Neah Evans does not to intend to end her absence from opening ceremonies at this year’s Paris Olympics.
The 33-year-old track cyclist helped Team GB win silver in the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games in 2021.
But the Scot prefers to miss the hours-long spectacle that heralds the start of the event, focusing instead on being in the best shape to compete.
“This will be my fourth major championships and I haven’t yet been to a single opening ceremony,” she told Sportshour. “So far, I’ve always come away with a good result. It’s a no brainer.
“Some people, they get to the Olympics and that’s their target. They’ve got to the Olympics and they can just relax, enjoy it and they just get involved with all the stuff around it.
“Whereas I guess I’ve been very privileged and always been a situation where I can challenge for medals so it’s very performance-based.
“And that then means you go, ‘no’. Because, obviously there’s a lot of standing about and a lot of waiting. Sorry to burst the bubble.
“You are standing for like hours and hours and hours to get in the right place so they can parade you in at the exactly the right moment and that’s not [good for elite] performance, basically.”
Two-time world champion Evans was acting as ‘Olympic myth buster’ on BBC World Service and revealed what she will be doing on the evening of the ceremony instead.
“We’ve had a memo that we’re going to take our ceremony kit because you get a special opening ceremony kit and I think we’re going to do something on the evening, that we’ll probably go to dinner in that kit as a like a nod to it, if you like,” she explained.
“We go to Celtic Manor [Resort, in Wales] for a holding camp and we stay in quite luxurious lodges.”
