I was travelling light. I’d managed to get a full glass of beer spilt on me the previous night (good story, for another time) and although I’d quickly rinsed the beer off my only pair of trousers I figured I’d be working outside on the race and should be safe.

Sitting on the back of the Bigla team car boot chatting with Mikayla Harvey about how todays de Ronde had gone I could still smell last night. “Sorry about the waft of beer, it wasn’t mine if that helps?” I laughed, cringing. “It’s alright,” Mikayla replied, “if you are in Belgium for Flanders and don’t smell of beer you are probably doing something wrong!”

Mikayla didn’t smell of beer but she was doing it right. She was living her dreams.

“I love it. It’s crazy!”

“Just being there…the atmosphere at the start was insane. The amount of people watching was incredible, and I’ve never been in a race where there’s so many fans. It just made you want to race.”

“I had quite an important role for the first part of the race, just to get my teammates in a good position before the critical parts, and that was definitely a battle from the beginning. There’s no mucking around, you’re full gas from the start. You are having to concentrate every second of the race, otherwise you end up getting involved in crashes, or you’re out the back. If you blink for a second riders have passed you and you’re almost off the road. You are bunny hopping up the sidewalk and sprinting up the pathway and then back into the peloton, it’s hectic.”

“It’s full gas like 5km before the critical sections, so by the time you reach a hill you’re already smashed, but you just have to keep going. It is pretty aggressive, it’s taken me a while to get used to it, I’m not used to everyone banging and swearing.”

“It’s just so different compared to anything I’ve done in New Zealand, Australia and America. We only have like 20-40 people in the New Zealand pelotons, so it’s a little different. Whereas here in Europe there’s just so much going on, and there’s all the team tactics and knowing all the courses is so important, and the roads are so narrow. I’ve been studying so I know each corner and when the climbs are coming, so I know where I need to be.”

I’d noticed fresh scabs on the startline, and as we sit there she wipes fresh blood from her knee.

“I crashed last Sunday [Gent-Wevelgem], just 1k into the race. That kind of made me a little bit nervous in the peloton but I’m surrounded by so many good teammates and they gave me so much support and pointers. I just got back into the right mentality and hit the racing again. Unfortunately I went down again today, 105km into the race, right in the middle of the peloton. There was a squeeze and I just hit the wheel in front and I was down. It happens.”

“But we got third today, that is epic. This is like one of the biggest races of the season, it’s incredible. It makes me so happy.”

A group of kids come to the car, searching for race souvenirs. “I always give all my bottles away, it’s so cool. It’s part of the culture here, it’s their rugby. We get behind rugby games at home, it’s just that it gets to be cycling here. It would have been so cool growing up in this sort of environment.”

She smiles.

“I love it, it’s crazy, it’s cool.”