It’s 2017. Neah Evans has just qualified as a vet. She’s started a new job in a good practice. Life looks like it is unfolding nicely in front of her.
“Then she says, ‘nah, you know what, let’s give cycling a shot’.”
Brother Donald laughs at the memory of his sister swapping four legs for two wheels seven years ago.
After all, going against the grain is not unusual in their family.
Olympic cross country skier mum Ros and dad Malcolm opted to home school Neah and Donald, both of whom grappled with dyslexia.
Sport was always central to their young lives, though, and Neah has gone on to amass world and European golds, as well as Olympic silver in the team pursuit in Tokyo three years ago.
But such is the standard the 33-year-old has set, she told BBC Sport there was “a tiny bit of disappointment” with the latter and that “gold is my target” in Paris.
The story of Evans’ remarkable rise is founded in determination, focus and hard work, as well as bucketloads of natural talent.
Mum Ros, who competed at the 1984 Winter Games in Sarajevo, saw early signs that young Neah could have a big sporting future.
“We were all quite sporty and it was part of our life,” says Ros. “We did it for fun, not for any particular wonderful motivation, and it was just ‘let’s go and do it’.
“We did a little bit of skiing and Neah was amazing. We were up in Glencoe – she might have been four or five – and she was doing it all herself. I thought, ‘wow, you could be very good at this’.”
For all that, though, it was a family holiday on Arran that provided the first indication that cycling might be in her future.
“My husband Malcolm, Neah and I were going down a really big hill,” adds Ros. “He said he was going to take off and wait for us at the bottom, but Neah followed him.
“I remember him saying that, halfway down, he turned round and was amazed to find her on his tail grinning from ear to ear.”
That competitiveness might, in part, be borne of having two brothers.
Donald speaks of an “unusual but active” upbringing and their battles to overcome their learning difficulties, something Ros says that home education helped with.
“We weren’t looking to judge ‘have you passed this exam, passed that exam’ because it was irrelevant,” she explains.
“The children didn’t grow up thinking, ‘I’m dyslexic, I’ve got a problem’. They just thought, ‘I can do that’.”
That get-up-and-go attitude has underpinned Neah’s development as a cyclist.
After initially taking up racing as a student, her drive, desire and willingness to learn were soon evident – even when her skills were perhaps not as refined as they might become.
“I met Neah in a gym in 2016 on a training camp,” recalls former strength and conditioning coach Paul Coyle. “And I saw the rough before the diamond.
“She was obviously strong, but her technique left a lot to be desired, so my first interaction with her actually was to scream ‘stop doing that’ immediately.
“What made Neah stand out was that she asked, ‘How do I fix this?’ – and it is not just what she said, it was how she said it.
“Even at that juncture, she said, ‘I want to be world champion’, and she wasn’t being anything other than serious.”
What Neah needed was to hone her technique and race craft.
Scottish Cycling’s Evan Oliphant has raced with Evans, and coached her, and realised early on that if she could marry her physical attributes to an understanding of how to race more smartly, then glory was within her grasp.
“There were races where I remember her lapping a strong field, so I knew she had something,” he says. “But she wasn’t tactically good enough to win major races.
“Every mistake she has made, she has learned from it, though, and that is the key because if you have got the legs to be there, you learn in every race.”
For Coyle, the moment he knew Neah would achieve her goal came the first time she raced internationally.
“She was wearing an old skin suit and riding an old bike in an elimination race,” he recalls. “One by one, the Scottish girls all got taken out but Neah was doggedly hanging in there.
“She finished third in a world-class field, eliminating world medallists, and that’s when the penny dropped that actually, she is the real deal.”
So far from counting against her, being a late starter might actually have aided Neah’s journey to the top of her sport.
After making the decision to leave her job as a vet seven years ago to focus solely on cycling, major medals soon followed.
It was a bold move which has undoubtedly paid off.
“We were all quite happy for her to do it because that is what she wanted,” mother Ros says.
“I think we all thought she might do it for a few years then go back to veterinary, but I didn’t have a leg to stand on because I gave up a teaching career to go skiing.
“It is your life, so it’s important you enjoy it.”
“She’s not afraid to go for it,” brother Donald adds. “You have got to respect that because these are decisions that are hard to make, then make stick.”
