Cycling great Rushlee Buchanan dodges potholes in life after sport

changing room

By Suzanne McFadden

It has been a daunting process for Rushlee Buchanan to embark on a new career after retiring from professional cycling. She’s now discovered her love of coaching, which comes with its own set of challenges, she tells Suzanne McFadden.

She is a three-time Olympian and four-time World Championships medalist, taking silver on the veld track at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

So why does Ruslee Buchanan suffer from impostor syndrome?

Buchanan, one of New Zealand’s most famous track and road cyclists when she retired after the Tokyo Olympics, admits she has struggled with the transition from two decades as a professional athlete to a working life of nine to five.

She left cycling, “didn’t want anything to do with coaching” and needed a break from the sport that had consumed her for so long.

When her husband, American cyclist Adrian Hegyvary, came home each day from his new job coaching the New Zealand men’s endurance team, Buchanan didn’t want to talk shop. It was all too difficult.

“When I retired, I had to learn a lot about life and figure out what I really wanted,” says 35-year-old Buchanan.

“One of my biggest struggles has been belonging and purpose. I had this every day with a cycling team and it was something I had taken for granted.

“When I didn’t have that, I was pretty lost. But I’ve decided to take my time to get through this — and I’m pretty grateful I did.”

Eighteen months later, Buchanan has found her new path – as a cycling coach. She works full-time at St Peter’s School, Cambridge, where she was once a student, and is now Convenor of Track, Road and Mountain Bike Cycling for the school, known for its strong sporting culture.

She is also part of a select group of coaches at Te Hāpaitanga, an 18-month program that aims to enable more Kiwi women to pursue careers in high-performance coaching.

And even that was a challenge for Buchanan – who felt “a huge sense of imposter syndrome” when she first met the 14 other aspiring coaches from 12 different sports.

But it’s already boosted her confidence: “Coaching at an elite level is now 100 percent my goal, which I wouldn’t have said confidently six months ago.”

Buchanan didn’t have to move far in her new career. She was one of the first riders in Cycling NZ’s high-performance program to be based full-time at the Cambridge Velodrome, which is right next to St Peter’s.

She takes her young riders to the track a few times a week.

Having raced on professional road bike teams abroad, primarily in the United States, for more than a decade, it’s no surprise that Buchanan will be drawn to offshore coaching in the future.

When she retired in October 2021, Buchanan focused on completing her Masters in Sports Management. She could see a future related to the welfare and leadership of athletes.

For her Masters she conducted an independent review of the BMX program in Cycling NZ.

“I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I was a cyclist for about 20 years and knew very little about BMX,” says Buchanan. “I learned about this very different community here in Cambridge and it opened my eyes to the journeys of these great athletes. Now I go to the BMX track and follow it with interest.”

Buchanan is grateful that her professor, Sarah Leberman — known for her work on women leaders in sports — has challenged her academically.

Wanting to give more back to cycling, Buchanan started riding with kids in St. Peter’s after school a few days a week. It was a brief taste of coaching, but she loved it immediately.

“It was so rewarding and I was able to see feedback right away – which changed someone’s day,” she says. “I realized that coaching can be pretty cool because you can have a huge impact on people’s enjoyment of sport.

“It also gave me the confidence to believe that coaching is something I could really do.” When it came time to take up the full-time position as director of cycling at her old school, she jumped at the chance.

While happy with her job and leaving the office to hit the streets with the students, Buchanan still wishes her journey from athlete to employee had been a lot smoother.

“I’ve spoken to other recently retired athletes who say transition is something that’s not talked about enough,” she says. “It’s definitely an area the sport could work on, but I understand everyone has their own journey and exits the sport at a different time. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to follow.”

Buchanan had a strong support team around him, including an athlete life coach. “Have I used everything? Probably not…I was an independent athlete who thought I could do it myself,” she says.

“But I’m really glad I took the time to go through it instead of rushing into work. I understand why people live for the weekends now.”

Buchanan admits she was “quite hesitant” to apply for the Te Hāpaitanga program, run by High Performance Sport NZ.

“I still wasn’t convinced that I would be good as a coach. But I had some good people in my corner to support me,” said the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games team pursuit silver medalist.

When Buchanan met with the other coaches on the program at their first of five residences (which kicked off in Cambridge), she was “extremely nervous”.

“I’m still very young in my coaching years, even if not in the sense of top performance. I was very aware of all the things I didn’t know. But of course I was excited to have the opportunity to spend the next 18 months with and learn from these amazing women,” she says.

Te Hāpaitanga’s program director, Jody Cameron, realizes what Buchanan has been through.

“I was an athlete-turned-coach, and it took me a good 10-15 years before I felt like I knew what I was talking about,” says the former Tall Fern and Tauihi National League basketball coach. “If Rushlee was an athlete starting out, she would be a beginner at the beginning of her journey. It’s the same with coaching.

“She may have felt impostor syndrome because she suddenly felt like she had to deliver. And as athletes stay true to this journey, they suddenly realize how important the coach is, how much work they have to put in, and how clear the communication needs to be.

“So the next step as a new coach is to ask what do I know and where are the gaps? You don’t want them to come out of Te Hāpaitanga as the best coach ever.”

The young coaches also met three former elite coaches – Helene Wilson, who led the Mystics to ANZ Premiership glory, Darryl Gibson, rugby coach for the Flying Fijians, and Craig Palmer, former New Zealand cycling head coach. “Here are some real people who have performed on the highest stages and won. You know what it looks like,” says Cameron.

Buchanan found this first residency challenging, but not what she expected. “I thought my coaching philosophy would be challenged and I was hooked,” she says.

“But it challenged me personally. Some of the women were able to articulate their thoughts and speak with immediate confidence, but I felt very overwhelmed.

“It was a big challenge getting out of my shell over the three days, so I had to push myself out of my comfort zone, which was good.”

It also made Buchanan realize that she has a vast amount of high-performance knowledge from her athletic days and academic studies. “I need more confidence to use it and a better understanding of when and why to use it,” she says.

She would also like to expand her knowledge to coaching other sports. “I go to a velodrome and it’s my home. But I have to go to Wanaka and work with snowboarding or work with the Magic netball team,” says Buchanan.

“I now have the confidence to want to work with the New Zealand cycling team, but I would like to think that I could work with another sport or go and work abroad and just have a wider knowledge and experience base, not necessarily just in cycling “.

Now Buchanan is “super interested” in speaking to her husband of nine when they get home from work. “When we were athletes we only talked about training, but now we talk about different coaching philosophies and periodization training plans and exchange ideas,” she says.

“Sometimes it gets a bit much, so we have to say ‘stop’ and watch Married at First Sight.”

• Te Hāpaitanga Third Cohort: Janey Charlton and Anna Delong (rowing), Victoria Grant (rugby), Sara McGlashan (cricket), Ellie Tressider (snowboarding), Aimee Woodhead (swimming), Rushlee Buchanan (cycling), Nuree Greenhalgh (track and field). ), Alison Rowland (equestrian), Annalie Longo (football), Megan Thompson (water polo), Justine Reed (basketball), Anna Tasola-Andrews and Tia Winikerei (netball), Gabrielle Peach (weightlifting).

This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.