ELLIE Richardson, one of Scotland’s best track sprinters, has retired from cycling less than nine months before the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Richardson began her sporting career as a track and field athlete, only turning to cycling five years ago after injury wrecked her athletics dreams.

Despite her late start in the sport, she wasted no time in picking up accolades including 10 Scottish national titles and a place in Team Scotland for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. She also earned a brace of call-ups to the GB team despite simultaneously practising as a physiotherapist and studying for a masters degree.

A second Commonwealth Games appearance in Gold Coast next April was on the cards, but injury, coupled with some serious concerns about the selection policy, has led the 31-year-old to hang up her helmet.

“I’d have loved for my swansong to have been in Gold Coast,” said the Wester Ross rider. “I’ve had an ankle injury and then got knocked off my bike so that’s been bad timing. And the qualifying targets for Gold Coast for the Scottish team have been released and they’re very, very high.

“I’m certainly one for challenges and I don’t believe anyone should rest on their laurels and assume they’ll get into the team so I’m all for setting high standards but the targets they’ve set are, given my context and everybody else on the female side, just unachievable.”

Richardson believes the targets are so high that no riders currently in the GB set-up could achieve them and she would have had to self-fund to get herself to events, putting the cost of trying to qualify for the Games at close to £10,000.

Richardson is well aware that elite sport is a brutal and cut-throat environment but she believes that had she made it to Gold Coast next year, she could have competed well.

“It’s a real shame because although you can never predict what will happen, I think I could have potentially have contended for a bronze medal,” she said.

“I guess they have to have standards – it just seems a bit tough when it’s not a professional sport. It’s not me being defeatist but in life, you have to weigh up the cost versus the rewards and so that, plus the injuries, made me think that now was the time to stop.”

Despite Richardson announcing her retirement prematurely, she is grateful for the opportunities she has had, particularly having only discovered the sport by accident. After injury wrecked her attempt to qualify for the Commonwealth Games in athletics in 2010, she turned her hand to track cycling.

It proved to be a good move. Richardson’s achievements in the velodrome in five short years eclipse what most achieve in an entire career and so while she knows her late start in the sport means she will never know how good she might have been, she will continue working as a physio while looking back fondly on her career.

“I could only have reached my true potential if I’d begun cycling much earlier and been a full-time athlete but I feel lucky to have found cycling in the end and I’ve exceeded what I ever thought I’d do,” she said.

“I’m feeling OK about my decision to retire because I’m an accidental cyclist and all I ever wanted was to be the best I

could under these circumstances. I feel so grateful for the opportunities I’ve had and what I’ve learned.”

Richardson also hopes she can be an example to younger athletes.

“I hope I’ve shown that you can have a balanced life, an education and a career as well as being an athlete and while I don’t have an Olympic medal, I can hold my head up because I feel that I’ve done my very best,” she said.