'Escape the chaos': Golden girl back at her family home in Christchurch

Double Olympic gold medallist Ellesse Andrews is back in Christchurch visiting her parents and looking forward to an extended period of rest and relaxation.

Andrews, 24, hasn’t lived in Christchurch since she was six, when the family moved to Wanaka.

She has been based in Cambridge since she was 16, first moving there when her father Jon Andrews got a coaching job with Cycling NZ. 

After finishing school, Andrews joined Cycling NZ’s Cambridge-based elite programme full-time.

She won gold in the keirin and individual sprint at the Paris Olympics last month to go with her silver medal from the team sprint.

But after spending time travelling around Europe after the Olympics, first with partner Josh Toa, a rowing coach at Cambridge High School, and later with friends, Andrews is excited to be back in New Zealand.

"I’m really looking forward to being down. I feel like when I’m home or where my family is, I can relax,” she said.

"The thing with the holiday, and afterwards, is that I was moving around all over the show and I was still travelling.

"I haven’t had many days where I’ve just been able to sit down and really not do much at all.”

She will spend three weeks in the South Island, staying with her parents in Mt Pleasant.

Andrews is also planning to visit friends in Wanaka.

"I really like to escape from the chaos of everything, make the most of my time and be able to get outside and do things that I want to do that I don’t normally get to do,” she said.

"With cycling, we don’t really want to get out there and be walking a million miles and always travelling, so I think now’s the time where I can really make the most of how beautiful our little region and our country is.”

Andrews is not going back to high-performance training until October to prepare for her next event – the UCI Track Champions League in Europe, which spans three weekends from November 23.

"I do really enjoy being in (a) routine,” she said.

"So I am looking forward to being back, but also staying in the present moment now and enjoying this time while I have it.”

It is impossible to be completely disconnected from cycling – her father Jon doubles as her coach, a role he has filled since last September when Cycling NZ asked him to be a part of its high-performance programme.

But Andrews said there’s no problem keeping their professional and personal lives separate.

"Because we don’t live together, we can make that time where we spend time together as a father and daughter quite deliberate and then the professional time is quite deliberate as well.”

They try to keep a "no cycling talk" rule when they’re together as a family.

"It’s easy to let all of that slip in, like if we were at a family dinner or something, but I think we are conscious of that.

"I wouldn’t want either of us to be talking about work all the time, and it’s nice to still be able to connect to the family outside that,” Andrews said.

"And then on the other side of things, no family talk at work as well."

Said Jon: "Ellesse is very strict on that, no hugs at work.”

Outside cycling, Andrews is studying part-time towards a Bachelor of Communications at Waikato University, majoring in public relations.

"That’s quite fun to do on the side,” she said.

"I actually really enjoy studying, and I’ve done none of it this year because I had a concussion at the start of the year and then the games the second half of the year.

"So I’ll be looking to do summer school."

While some cyclists love coaching, Andrews has never caught that bug. Instead, she wants to get into management.

"That’s one of the potential pathways for the future.

"And one of the reasons why I did communications and PR was, I guess, to gain an understanding of some of those skills that are required for those roles.

"I would enjoy more management and guidance rather than coaching or prescribing a programme."