World and Olympic champion Bethany Shriever is ticking off her BMX bucket list one event at a time and now has the final feat firmly in her sights.
The Manchester-based star, 24, dominated on home soil at the UCI Cycling World Championships in Glasgow this month, adding a second global crown to her Olympic gold clinched in Tokyo.
Paris 2024 is, in her own words, ‘just down the road’, but before then she has one more prize to pursue and one last score to settle.
“We’re about halfway through the World Cup season and it’s obviously going very well, it’s been my best yet,” she said.
“I’m currently top of the leaderboard so I want to stay there. We’ve got the Euro round in Portugal, then the World Cup in France and two World Cups in Argentina.
“I’d love to take the overall top spot at the World Cup, that’s the last thing I want to take off my list.
“I’ve been Olympic champion, world champion and European champion, so it’s the last thing, it would honestly be so good and there’s a good pay out from it as well.”
Shriever, who led from start to finish in Glasgow, knows the target on her back is growing with each field she conquers.
But she insists the best is yet to come and reckons a winter in the gym will help push her onto new heights in the summer.
“I’d say leading into the Worlds, that was probably the fastest I’ve been all season,” she said.
“But I still think there’s way more to come. Strength wise in the gym, I know there’s loads more there. I only just started getting stronger probably at the end of last year.
“I’ve never really been good at the gym but now I’ve got a new coach (Keith Barker, British Cycling lead strength and conditioning coach) and he’s helped so much.
“It’s exciting thinking about it. I know for Paris I’m going to be freaking rapid.”
Shriever’s continued excellence has not purely been a result of reps and personal bests, with psychologist Richard Hampson helping strengthen her mindset too.
Pressure has proven to be more foe than friend in recent times, but Shriever is slowly coming to relish the heat of battle.
“Last year I feel like I struggled with it quite a lot,” she said.
“I’d get nervous and wouldn’t really know how to deal with pressure but that was obviously coming off of a lot of success which I’ve never had before.
“At the World Champs I dealt with the home crowd, my family being there, I dealt with the pressure of people expecting me to do well, so I feel like that was what impressed me most.
“Now having the rainbow jersey again, it’s kind of like another challenge.
“So I’m going take it in my stride, use it as a challenge and hopefully win some more races.”
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