’t know much about women’s football,” Banks says. “But what I do know is when I turn on the TV, sometimes I see women’s football live on the BBC. And that’s brilliant. That is a massive step towards equality. Still miles away, but a massive step.”

Banks repeats again that she is one of the lucky ones. She is “very well paid” by a team who are “incredibly supportive”. Where the minimum salary is “at least the minimum of the men’s World Tour, which is higher than is required by the UCI [cycling’s world governing body]”.

She is also keen to stress that the general trend in women’s cycling is “hugely positive”. Only last month, Flanders Classics, whose stable of races includes Omloop, Gent-Wevelgem, Dwars door Vlaanderen, Scheldeprijs, and Brabantse Pijl, announced that it would offer equal prize money this year for its blue riband event, the Tour of Flanders. Chief executive Tomas van den Spiegel added that the intention was to roll that out across all of its spring races by next year. Other races and organisers are following suit.

But Banks is also aware that the pyramid remains unstable, for women in particular. Below the top teams, it is a precarious existence. “Whereas men’s Pro Conti [the next rung down] have minimum salaries, women’s don’t,” she says. “That’s where you’re kind of missing that step of development, and where you’re losing a lot of talent on the women’s side. And that’s before we get to domestic teams.” Banks herself was only able to turn pro because her husband supported her. “There are so many things that had to fall into place to get me where I am today,” she says.

Right now, happily, that is back on a bike. Banks sets off for Gent in Belgium at the crack of dawn today, and hopes to be back racing next week at Dwars door Vlaanderen. Then it’s the Tour of Flanders, Scheldeprijs, Roubaix and Liege-Bastogne-Liege. “Punchy,” she grins.

“Unlike my legs. But I don’t even mind about being s--t and being dropped. The main goals this year were the Women’s Tour, the Giro, and the Tour de France Femmes anyway. I’m just happy to be back riding.”

After her year from hell, no one could begrudge her that.