'A happy rider could be fast, but an angry rider could be faster' - Meet Trek-Segafredo's sports psychologist

“Burn-out syndrome is one of the most dangerous risks that an athlete can have.” So says sports psychologist Elisabetta Borgia of Trek-Segafredo. Borgia was hired by the men’s and women’s WorldTour outfit in November last year. As well as being a doctor of psychology, and a mother of two, she has 17 years experience as a competitive cyclist behind her, and two Italian national cyclo-cross titles to her name.

Ad/> It makes her almost uniquely qualified to understand and appreciate the pressures experienced by the athletes in her charge. Not only can she treat them as patients, and support them as sports stars, but she is better able also to see them as people, with lives and interests outside the bubble of cycling. /> Cycling‘A happy rider could be fast, an angry one even faster’ — Meet Trek-Segafredo's sports psychologist17 MINUTES AGO “Sportsmen and sportswomen are ordinary people, with family and friends,” she says on the latest episode of The Cycling Show, which is available to watch now on discovery+.

“It’s not easy to separate these worlds.” “We are thoughts, we are emotions and we are behaviours,” she adds. In that respect, Borgia’s recruitment represents progress on a quite basic level. “There has been a big change in cycling, in sport, and in society in general.

Five or 10 years ago there was a big prejudice that psychologists were only for mad people, for crazy people. Now it’s almost trendy.” It also reflects less welcome, external changes to the sport that have come about in the last decade or so, with increased media attention and expectations on riders to exist not just within the field of sporting contest, but away from it as well. “In the past, performance was mainly about physical and physiological